AMGK Summary Report on Meeting Sunday 20th August 2023

The latest meeting, which included a baby fish table show was held, as usual, at the St. Bartholomew’s Church Hall, Brinklow Road, Binley, Coventry CV3 2DT starting at 1.00pm and finishing at 4.30pm. Attended by 15 members this time, clashing with the day of the televised Women’s Football World Cup Final and being in the middle of the school’s summer holiday.

• Fish on show bred this year were some well grown Pearl-scales and Bristol Shubunkins bred by Elaine Edmunds, judged by Ian Mildon with Elaine winning two first rosettes and goes without saying best in Show recognition! Well done to Elaine and congratulations on the fine fish on show. Other members announced that they had bred fish this year, but due to a late start, were considered too small, or had not started to sort out to bring to the meeting this time. Best of luck to all the breeders for the Open Shows this early Autumn.
• A summary and review of our last Open Show held at the Wyken Centre in Coventry last June formed the bulk of the meeting’s agenda with many questions and opinions raised and discussed following a short presentation of a written summary prepared earlier by Pat Davies, our former Chairman and Vice President.
• The length of time taken to judge the Open Show was addressed by Ian Mildon. The fact that we only had a few judges attend on the day, with three of them also having to undertake one to one training with the three volunteer trainee judges left on the training course, meant that there was little time for some of the visitors and exhibitors to review all the show before the prize giving had to start. The good news for the future as stated by Ian was that we expect to have some of the trainees accepted as fully qualified judges for next year.
• To celebrate the AMGK’s 50^th Anniversary next year (2024) it was agreed that we should do something special to mark the event. Suggested ideas included:-

1. Inviting a special guest to award the prizes at the Open Show (we invited the Mayor of Coventry for a previous milestone). Ideas welcome please to the Committee in the normal way.
2. Consider moving the Open Show to accommodate baby fish classes into the Autumn schedule rather than our normal time slot of June.
3. Have more classes for previous year’s bred fish. Breeding of fish being the very lifeblood of the showing aspect of the goldfish hobby from the club’s perspective.
4. Invite expert speaker to lead a seminar in photographing fish.
5. Offering a surplus spawning from a breeder to the wider membership, with a view to having a competition at the end of the year to see who had managed to best grow on the youngsters and select for the correct standard to Nationwide criteria.
6. Encourage members who had joined the society over the last two or three years to attend some of our meetings, to get to know each other face to face rather than just on our facebook page and through the website etc.,
7. Continue with our successful auctions at each of our meetings, (although we did not have one this time as nobody had surplus fish to bring).
8. We had previously discussed producing a calendar depicting our fish, and although this was not discussed again at the meeting, we could do with a volunteer capable of producing one to come forward. Costs would be covered by the AMGK. The last one was commissioned and produced for 2005 and has become a rare collectors’ piece apparently!
9. More suggestions would be appreciated and should be forwarded to the AMGK secretary.

The meeting finished earlier than normal, with the bonus being that everyone could get home before dark, especially appreciated by our Bristol contingent who regularly make the long journey to support our meetings.

Thanks once again to Sue Brailey, for volunteering for canteen duty throughout the meeting.

Pat Davies 23/8/2023