Judo Unity

Letter sent to local papers

Dear Editor

For many years there has been disunity in the World of Judo and a sense of unfairness I refer to the fact that the British Judo Association the governing body for the sport forbid its members joining any other Judo association. Unlike other sports Judo is more then just a competitive system where a governing body decides rules of the game and oversees the conduct of its members, it’s a Martial Way and a philosophy of life. Therefore its practitioners have many interpretations on what direction they should travel to fulfil their ambition to become good Judoka, hence many Judo associations. The BJA have travelled down the road of being an Olympic Sport with some considerable success but their refusal to recognise other associations has caused upsets.
Recently there has been a dramatic change in the attitude of the BJA and I might say quite a courageous policy change in my opinion, they now allow their members to belong other Judo associations, this opens the door to clubs like the Young Judo Club based at the Swale Martial Arts Club East Street Sittingbourne to affiliate its members. The YJC which is 50 years old in 2007 has for the last 30 years been affiliated with the International Budo Federation an organisation that was founded in Holland and has representative throughout the World, the IBF caters for many Martial Arts and Combat Disciplines such as Sombo, CombatSombo and Kurash, hence you will see our members entering and grading in many varied events. If a member wished to compete at World Level in Sombo or Kurash their membership to the IBF was not a problem with Judo it would mean rejecting their IBF membership to join the BJA and then return at a later date, something I have done on many occasion 1977-80 becoming a member of the Olympic Judo Squad, 2001 winning the World Masters. This no longer the case and YJC members can now retain their IBF license and be a BJA member, which we intend to encourage.
Some months ago months ago the BJA approached myself about affiliating the club, the majority of the Instructors agreed, this involved having grades and coaching certificates verified. This has caused some concern with other clubs who refused to attend a familiarisation course, this I cannot understand as our own IBF would not allow someone to join without checking their credential and explaining their methods. The first step for YJC member was for our competitive Black Belts to attend a grading at the famous Budokwai Judo Club in London to see if competitive standards are the same needless to say they were Danny Carrott had 3 fights to confirm his 2nd Dan winning 2 and drawing 1 the latter in competition he would have won but in BJA grading only Ippon and Waza-ari are scored, Colin Carrott who is in his mid 40’s insisted on going for a competitive grade rather the a Technical Grade as his would have been allowed because of his age, also had his 3rd Dan recommended drawing 1 fight and losing to a 128 Kilo (20 stone) 4th Dan , John Clarke who is a member of the PE Staff at the Sittingbourne Community College, fought the same 4th with a different result in grading terms it was classified as a draw but in real terms John’s continual attacking made the big guy look ineffective and he picked up 4 penalty points (4 shido’s) in normal circumstances they heavyweight would have been disqualified but the examiners decided to let the fight continue as they wanted to assess John’s ability as their was no one else of his standard present, in my opinion this was the right course of action. An Ippon won his next fight he was recommended to 4th Dan. All returned proving that the YJC has a very high standard, being welcome edition to the BJA family something that our rivals have questioned in the past. Joining the BJA will help John in his bid for his 5th Dan because he can stay in this country the IBF would have expected him to travel to Holland.

The next stage is to have their theory confirmed this will be the easy side as the IBF theory syllabus is lot more involved then the BJA this will be done on the weekend Coaching Course the BJA are doing at the YJC Dojo in East Street where several of our older Dan grades and instructors will be attending. This liaison will prove a major benefit to both organisations and we are already preparing our youngsters for BJA competitions.

For further details on Judo, Sombo, Kurash contact 01795 437124, 07074 200150, youngjudoclub@yahoo.co.uk, www.sittingbourne.org

Martin Clarke 8th Dan