No midweek game this week, but last Saturday our men’s team put in another excellent performance to sweep aside Swindon Supermarine 4-0 and maintain our place at the top of the table. If you were one of the 651 spectators at The Meadow at around 4.50pm you will have witnessed what must have been a contender for any goal of the season competition with our very own Ryan Upward completing a spectacular overhead kick into the roof of the net that would have had the great Pele himself nodding in appreciation. It rounded off a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon and demonstrated once again how we have adapted our squad to be able to rotate, adjust to different playing styles from the opposition and still play out a victory.
Tomorrow (Saturday) we travel to Sholing before returning to home action next weekend for another huge game against Poole Town. Your support so far this season has been phenomenal, I still believe we could top 1,000 at home for a league game before the season is out, and the Poole match seems a good one to target, with they themselves very much in the hunt for a play-off spot. Put the date in your diary now, or even better, you can purchase your tickets in advance via our ticketing website here. This will help you to beat the queues, and be sure to arrive early enough to enjoy a drink in the clubhouse pre-match, whilst reading your matchday programme.
As our home crowds for first team games continue to rise we have taken the important step of increasing our spectator first aider support around the ground, along with spreading our stewarding to all sides to ensure we are fully equipped to deal with any potential incident. We are also looking at reviewing the medical equipment we have available for supporters on a matchday should it be needed, and I appreciate the Supporters’ Trust who have engaged in conversations with us about supporting this.
This week we also had our ground grading inspection, you may recall that there is a new more transparent system in place now. There are 123 different points that the ground gets assessed for and out of that there are nine that we need to do a little bit of work to rectify, but overall it is good news and we are all systems go for planning for the seasons ahead, without it having to affect any of our end of season events. The ground grading system is particularly strict nowadays and the loopholes that seemed to exist in the past that raised questions about grounds being interpreted differently will not be around anymore so I am sure there will be clubs that will be a lot more fearful of their ground inspection results than we are!
One of the nine tasks has already been completed and others include yellow hatching lines around the ground and signage to identify where food options are. The biggest job is likely to be having to increase the size of the away dressing room, this is something that we have already looked into and have a plan to resolve by moving a wall towards the shower area and adding a new entrance to the shower. We will be organising work parties to get other jobs done around the ground including improving the terracing at the far end of the ground on the side beyond the main stand, making this safer and more stable. Please do keep an eye out for work party plans and help if you can.
Elsewhere in the club Chesham United’s senior women’s teams had a weekend of matches against top of the table opposition with the same outcome in both games. The first team played top of the table AFC Wimbledon in the FA Women’s National League and despite a solid, high intensity performance from Chesham, Wimbledon’s quality showed through in the end with 2 goals either side of the break for a 0-4 win. The Development squad, in tier 6, were also playing league leaders Long Crendon with the same 4-0 result. The first team have an important game at home this Sunday as they take on AFC Sudbury Women at 2.00pm. AFC are below us in the table and so a win will propel the ladies to a mid-table position. I hope to see a few of you on the terraces to cheer them on.
I would also like to say thank you to our magnificent vocal supporters behind the goal for taking note of my comments from last week’s notes about some unnecessary choice of words in songs. I think there might have been the odd F-bomb dropped early in the game, but after that it was fantastic, passionate and appreciated. Let’s make every home game like that, and I’m sure as the season progresses more and more people will join in.
Thank you everyone for your ongoing support.
Peter Brown, Chairman