The Chairman: “Let’s make it a great one”

Some of the more important points then:

• Captains and Vice-Captains are broadly in place with a few confirmations to be made at 3s and 4s level. Please do your best to support these guys whenever you can as it can be a thankless task!
• I am pleased to say that Brian has agreed to carry on with his broad supportive role within the Club which will include attendance at training (so if he can get there from Beckenham so can you!!) and on match day which is great news for all the teams.
• Chris O’Connor will continue to oversee administrative duties which again is fantastic as it is very laborious work (Captains pls call in with your team and results before you get that first pint!) and Matt Beckett will support.
• We have added in a couple of further roles which we think will be really important this year as well:

• Mark Grove has been appointed as Club Captain and he will seek to create much better communication between the teams and the captains/vice-captains and to support in issues relating to player movement between teams etc. We all recognised this as a major issue last season and we hope we can now consign that problem to history with an open and transparent policy that rewards both performances and all-round commitment to the Club and we really hope this will foster a far more cohesive spirit within the clubs and between the teams. Please support this by understanding that no-one has a guaranteed place in any particular team and that movement may sometimes be for the good of the Club. Mark will help introduce this into the club ethos!
• On a slightly different note we have also appointed Andy richardson to run all of our social media stuff, including the website and we have already seen huge increases in our Facebook activity, for example. Please help with content and likes/retweets etc where you can! 

• Alex Ewin will continue as Treasurer and he will be the point of contact, via your Captains, for payment of subs which remains critical for the Club to survive.
• We have some good news hear we hope in that first team Captain Arren Sutcliffe has done a deal with his school, the Chelsea Academy, whereby from the start of October we will have exclusive Tuesday night use of their facilities for training. This is hopefully not only good news in terms of travel time and convenience but also in relation to subs levels this year as we are hopeful we will be able to negotiate a much better rate than we currently endure at Tolworth so reducing the overall level of subs. More news of that in due course. The other exciting development here is that between 6-7 on Tuesdays we will have the chance to train the U18s at the Academy and we have agreed to take them over as our Nottsborough Colts who in the first instance will play in the AFA Youth Cup but, we hope, will also deliver some new and young players into the Club.

That leads into the Club Day this coming Saturday that I trust will be as successful as last year and the ones before. You will be getting separate mails from your Captains in due course but broadly we are meeting at 1pm for a 2pm start and we hope to have all 5 teams out, although we condense this to 4 depending on numbers. Some points connected to the general info above:

• As per home match days this year we will ask you to bring £10 to help us cover costs for the day (away subs will be £5).
• We will also ask you on the day to fill in the mandatory SAL registration form with the £50 payment as per last year. This will be the first £50 payment towards subs and, as indicated above, we are trying our hardest to bring down the overall level of subs this year which we will communicate as soon as we can. The AGM has already decided (positively in my view) to cap subs for new players to the Club at £100 for the season. We have always been flexible on anyone who really cannot afford the full amount of subs so please let myself or your captain know (in confidence obviously) if you want to request this. Of course all of this pre-supposes that all other players pay their full subs on time – amazingly there are still a small number of individuals who for some reason don’t feel they have to pay their way – please make sure this does not happen this year!

One final point – we have once again seen a great influx of new players pre-season which is great news but we always need more so please have a think about any friends, uni friends or work colleagues you could target to come down as it will make a big difference to our season. Please see below for an example e-mail that will hopefully get the message across! 

Anyway I look forward to seeing all or most of you on Saturday and then for the season proper which starts on the 6th for the 1s/2s/3s and the 13th for the 4s and the Vets – let’s make it a great one.

Best