There was no midweek game this week; I think we all needed time to catch our breath after last Saturday’s league game against Aveley.
Another fantastic crowd of over 1,000 at The Meadow, and hopefully nobody left early to beat the traffic. Somehow we found ourselves 0-2 down midway through the second half in a game that we had dominated for long spells. An important lesson in this league, you must take your chances when you have them, because the chances are the opposition will. However, we also learnt what amazing character our team has and what quality we have in depth across the squad, allowing the substitutes to come off the bench and slot perfectly into the game. With less than twenty minutes to go we pulled it back to 1-2, but the equaliser looked to allude us.
When the board went up to say there will be nine minutes added on, you could sense the whole crowd was lifted – we could still get an equaliser in this game. And it came in the 93rd minute. Whilst the crowd celebrated wildly, the players picked the ball out of the net, sprinted back to the halfway line for the restart. We were not settling for a point. Sure enough, sixty seconds later we were back down the other end to score the winner, turning The Meadow into a sea of smiling faces (apart from the Aveley fans at the other end who had been magnificent throughout the game, they must have wondered what had happened).
An astonishing game of football. We hoped that there would be a step up in quality and entertainment when we got promoted, I’m not sure any of us thought it would be this good. That 3-2 win, our third win on the trot, took us up to 9th in the table, two points and two places off the play-offs! With 38 games to go it is a little bit early to start popping the champagne bottles, but a quiet beer and a big smile was fully deserved for all on Saturday night.
Tomorrow we are back in FA Cup action when we travel to Cray Valley Paper Mills, a side from a league below us, but they are doing well and will provide tough opposition in our quest to repeat last season’s FA Cup success when we reached the First Round Proper. Everybody loves an FA Cup run, it can galvanise a town like no other competition, and the financial rewards for progressing far are tremendous. I know many supporters are planning to travel by train and car, your vocal support will be appreciated by all.
You will recall that in the FA Cup First Round last year we faced Maidstone United in front of a crowd of 3,000 people. It was a huge game for us. Maidstone were flying high in the league above us, and we were massive underdogs. However, in the back of our minds we were thinking, well actually, this is the sort of opponent we want to be playing every week in the league. Sure enough, less than twelve months on, our next league match is against Maidstone United, away, next Saturday. If you had told me on the terraces during that FA Cup game, as we trailed 0-2, that within twelve months we would be four points and eight places above Maidstone in the league, I would have thought you had gone mad.
There are travel options available for getting to Maidstone next weekend, with the Supporters Trust running a coach (£10 for member, £15 for non-members) – book here, or we do have spaces available on the players coach – email secretary@cheshamunited.co.uk for details on the players’ coach. The Supporters Trust are also running a coach to Weymouth away on 19th October (£15 for member, £20 for non-members), and can be booked now with full details on their website at www.custrust.co.uk.
The Chesham United Women’s team were also in action at home at the weekend in the FAWNL against AFC Sudbury. Despite getting their noses ahead courtesy of Natalia Makowska the game ended in a 1-2 defeat but again it was an encouraging performance to build on. Next up they welcome the Tottenham Hotspur Academy at The Meadow this Sunday in the FAWNL Plate competition. This is the first year that Barclays Women’s Super League and Barclays’ Women’s Championship academy teams have been invited to play in this competition, so we are excited to welcome a Spurs team to Chesham.
Elsewhere this week, I have had meetings to start to progress a complete overhaul of our website, which is in need of a refresh to make it more user-friendly, up-to-date and professional. We have started discussions with web designers and investigated the important task of adding content and general maintenance. The conclusion is that we believe that we have people that we can tap into to supply the content (match reports, away travels, events, sponsorship, match details, etc), but we are looking for a ‘Website Content Editor’ who will write & chase up content, in much the same way as the programme editor does for home matches. If you are interested in that website role, or indeed rebuilding the WordPress website (we are prepared to pay for this), please contact Ryan Woolnough @ press@cheshamunited.co.uk
Don’t forget, if you are not a season ticket holder, you can beat the queues by buying your matchday tickets in advance, on our website now you can purchase tickets for all of our home league games for the season, and if you keep an eye on social media you will see that the same applies for our away matches, often with extra discounts for buying in advance. Also going on sales soon, and please put the date in your diary, will be tickets for our popular Fireworks Night on Friday 1st November. Our cost for the fireworks has gone up slightly this year, but we are freezing the entrance fees at last year’s prices as we know how much the families if Chesham enjoy the event and we want to keep it affordable to all.
Thank you for your support, I look forward to seeing you at The Meadow tomorrow,
Peter Brown
