Sir – Your bridge correspondent, Nick Smith’s assertions that the game of bridge’s governing body, the English Bridge Union (EBU), is obscuring the fact that EBU members are dwindling couldn’t be farther from the truth.
It is true that the number of people playing club bridge has been declining. It is for this very reason that the membership of the EBU overwhelmingly voted for universal membership in June last year.
Nobody would disagree that Nick Smith’s own club, the Menagerie has been the most successful club in Oxford’s history in terms of winning trophies, but the very nature of its membership profile is far from the typical ‘member profile’ of which he writes, by the very nature of its own recruitment policy of inviting only elite players into its membership.
Universal membership enables all club members to share the responsibility for investing in the promotion and governance of the game.
The new policy is more inclusive and democratic and far from being a ‘leap in the dark’ it is the light at the end of the tunnel following years of steady decline.
Sue Maxwell, Oxfordshire EBU shareholder, Aylesbury
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