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Archive for January, 2006

From Fred - The Membership Drive

Hibees Here!, Hibees There!, Hibees Everywhere! – Fred Legget explains the rationale behind the recent Membership Campaign.

Having been involved with the Branch from a very early date, I was aware of how membership numbers could fluctuate for a variety of reasons. Not least because of past practices of removing members from the membership list because they hadn’t forwarded their membership fees! Something that in recent years I thought was a self defeating philosophy. But..and a big but, in my experience the main reason people sometimes did not renew their membership was simply, they were too busy doing other things…and simply didn’t get round to it, let it fall off the radar and bang..we lose a member…NOT because they begrudged the money. Hands up anybody reading this who hasn’t got round to replying to someone’s letter at some stage. I know this sounds trite, but in today’s hurly burly, instant coffee lifestyle, to actually buy an envelope, obtain a money order, buy a stamp, write out an address on an envelope and post a letter by snail mail was in my opinion, one of the main reasons our numbers were dropping ..and alarmingly! When I discussed the membership numbers with our esteemed secretary Peter Hart only a couple off months ago, one could have been excused for thinking that we were the Australia branch of the East Stirling Supporters Association, not the Hibernian Supporters Association!
Also, I have thought in the past few years that quite simply, as an organization we were perhaps not as ‘welcoming’ as we once were, and we needed to go, as Alex Ferguson would say after a bad run, ‘back to basics.’ The Committee agreed to the radical step of abolishing ‘membership fees.’ Reams and reams of lists were downloaded from the computer and my hand ached from all the addresses I wrote on all the envelopes I sent, as we attempted to contact EVERY ‘lapsed’ member we had an address for, with the simple statement..’We want you back.’
AND BACK YOU CAME!
I was delighted to see some members whom I remember from as long ago as our foundation year in 1987 sign up again, and a few weel kent names that joined in the ensuing years. Also, around this time, Hibs were about to gub Hearts in the local Derby and with it being shown live at some hostelries around Oz, several members joined the quest and actively asked any Hibbies they found themselves dancing with at 2 in the morning, to show their solidarity and join the club. Quite simply, it is much better to be able to boast over 130 members (as we are just now) than to boast 30, so the first phase of the membership drive was an overwhelming success. While the ’membership fee’ method of doing things may have been entirely the right strategy back when the branch kicked off in 1987, times have changed, and so must our approach. It is much better to have 130 members who MAY happily contribute to a raffle, than to have 30 who stump up $10, when they remember, that is. After all 7/8th of nothing is still nothing! So a welcome to all my old friends, and to those new friends who have just joined us – these are exciting times for the Branch with Pat Stanton and Jimmy O’Rourke coming out next year as our guests, and I hope you can all share in it. As members! Everybody who is now a member, will remain a member until they tell us they no longer want to be one. I know from personal experience that both the football club and the supporters association are delighted that we are a large group who continue to follow and support the team so far from home. There are literally many more hundreds of Hibs supporters throughout Australia – let’s do as much as we can to gather them all under the umbrella of the Australia Branch. If you know of anyone who is of a Hibs persuasion and may not be a member, drop me a line at forza@bigfoot.com.au and I’ll send them an invite to join us. We maybe can’t all congregate behind the goals at Easter Road, but we can still do our bit from the various outposts of Australia.

9:40 pm January 19th, 2006 | admin | 27 Comments, already | ¶

From NI Hibs

Received from Conor, NI Hibs:

Hi Susan,
Hope all is well in Oz!
Many thanks for supporting our Turnbull event in Belfast last year. Would you be good enough to add details of this year’s event to your website and newsletter:

