After the frustration of having last weekend’s top of the table clash with Farnborough called off one hour before kick-off, once we had all arrived in Hampshire, all of us here at Chesham United cannot wait to get going again this weekend with a mouth-watering home tie against Tiverton Town. As we move towards the business end of the season you support becomes all the more important, please do grab your friends and neighbours and bring them along to the game with you, 3.00pm kick-off at The Meadow. I am genuinely excited, and optimistic, about what we can achieve as a club over the coming months.
All that said, please note that we will be arranging a pitch inspection in the morning, it is a long way for our visitors to travel and we would not want them arriving at the ground to find the match postponed. We do have programmes printed for this game, unlike the game against Hayes & Yeading when the Christmas break did not make it feasible and we went with an online version only, however, we do now have a limited number of printed copies available from the game on New Year’s Day, if you would like to get your hands on one of them, please contact ryanw@cheshamunited.co.uk while stocks last
Off the pitch we also have reason to be pleased as things start moving again with regards to plans for moving to a new ground. We now have a meeting date in place next month with the council to go through our pre-planning applications for both our current ground and for the proposed new location. A huge amount of time and investment has already gone into getting this far, once we can get the application feedback we can really start delving into the details and liaising with other interested parties about the benefits we can incorporate into what will be a fantastic new community ground, bringing benefits to a far wider audience than just our current players, management and supporters.
This week we had Board and Management Meetings at the club, it is fantastic to have Chris Kay onboard working with us, he had the opportunity to meet with the rest of the management team, hear updates from all areas of the club including Ladies, Youth, Supporters’ Trust and the clubhouse and he will also be working closely with Alan Calder and Michele Brookes to put together fresh new commercial packages for next season, these should be available to launch at the beginning of April this year.
As touched on last week, we are looking at the share ownership of the club with the intention of increasing the number of ‘B’ (voting) shares available to allow for further stability and investment in the club. We have a corporation law solicitor working on this for us and all shares will be managed properly under the 2006 Companies Act.
We have also confirmed the date for our next Sportsman’s Dinner, this will be on Thursday 21st April with our guest speaker being the legendary Tony Woodcock who made over 100 appearances for both Nottingham Forest and Arsenal, as well as over 40 appearances for England, scoring 16 goals for his country. Individual tickets for the event, including dinner and entertainment, are £70, with tables of 10 available for £600 ex-VAT. Full details on how to book will be announced shortly.
On the subject of players from the past, it was sad to note the passing this week of Derrick Smith who played left back for Chesham United in the 1968 Amateur Cup Final. I am pleased to say that John Hatch will be representing the football club at the funeral.
As mentioned, when we move to a new ground we intend to have ample facilities for a much broader range of activities, although you may be surprised how much use the current setting does get from activity away from our main business of football. On a Wednesday we have a local choir group who sing away between 2pm and 4pm, all are welcome to join, male or female, with the bar open afterwards – if you want to give it a go and meet new friends, the first week of attending is free.
Also, Dean Porter has now started to base his Boot camp training at the club in the rear car park Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7pm and 8am Saturday mornings. It was great to see adults of all ages and sex taking part last night really punishing themselves in an attempt to get fit. He is looking for new members so come on down for a try, you might even enjoy it!
We have had a few entries in for a new kit design for next season, but we want more! We are looking for designs for both the home and away kit, the home kit must have white as the main colour on the top and the away kit must be predominantly yellow on the shirt – send your ideas to chairman@cheshamunited.co.uk.
Needless to say we are still on the lookout for volunteers. Our chef who works for the NHS as a hospital cook is unable to do our food on a Saturday at the moment as he has to work all weekends as they cannot get staff to cover the food due to Covid-19 so our Clubhouse Manager has shown multi-tasking abilities and is doing the food for this week again! We are also still looking for volunteers to help with stewarding, Scoreboard operation, 50/50 draw sellers, and help with our social media channel – being a part of the volunteer team is actually great fun and very rewarding, why not give it a go?
Please do keep an eye out on social media for news of the pitch inspection on Saturday morning, hopefully the game will go ahead and if it does, it would be great to see any willing helpers to clean up the ground on Sunday morning at 9.00am. If the game happens to be off, we can all have a lie in on Sunday!
Thank you as always for your support,
Peter Brown, Chairman
