Friday 18 March 2011

New Classes for Breed Clubs

In order to resolve issues that have been raised concerning the possible loss of entries at Breed Shows and prevent too much migration to All Breed shows and the new Olympian Class Award which was approved by Council at the last meeting, the board have come up with a proposal which could be implemented with very minimal change for breed shows to put on, it could also be incorporated to give a new class heading for titled pets at all shows.


The suggestion was that this would be called a Purple Ribbon Class for the Pedigree Section and Green ribbon for the Pet Section to tie in with their current colours.

The criteria would be that the award would be an Imperial Certificate which would be called either Purple Ribbon Imperial Award or Green Ribbon Imperial Award dependent upon the category.

Purple Ribbon Category (Pedigree Section)

Eligibility full Imperial Title holder, Male & Female combined= Purple Ribbon Imperial Certificate & Reserve
One Class for Entires
One Class for Neuters

Green Ribbon Category (Pet Section, all shows)
Eligibility full Imperial Title holder to include both Pedigree Pets & Non-Pedigree (Male & Female) = Green Ribbon Imperial Certificate & Reserve.

One Class.

The award would not count towards any additional status, but all entries would still be considered for Best of Breed or Best of Group as applicable and the winner would be automatically considered for Best in Show as long as the Certificate was awarded.

This would then enable all highly titled cats to continue to be shown in an appropriate class without impacting on other classes whilst still allowing them to be shown in other appropriate classes in competition. This could with very minor adjustment be put into effect at the beginning of the show season.

It is appreciated that this could be difficult for some show mangers to implement quickly and if they wished they could continue with the new class status which comes into effect on the 1st June .

The rationale behind only having one class in each category is an attempt to ensure that these classes are competitive as far as is practicably possible.

It is important to be aware that this will be a prestigious class and the award of the certificates concerned should reflect this.

13 comments:

  1. Er yes, all very well but I honestly don't see the difference between the special classes Breed Clubs were considering anyway after the Olympian bombshell hit them and the new classes, just somewhere else for the Imperial titled cats to go, which many breed clubs were going to provide anyway! The only extra that the inventively (!!!) titled Purple and Green Ribbon Classes (which put at least one person I have spoken to in mind of horse shows LOL) will provide will be a GCCF certificate but still nothing towards a higher title. So still no extra incentive to the title seeking exhibitors to enter a breed show as against an all breed show and still nothing more for the HPs after Imperial:-( About the only thing it does do is clarify the position of the HP section!

    It does not address the inequality between breed and all breed shows resulting from the Olympian class and just serves to emphasize the Olympian class as an elitist class for all breed shows. Sadly this latest offering is just another example of the GCCF's usual hasty implementation of rushed ideas without fully realising the implications or, indeed, without even bothering to try to find out if it is actually what exhibitors want :-(

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  2. i am a little confused about this as it looks like the true Non-Pedigree cats have to compete with the ever increasing pure pedigree breeds that are swamping the household pet section. While i have nothing against these cats, please please can the GCCF keep them completly seperate from the Non-Pedigree. how can the likes of my much loved little resuced girl compete with pure bred ragdolls, asians, burmese,and siamese as she has done at a recent show. the true Non-Pedigree is disappearing from the show bench, and after all these are the cats and exhibitors that have help support the breed clubs for mnay years!!
    come on GCCF play fair!!!

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  3. I had not realised that incorporation would directly lead to an autocracy where Executive (or I suppose now the Board of Directors) can immediately implement whatever half-baked scheme they can think of without troubling Council with the need to discuss it.

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  4. I'm sorry there is so much knee jerk negativity once again.This is a suggestion'The suggestion was that this would be called a Purple Ribbon Class for the Pedigree Section and Green ribbon for the Pet Section to tie in with their current colours.' Where's the autocracy of putting forward a suggestion for people to discuss before the next council meeting?

