Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Battle lines drawn

Curling-crazed readers may wish to consider getting a paid online subscription to the Calgary Herald. This way they can read the regular work of curling scribe Al Cameron, one of the busiest around, who also contributes to The Curling News.

Naturally, this being a Blog, readers are are also invited to consider the long-held conspiracy theory that you can't believe anything the mainstream media say. ;-)

Today's column on page F2 of the sports section delves deeper into Thursday's extraordinary provincial/CCA summit meeting (see Oct. 24 below) with some eye-opening rumouring in addition to hard quotes from Cindy McFeeters, an elected official (ie. volunteer) recently decommissioned from the CCA board.

McFeeters: "What was most frustrating was the lack of information given to the directors to make the proper decision. And the provincial associations have asked the hard questions, and the CCA hasn't given them the answers they deserve."

Cameron says his newspaper tried to get the CCA to reveal the payout to lawyers during the TV deal renegotiations, but were "politely, but firmly, dismissed last month."

Over at the Globe, Bob Weeks managed to wrangle this quote from Ontario provincial exec Doug Bakes: "If (the CCA hopes) to get everyone on side, then they need to back up, clean up the past and maybe acknowledge that somebody screwed up. That would go a long way towards regaining some confidence."

On the good news ledger, CCA has mailed the cheque to the hosts of the second-biggest Scott Tournament of Hearts shootout in history, the 2004 event in Red Deer. The magic number is $291,621.05, which will be split between area clubs based on their volunteer participation. Thanks again to Al Cameron for that one.

1 comment:

OttTriGuy said...

The last sentence in Bob Weeks' article really sums up the problem with the CCA: "The CCA is aware of the disappointment of the regional associations, but said its actions over the past year have been unavoidable."

With no explanation, our very concerns about communication and transparency are once again being dismissed. It is cryptic comments like that that everyone is so damned upset about, and to still see this going on today demonstrates that even after all the uproar, the CCA still has no clue. I don't see how the current group can fix the problems when they can't even see them.