NORTHERN VETERANS ATHLETICS

An independent website for veteran athletes

I have noticed that this site is still getting  a good number of visitors despite the fact that it has not been updated for some time. I regret this, but it is mainly due to stupidity on the part of the Northern Veterans Athletic Club Committee.

I set up this website several years ago as the "official" website of NVAC, and back in 2004 I had plans to develop the site so that it would be the best veterans athletic site in the UK.

Unfortunately, due to mindless and inexplicable actions on the part of the 2004 committee I reluctantly relinquished my position as membership secretary and felt unable to continue as a member. I have never had the courtesy of an explanation from the offending parties, or even any thanks for the many hours I put in on behalf of NVAC on both the website and the membership, though no doubt untruths have been spoken behind my back, and new committee members appointed from 2005 onwards have been given false information.

Though I was not prepared to rejoin the club so long as any of the 2004 officials remained in office, I have no dispute with the majority of members who are not to blame for a few bad apples. I fully intended to continue with the website, and was updating and working on a greatly enhanced version of the site during 2005.

I was rather taken aback to receive a letter from the club secretary (one of the culprits in the 2004 fiasco) asking me to discontinue the site because a new site was being designed. This was entirely unnecessary since I was updating the site with as much information as I could acquire, and I had not posted anything controversial despite the temptation to tell a few home truths about certain arrogant club officials.

Since I had already put quite a bit of work into developing this site, I refused to discontinue it. Would you believe that the club secretary even contacted my service provider to try to get my site closed down as containing "misleading information". Total nonsense, and she obviously has little knowledge of how the Internet works, the domain name being in my name, and I had passed  no charges to the Club after the 2003-4 financial year.

I did write to the new (in 2005) club chairman, explaining to the best of my knowledge what happened in 2004 and stating that I was happy to continue with the website at no charge to the club. I have never had the courtesy of a reply.

In the autumn of 2005 the proposed new website appeared as www.nvac.co.uk. It was a rather basic site, limited to very few pages and obviously constructed using a beginners design kit. Quote from this site "This website is in its infancy; please bear with us while we are developing it.". Well, 2 years later it is still "in its infancy" and we still wait for it to be developed.

For the past 2 years the NVAC membership has been deprived of a proper website, the current one still showing mainly unchanged information from 2005. Amazingly the 2007 fixtures list has appeared at last (what happened to the 2006 list?) but nothing else seems to have changed.

A total waste of the members funds, paying for the domain name and space for hosting, when you could have had a professional web site completely for free. Well done  the committee!

I have updated the results on this site as far as possible, but since nobody has bothered to send me any results for 2006 or 2007, and the person lending me newsletters is no longer a member, I have been unable to include these. If anybody can supply me with these results then I will publish them on this site.

I am still prepared to keep this site up to date with NVAC information if somebody can pass on results sheets and/or newsletters which I will return after use. Please email me at dtbs@lineone.net and I will supply you with my address.

Any other article of interest to veterans and comments on NVAC or athletics in general will be posted if received.

Dave Tomkinson