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I was honoured and humbled to be elected President of the South Pacific Bridge Federation at our annual meeting at the Gold Coast Congress in February, and at the same time, as our zonal representative on the World Bridge Federation Executive Council.

 

Our region is both big and small - the South Pacific has a small population but some of our countries cover vast areas. Our bridge zone is also both big and small - we only have 4 member countries (at the moment) but we are many times bigger than the 4 smallest zones combined in numbers of bridge players!

 

Zone 7 has also been a huge contributor to world bridge. As just two examples, Denis Howard was WBF President from 1986 through 1991, and Laurie Kelso as well as being a senior international director was also secretary of the WBF Laws Committee for the recent update.

 

I'd like to pay tribute to John Wignall, my predecessor as zonal president. John was a fine player for New Zealand at world level. He has been our zonal representative to the WBF for an incomprehensible 32 years, a number that I am determined not to reach! John has been a truly outstanding administrator, and will complete his innings in Orlando as WBF 1st Vice President. Thank you John.

 

I have played bridge for over 30 years, and I have also been an active bridge administrator at local and national levels for over 25 years. As a frequent Australian representative I dare say I am well-known in the expert community. Now I hope to become better known across our entire bridge zone, particularly since I would like to call on everyone to help us promote and develop our beautiful game across our beautiful South Pacific!

 

In fact, I'll start now! If you have bridge-playing contacts in the South Pacific island nations, I'd be very pleased to hear from you at president.spbf@gmail.com.

 

I'm very much looking forward to representing our zone, and contributing to the global future of bridge.

 

Regards

Ben Thompson

 

 

Ben Thompson

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