President's Report 1995
This year was a turning point for Diplomacy in Canberra. In the early days we spoke of becoming a force within the hobby, now we are. Sydney's Dip club is dead (so our Ashes record will remain 1- 0 in our favour, I guess!) and Canberra is edging closer to parity with Melbourne. We had 31 new players this year out of 62 since we began. We need to make more of these into at least semi-regular players and a few, even four, into Tournament circuit players. Our leadership of the Nationals and the ACT Championships are important to the hobby and the Slovenian has been a great venue. My thanks to all those players who tried their hand in '95. Please come again: the only way to get better is to persist (and mug the bastards that got you last time!). While everyone tastes the knife at times, Diplomacy is about developing the hunger for winning and scoring. True Diplomats get up off the conference floor and come back a month later with a new set of cutlery. Do it! A special thanks to the Dickson College players and, in particular, Andrew Goff for descending on the club and the ACT Championships. DCDC is as critical to the growth of Diplomacy in Canberra and indeed the national scene as DCOC has been in counteracting the apparent national attrition which is most evident in Sydney. Andrew's leadership role at DCDC has, I hope, established Diplomacy as a continuing option at college level. The introduction of a club ranking system gives us a way of fairly sorting out a mix of players each night as well as something for new players to strive for. Several new players have made great strides towards higher status already in just a few games. Well done. I think we should also discuss running demonstration games in shopping centres in 1996. Doug and I want to wish all members a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and encourage everyone to attend, even for a day, the Australian Diplomacy Championships here in January. Come along and at least see what real cut-throat Dip is like! Andrew Geraghty (Pres)
