At the game on Tuesday night we were delighted to have a regular supporter amongst the match sponsor guests and at the end of the evening they remarked, “wow, I had no idea how much goes on behind the scenes.” And it is true, most of what goes on with running the club is out of view and does not get noticed but is all needed to make sure we still have a club.
Just this morning I have over three hours with the accountants to make sure we have everything in order to file the annual accounts, ensuring that income and expenses are all in the right place, but overall we are looking in a very healthy position – helped in no small part by the FA Cup run of course. Yesterday I spent the full day on football club tasks, none of which will be evident to supporters. I spent over an hour with a training wear company looking at kit for next season and spent several hours with our neighbours at the care home and our Chess Sports landlords. In the case of the former it was regarding trees that have been cut down recently due to lack of maintenance and as a result their roots have penetrated so far that it has caused damage to our drainage system which, as is evident to all, has given the groundsman a near impossible job this season to maintain the playing surface we would all like to see.
The meeting with Chesham Sports Company, our landlords, was also time well spent as we discussed the details of the plans for moving to a new ground and how the partnership will continue through the transition to new land and how the ownership will work once we are there. It is vital that we all communicate well and work together to achieve our ambition.
On the same day I also spoke with one of our sponsors, Jack Rivans, about the issues we have had with the electrical supply at the tea bar in The Popular Stand. Having also spoken with the fantastic volunteers that operate the tea bar on a matchday we are hopefully now getting in a position to upgrade the electrics and purchase the equipment needed to make the tea bar fully functional.
We are on the lookout for a volunteer to fill a very important role at the club to help with our ground-grading requirements. We are actively looking for a Ground Safety Officer, the club will fully fund all the necessary training and qualifications for the successful candidate, please contact me at chairman@cheshamunited.co.uk.
Having covered some of the off-field activity, I can avoid it no longer and must mention the football on the pitch. I accept as Chairman that I must be careful in what I say and believe me, I am holding back on 90% of what I would like to say, but on Tuesday night we saw one of the most shocking performances that most supporters agree has ever been at The Meadow…and it did not come from either the Salisbury or Chesham United players. If you go on social media and read comments from supporters, you will get a sense of how people feel about how the game was officiated. Baffling, perplexing and frustrating. Too often as clubs we take the easy route of avoiding reports when it comes to giving the match officials ratings, but we just cannot do that any longer and continue to have games ruined in this way, we must speak up when it is so obviously damaging to the game.
Despite what felt like every attempt at goal seemingly being hampered by a complaint from the opposition which somehow got upheld, we did manage to get the ball in the net twice without it being disallowed in what ended up a 2-2 draw. Frustrating having dominated the game, come back from 0-1 down, only to concede an equaliser deep in injury-time. I don’t think I have ever seen the ground so stunned by a performance and it was no great surprise that it was nearly an hour by the time the officials’ assessor came out from their post-match meeting.
Anyway, we move on. I must also give a special thank you to the extra volunteers who stepped up to help manage the car park on Tuesday night. Another essential cog in the wheel. We must continue to strive to improve everything we do. As I have mentioned many times, we are now in a very strong league on and off the field and we must continue to push forwards, we cannot stand still because if we do we will find ourselves slowly slipping backwards and we cannot afford to undo all the hard work done to get where we are.
All the above said, life as the Chairman does come with some fantastic rewards. Unfortunately not financially, but how do you put a price on the lovely note, with a picture, that I received from a young inspired 8-year old boy called Lucas who attended his first ever football match at Chesham last Saturday and “because of the amount of love and care that was shown to him (including all 103 high fives that he got, he counted them), he just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone.”
We did lose the game 1-3 at home to Enfield last Saturday, but Lucas has promised he will be back to see us win soon. Thank you to everyone at the club who made Lucas feel so special, you should be very proud of yourselves. Thank you also to everyone at the game who gave to the matchday collection for the Society for Mucopolysaccharide Diseases, you raised over £590 for the cause, and I received another very thankful message in my Inbox this week from the organisers. It is a cliche, but this club really is about more than just the football.
Talking of football you will have seen that Jack Cawley left the club week, that is purely down to the travelling involved in him coming from the other side of Colchester for training and matches. We thank Jack for his contribution and wish him well in the future. Meanwhile, off the back of their terrific win last weekend the women’s 1st team sadly suffered a defeat at the hands of Newport Pagnell Town in the semi-final of the Berks & Bucks Senior Women’s Cup. This weekend the women travel to Norwich City Women FC against an in-form team battling for promotion in the FA Women’s National League whilst the men’s team travel to Hornchurch for another important National League South match – I hope to see you there.
Peter Brown
