ISKA UK AGM
The ISKA UK Board of Directors gathered for their Annual General Meeting on the 7th February 2010 at Jurys Inn in Birmingham. The meeting was chaired by ISKA UK Executive Director Paul Hennessy who opened proceedings with the chairman’s report.
ISKA UK sanctioned 86 events during 2009 an increase of 5.8% compared to 2008, a total of 102 events were booked with 16 being cancelled or postponed, 95 title matches were contested including 7 World titles, 2 European titles 4 Commonwealth titles and 82 British, National and Regional titles, showing a 9% increase in the number of titles sanctioned. ISKA UK maintains its position as the No.1 sanctioning body in the UK
The recession did take its toll with fewer World and European titles taking place than in the previous year, these type of events are expensive to stage and promoters reported great difficulty in finding sponsors and selling VIP ringside tickets needed to cover the expenses of a major International card. Standard price tickets sales were steady throughout the year with many successful small and medium sized shows. The recession had an unforeseen effect on the number of fighters available to compete as the vast majority are park time, pressures of keeping the day job or having to find a new one, kept many of them away from training as the number of promotions increased the pool of available fighters got smaller.
The ISKA Amateur 2009 European Championship where hosted in Rome, Italy. The UK fielded a strong team with competitors in almost all the disciplines on the mats and in the ring, The UK coaches and Team managers did a great job preparing their teams and it paid off with a massive medal haul, including 60 Gold, 27 Silver and 20 Bronze. ISKA UK Executive Paul Hennessy accepted a position on the newly formed ISKA European Executive Council and will work alongside European President Fritz Exenberger and European Vice President Sidal Davut together they will shape the future of ISKA Europe.
The agenda covered the need to embrace 21st century technology with plans to expand the ISKA UK Website and open Face book and Twitter accounts. The reporting of results was also debated, every major sport has an accurate system of reporting results, MMA has surpassed Kickboxing and Muaythai just go to Sherdog.com and their Fight Finder program will give fight records for hundreds of MMA fighters. We need something similar for Kickboxing and Muaythai.
The new ISKA UK Amateur Director Clifton Findley introduced himself, he was joined by the new ISKA UK Forms Director Joe Hallett. Clifton confirmed that new directors for the Semi-contact, Light-contact and Ring-sports divisions will be announced shortly. The first Amateur event for 2010 will be the London Open on the 29th May at the Excel which will also act as the England Team qualifiers for the ISKA 2010 World Amateur Championship which will be staged in Almeria Spain 2nd-7th November.
ISKA UK MMA Director Lee Hasdell discussed the growth of the new ISKA MMA division, from a slow start ISKA MMA has gathered momentum with eight MMA events booked for the first quarter of 2010. Lee has schedule more referee and judge’s courses and also plans to offer Instructor courses aimed at Thai/Kickboxing Instructor who want to add the grappling and ground work of MMA to their classes.
It was agreed generally although we has good year under the circumstances, there are still many areas in which we can improve our service to our members and will endeavour to do so.
9 February 2010
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