NSWCA/ACF Responds to Parr

A couple of days after this post, Peter Parr fired another one his usually long salvos at the familiar enemy, the NSWCA and ACF, in Australia's most popular chess bulletin board, Chess Chat. That move might have been a bad blunder. For now, Australian chess mandarin, Bill Gletsos, appears to have found no other choice but to publish the following email into the public domain (which I also publish here in full with minor edits added for punctuation and layout):

Dear Peter,

The NSWCA Council made it quite clear it had no involvement in the 2009 Australian Open bid, other than to offer a successful NSW based bidder the use of NSWCA equipment if required and the ability to put the tournament income and expenditure through the NSWCA accounts. As such your offer of sponsorship had nothing to do with the NSWCA.

Now the running of the 2009 Australian Open was awarded to Chris Dimock and Fred Shuetz (not Manly) by the ACF in late July 2008.

No mention of your offer was included in documents submitted to the ACF by Chris or Fred as part of their bid.

You claim that your offer was accepted by the ACF, the NSWCA and the organising committee in mid July 2008.

There is no correspondence I have seen from the ACF, the NSWCA or the organising committee to support this claim.

In fact in your email to Fred Shuetz dated the 10th September 2008 you clearly asked Fred: "Please list Chess Discount Sales as a sponsor of the event if the offer is accepted."

From this it is quite clear that as of the 10th September your offer of sponsorship had not been accepted.

At no stage since your email of the 10th September have I been informed either verbally or in writing by the organising committee that they have accepted your offer of sponsorship.

In fact the first I was aware of the fact they had apparently belatedly accepted it was when I saw it mentioned on the tournament website on 10th December along with the notice stating they were extending the early entry discount. This was 2 days after Chris Dimock advised he was withdrawing from the organising committee.

As such any issues you have regarding your sponsorship, its promotion and advertising, you need to take up directly with the organising committee.

The organisers are quite capable of advertising the event through various channels and can easily contact the ACF Newsletter editor Joe Tanti to have whatever information regarding the 2009 Australian Open placed in the ACF Newsletter.

Also who the organising committee wishes to appoint as their contact for the tournament is up to the organising committee and certainly not the NSWCA.

As for the arbiters fee my understanding is that the budgeted $2,000 fee is for a chief arbiter and an assistant arbiter. However what the organisers pay their arbiters is up to the organisers.

The tournament website is simply being hosted off the NSWCA website, but the NSWCA has no involvement in the contents of the tournament web site. As such what information appears on the website is the responsibility of the organising committee.

My role as ACF Liaison is not to carry out functions of the organising committee but to act just as the name suggests as a liaison between the organisers and the ACF.

You should note that the NSWCA at the request of Fred Shuetz advertised the event and your sponsorship in an email bulletin sent out by the NSWCA Communications Officer last Sunday evening.

In my earlier post, the following quote from Mr Parr appears: "This morning I was advised by email from the NSWCA President and ACF Deputy President Bill Gletsos that the Australian Chess Federation and the New South Wales Chess Association have not accepted my long standing offer of sponsorship. I therefore had no alternative but to withdraw my offer this afternoon."

Unless Mr Parr is referring to another email from Mr Gletsos, I can't see anything in the latter's words, above, which amounts to anything like not accepting the sponsorship. Can you?

Mr Parr's annoyance at the whole situation is understandable. With PR for his sponsorship appearing as late as it did, his original aim, obviously to generate revenue for his business, has clearly been curtailed.

Still, Mr Parr should reverse his decision to withdraw his sponsorship. It's Christmas, after all.

NOTE: I'm off on Christmas celebrations today and lasting well into the night. Thus, comments to this post will likely only be published from tomorrow morning.