This week’s notes come to you a day early as our club will be joining the FA, Premier League, EFL, FA Women’s Super League & Championship, the PFA, LMA, PGMOL, Kick It Out and the FSA as well as an increasing number of Non-League clubs in a social media boycott from 3.00pm tomorrow to 23.59 on Monday 3 May, in response to the ongoing and sustained discriminatory abuse received online by players and many others connected to football.
Social media has become a wonderful thing over the years, bringing many benefits, especially to us fans of clubs much lower down the footballing pyramid. Many of us will remember the days when to find out the results of matches at our level would involve waiting until 7.00pm on a Saturday and then having to sit through around 30 pages on Ceefax or Teletext until our league came up. Nowadays on Twitter you can get updates from just about any match within seconds of a goal being scored, including our First XI, Ladies and even Academy matches.
Unfortunately, alongside those positives we have the negatives, yet another example of where the few spoil it for the many. Behind the anonymity of social media, some people use it as a way to abuse individuals in completely unacceptable, often despicable, ways that they would never dare do in a face-to-face environment, or if they had to reveal their identity.
At Chesham United we love our sport, we love the community spirit and release from some of life’s everyday challenges it gives us, but we cannot tolerate people within our game, or any sport, or walk of life, being abused and for that reason, I am very proud that as a club, across all sections, we will be supporting the social media boycott and joining the call for the social media companies to step up and take action.
On the subject of stepping up and taking action, I am very keen to follow-up on some of the recent requests for helpers and volunteers, please, if you have been thinking that you would like to get more involved and have some spare time on your hands but have just not got around to coming forward yet, I would love to hear from you. We have a number of key tasks and roles that we do now need to complete and fulfil.
A priority at the moment is a request for a volunteer to take control of the administration of season tickets for the forthcoming season. We are looking for somebody that can take charge of the renewals as they come in, passing details to accounts for invoicing, sending out tickets and reminders and generally be in charge of this important administrative role. If you are able to help out in this area, much of the work can revolve around your own spare time, please do get in touch. We have a number of people to help you out, but I would ideally like somebody to take responsibility for making sure everything happens as it should.
We have also not yet been able to fill the vacancy for preparing food for the players and boardroom on matchdays. Naturally we want to make sure our players get well fed after a match, but it is also a league obligation to feed visiting officials in the boardroom on a matchday, so it is vitally important that we are able to do this. It need not be too time-consuming, but we are looking for somebody reliable that will be able to commit to ensuring the food is provided at every game. The cost of buying the food will be covered and in this role, we would typically expect to pay a little extra on top for your services.
The third area that I am really looking for help in is on the commercial side, basically helping to sell sponsorship and advertising for the club. At the moment, as with many routine tasks, the burden is falling on the same few people to carry out multiple tasks and if we were able to get a few more volunteers to help, it would make a massive difference. Again, if you have some time you can spare to the club and would be able to help with approaching local businesses to discuss partnerships with the club, then I would love to hear from you.
For any of these roles, or any other enquiries, I can be contacted at chairman@cheshamunited.co.uk.
My final plug for the week will once again be The Chess Suite which will be open over the course of the weekend, please do pop along and enjoy a drink served on the terrace. We also have the youth tournament at The Meadow this weekend, it will be great to see so many kids running around and enjoying their sport once again.
Thanks for your support, stay safe, remember not to expect any social media posts from us over the weekend, but we will be back after the Bank Holiday, and hopefully the united boycott of social media by clubs will help to make a difference.
