I have to open with the sad news of the passing of our former goalkeeper Martin Baguley at the age of 62 on the 6th August, we are aiming to have a minutes applause for him prior to the start of our game against Boreham Wood on 17th August. Martin played in both of our FA Cup 2nd Round matches vs Merthyr Tydfil in the 1979/80, before we progressed to the 3rd Round and hosted Cambridge United a game in which Billy Barber returned from injury. Martin played 245 times for the first team between 1979 and 1993, along with around 600 appearances for the Reserves and Youth as he represented the club across multiple teams.
An interesting footnote to Martin’s Chesham career is that in his penultimate game we played Newbury Town in the B & B Cup where a certain Brendan Rodgers (currently Celtic manager) scored Newbury’s consolation goal. As a club, we send our deepest condolences to Martin’s family at this very sad time.
Last Saturday, we completed our pre season programme with the visit of Brackley Town, a side who have been in the playoffs in the National League North for the last 7 completed seasons. The game itself was very competitive fixture which was great for the squad to test themselves against a top side at our level. The game ended in a narrow 2-1 defeat but we showed plenty over the course of the game to suggest we should acclimatise to the level well, there were spells where dominated the game and the managers in their interview were very pleased with the efforts from the squad. A special mention has to go to the managers for preparing and setting up such a brilliant pre season fixture and training sessions.
Last Sunday, our Women’s team completed their fine unbeaten pre-season with a 5:3 win against Wycombe Wanderers Women in a highly enjoyable encounter, which was marred though by a late head injury for Kat Bowers, who had to spend Sunday night in hospital, but fortunately all the scans showed no major injuries. Kat is now is resting and following Football Association protocol for returning to play after a concussion in order to have a full recovery, we hope to see Kat again soon on the pitch.
On Tuesday, we had our second One Chesham open evening & joint training event with the men’s, women and youth teams all on the pitch training and having fun together. After the initial warm-ups & sessions the teams then split into their own training sessions for their typical intensive training workouts. As part of the evening, we distributed some 700 free junior season tickets to our younger players. Thank you to all that came and watched or took part in the evening, I hope you enjoyed the evening which was led by Mike Caidan and his team in a job very well done.
We had our initial ground grading inspection for Step 2 and passed the main requirements from the previous inspection last season, we do have a few new items to complete including having to purchase 3 new turnstile mechanisms, the completion of the spectator medical room which is very close to completion and some repairs to some areas of terrace that require some running repairs that any stadium of our age/size requires. Rest assured, we have plenty of time to complete these works before the 31st March this season but we hope to actually have these completed before the end of November. You will also find more new fire escape route signs being added as part of the requirements and some signage for the disabled and blue badge parking areas near to the clubhouse.
We all owe a great deal of thanks to our wonderful bunch of club volunteers led by Ray Trafford for the sensational amount of work completed by them and all for a few jam doughnuts and cups of tea, to Roger with the enlarging of the changing rooms and Jamie for his skills with a yellow paint brush. Woe betides anyone who stands still on the yellow hatchings in the main stand. It is a walkway and no standing is allowed at any time please. Our ground inspection would not have been as good as it was without the work of these volunteers. Not bad for the nearly 100 year we have been playing here!
For the first time in many years all our players and management team are sponsored for the season for their kit. Thank you to all our new & returning player sponsors.
Now the last training session was on Thursday evening at the Meadow where the players trained hard in preparation for our opening fixture at Eastbourne Borough in the National league South. This like all will be a very tough fixture against a full-time team. The team coach is full to the brim with players, officials and spectators and I understand that many are making their own way there some even staying over for the weekend! I hope you all have safe journeys to and from Eastbourne and a very enjoyable weekend. Let us show all how polite we are from Chesham and hold the clubs name high.
Thank you for your wonderful support
Peter Brown
