Many of you will have seen by now the fantastic news that Alex Horne has agreed to join the Board of Directors, bringing some much-needed youth to the aged boardroom we now have! Many of you will know Alex from his television appearances, perhaps best-known for his role in the popular TV series Taskmaster – a programme in which he regularly gives free publicity to his favourite football team, Chesham United. If you have not yet seen his little video announcing his arrival on social media then I strongly suggest you have a watch and a chuckle here.
I am sure Alex will bring much to us as a club and I ask you all to welcome him onto the Board. We are still looking to add more fresh faces to the Board of Directors at the club, so if you have a niche and are prepared to work with us you will be more than welcome, please do get in touch.
This news has brought much joy to my week after last Saturday as Chairman of Chesham United goes down as the worst possible day during my eight years at the club. To see one of our young superb players laying prostrate on the pitch for over three hours waiting for an ambulance was gut wrenching and awful when there is nothing that you can do. It was four hours after the incident that he was eventually taken to hospital with copious amounts of morphine and entonox in his system so that he could be moved into the front seat of the first responders vehicle. Jake Peck, get well soon young man and we all look forward to the day that you put on our shirt again.
As you will be aware, the game last weekend was abandoned and I would like to pass on my thanks to the officials, supporters, players and in particular the physio from Merthyr for your support and understanding on the day. I appreciate that a midweek return trip for Merthyr is far from ideal, but sometimes there are more important things to deal with.
We were back in league action on Tuesday night with a frustrating 0-0 draw at Hendon, I believe we were the first team not to score against Hendon this season which highlighted our need to strengthen our attacking prowess, something that we are in conversations with the management about.
In the meantime, many supporters, and players, have been in touch and asked how they can help to support players when they get injured and I am delighted to announce that we have launched a GoFundMe page that is designed to do just that. We hope that this platform will allow those who want to donate to help them cover some of the loss of earnings and medical costs they will be experiencing to get back on the field. Amazingly since launching on Thursday evenings we have already received over £2,000 towards this fund, that is a truly fantastic start. If you would like to contribute you can do so by visiting the page here.
In addition to the GoFundMe page we will be organising a number of events, including a Golf Day, to raise funds along with bucket collections at matches – it is important that we look after players that wear the clubs shirt. As with all football clubs at this level there is player insurance in place, but football is not their main profession and therefore the pay-out is not going to be enough to cover loss of earnings from their man job – although at Chesham we have recently upgraded our policy to a higher pay-out than many of the standard policy our peers will have, I believe this benevolent fund for our injured players is an essential part of our policy to look after our players.
More exciting developments at The Meadow this weekend saw the installation of our new floodlights, I was down at the club when they were being tested and I have to say they are absolutely superb. You will definitely notice an improvement to your viewing at our next midweek game, a big thank you to everyone who contributed to help make this happen. As well as the improved brightness the lights are much more energy efficient than the old ones and will start paying for themselves over the coming months as the price of energy continues to escalate.
With our Fireworks Night on November 4th starting to be heavily publicised, we are in the process of looking to put together a marketing team that will work with the Board and management to raise the profile of the club and turn the many ideas that we have for attracting more people to games into a reality. We already have a couple of people that are prepared to be a part of this, but I know they are looking for 2 or 3 more to be able to make a difference without having to put all the burden on too few shoulders. If you are interested in getting involved with things like ensuring regular content in Our Chesham/local media, keeping the programme packed with content, distributing excess programmes in waiting rooms and garages around town, getting match posters regularly distributed as widespread as possible, looking into other areas around the town where an additional fixture board could be added, making full use of the scoreboard, liaising with schools, distributing flyers/match tickets or helping with occasional stalls on market days – please let me know, chairman@cheshamunited.co.uk and I will make sure that you are contacted with more details.
Tomorrow (Saturday) we host Tiverton Town at The Meadow, another long trip for our visitors, let’s hope we all get to watch an entertaining game of football and we never have to witness an injury like last weekend again, please do come along, your support can make all the difference.
Peter Brown, Chairman