“Belfast Hibbys to hold Reilly tribute - an invite. Hibs fans in Northern Ireland are to follow on from last year’s Tribute to Eddie Turnbull function with a ‘Tribute to Lawrie Reilly’ event in March. Also being held to mark the NI Hibs Supporters’ Club ‘Famous Fifth’ anniversary, the event will also feature a number of special guests as well as guest of honour Lawrie Reilly. The information function will be held in Belfast on Friday March 10th and is likely to return to the Lower Falls Social and Recreation Club which was popular with visiting Hibbys last year. The event will include a few words from guest of honour Mr Reilly as well as a big Hibs raffle and auction in aid of the NI Hibs Travel Fund. Donations of raffle prizes are very welcome. A collection will be taken for the Dnipro appeal. Ticket details are still being confirmed, however the price will include a band and plenty of Hibby music! See the Hibeesbounce NI Hibs forum for latest information, a list of hotels and contacts for tourist information. Northern Ireland Hibs was officially founded in May 2001 to bring Hibbys in NI together for travel to games and for social events. Despite making their mark with a number of other achievements such as last year’s Turnbull event, a regular matchday travel scheme has been difficult to set up due to lack of funds and the wide spread of members throughout NI. It is hoped that funds raised this March will provide a ‘float’ for monthly travel (or more!) to Sunny Leith. A more formalised membership scheme and new club banner are also planned for 2006. Long term plans include player sponsorship and donating season tickets to young people. ‘Northern Ireland Hibby‘ said: “We can never really express what an honour is was to welcome Mr Turnbull and our fellow Hibbys to Belfast last year. It was an incredible experience for us and the icing on the cake was the great support and turnout we received. “We hope that just as many - if not more - people show their support this year as we honour Mr Reilly. “Ticket sales will help us achieve our goal to show our support at the Holy Ground as often as possible,” he said.

* Raffle and auction prizes very gratefully received. Please see the Hibeesbounce forums for latest event info and post any questions in the NI Hibs forum: we’ll do our best to help.

* For ticket details please reply to this email or see the NI Hibs message board.”
Thanks, Conor
Nihibs.com

7:19 pm January 14th, 2006 | Webmistress | 18 Comments, already | ¶

Gallery

Well it’s almost there. Things were going wonderfully until I tried to upload a pic of the Auld Farts - Fred and Tom and Peter that is. Then the gallery died. Suddenly and dramatically. Kaput. Zero, zilch, nada. It’s just a coincidence I’m sure.

11:03 pm January 12th, 2006 | admin | 32 Comments, already | ¶

Eddie Turnbull’s Cap

At first I didn’t understand what all the kerfuffle was about but having now read further I think the situation is amazing. The man played for S C O T L A N D, he wore the S C O T T I S H jersey and he doesn’t have the honour of a Scottish Cap? Ok, so the rules at the time were that you had to play against THEM or Wales or Northern Ireland to earn a Scottish Cap. I’d be interested in learning the history behind those rules but it still isn’t right. If you are GIVEN your country’s jersey to wear on a sports field then you ARE representing your country and therefore deserve a cap. Even if it is given restrospectively.

10:46 pm January 12th, 2006 | Webmistress | 18 Comments, already | ¶

Display in IE & Other Things

At the moment the website is not displaying properly in Internet Explorer even though it’s fine in Mozilla Firefox. This is something I’ll be working on over the next couple of days. Other things in the pipeline are : the Photo Gallery, links to other Hibs sites, notes about the standard meetings, and more categories and pages. Are people still using the chatroom? Someone let me know about that one please?

I’ll also probably be switching to three column format before much longer. I think it works best for us because we have a lot of unchanging information to display and I, for one, don’t like having to scroll down long sidebars.

You’ll notice that the Scotsman’s Hibs feed was one of the first things I added. This was because both DC and Cookie mentioned that they liked that aspect of the previous site. The Photo Gallery is the next big thing on the to-do list as people mention that they like seeing the photos. So if you do like something, or don’t like something, LET ME KNOW. Maybe what you want isn’t possible but maybe it is.

1:15 pm January 4th, 2006 | Webmistress | 22 Comments, already | ¶

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