Since this was our first season with this machine and since many players contributed a lot of money to purchasing it, we maintained an open door usage policy. Basically, anybody who was a frequent user was entrusted with a key to the shed and allowed to use the machine whenever they wanted to.

Unfortunately, one or two bad apples (as they say) spoiled it for everybody and this policy will no longer be possible for next season.

Three different times this year, somebody used the ball machine until it started to malfunction and then put it away broken. They did not tell anybody that it was not working. They did not put an out-of-order sign on it. They didn’t contact anybody who might have been able to fix it. They simply unplugged it and put it away without saying a word.

The impact of this behaviour, of course, affects all of us. For example, we don’t know what the access policy will be for 2009, but we can guarantee that it will be tougher. Whatever the policy, it will certainly restrict access to the machine to those who recognize problems and admit when mistakes have been made.