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  5. I second what Sue says; if you don't like something then say why and offer an alternative. I'm sorry if I offend anyone, but lately so many people seem to be taking the easy option of just being negative, rather than the more constructive option of offering an alternative - if more people offered suggestions we could get some real debate to find the best solution.

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  6. With respect, how is

    "This could with very minor adjustment be put into effect at the beginning of the show season. "

    compatible with only being a proposal for discussion by Council, when the next Council meeting takes palce after the beginning of the next show season?

    As to why this proosal is not a good idea, see Carol Walker's post above. I didn't think it was necessary to repeat. And if you thought my post was negative (I suspect that remark was aimed at me) you should listen to some of the things being said by the rank & file of the Cat Fancy at shows.

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  7. I have actually offered an alternative on the other "New Class Structure" blog :-)

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  8. My concern is that this gives the impression that breed shows are inferior to area shows. When a title is won in a breed show it holds just as much weight as from an area show, because the cat has more competition from its breed peers. Why is there such a rush to introduce more titles? It's not really that long since the Imperial titles were introduced. I agree with excluding titled cats from the Open classes, but surely to keep winning certificates in Title classes - without the benefit of competing cats reduces the value of the title?

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  9. It's a very simply issue. Entries must be encouraged from as many cats as possible. The majority of cats are not and never will be Olympian quality. Most of them will not even be Imperial quality. To prevent these cats from continuing to enter shows at the highest title they have and are capable of achieving is to effectively retire them. Once they are retired, their entry fees are lost. Entries dwindle. Competition dwindles. Cats live for about 15 years. Non-breeders (neuter exhibors) simply cannot keep buying new show cats. These exhibitors will therefore stop showing. Can cat showing really survive this loss?

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  10. could gccf be more like tica they have alot more chances, but with the gccf its basically 1 chance the 'open' and then you have to spend the entire day there just for that one class and one judges opinion!

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  11. Foreign Grands

    I was very happy with the proposal to group Russian, Abys, Korats and Singapuras. The new proposal groups Abyssinian, Egyptian Mau, Ocicat and Singapura with Ocicat Classic and Australian Mist to come.

    I'm not showing at the moment so won't get the chance to visit a "reform road show" to express my views. I'd like to register that I much preferred the original proposal, which put old established breeds together. Never heard of an Australian Mist and find it is "1/3 Burmese, 1/3 Abyssinian, 1/3 domestic shorthair". While I've nothing against people inventing new varieties of cats to suit themselves there seems to me to be a fundamental difference between these, which may not breed true, and cats which have had a continuity for a hundred years. It's precisely that continuity and tradition that draws me to Abys, Russians, etc. To me these cats appear to be very distinctive in type, some of the newer "blends" are blurred at the edges. Much better to judge them in separate groups.

    VFivien

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  12. Well said Harry Meekings, Linda Vousden and Jo Goddard. When are the board going to stop putting forward ill considered, half baked ideas ? Perhaps the knee jerk reaction is because the ordinary members of the Fancy have seen these so called "suggestions" become the rule so often, at the blink of an eyelid, without being thought through.
    What person in their right mind, knowing that something needs to be done to halt the decline in show entries, puts forward a scheme to exclude Imperial titled cats from the Imperial class and invents an Olympian class, where cats can only win a certificate which counts towards a title, at an all breed show ? When this is followed by a, frankly, patronising suggestion that breed shows could offer a meaningless purple ribbon class, is it any wonder that exhibitors and others are less than enthusiastic.
    There seems to be an aim to ensure competition, but restricting title holders at each level is surely removing competition and enabling cats to gain a title of which they may not be worthy.

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  13. I would like to show my Mainecoon kitten, but I'm not sure what the judges would think of her colour, she was born sold blue her markings started to appear at the age of 2 months old, she is now 8 months old and is between silver with almost black markings and her chest and bottom part of her legs and feet are brown, she will eventually, be a brown classic tabby.

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