Hednesford Awaits...

Well, I knew it wouldn’t last. It’s almost as though you spend so much time talking about stuff and writing emails to people, I don’t have enough time / will-power to then go and keep the blog up to date. I’m finding it increasingly difficult, unfortunately football is changing, at all levels, and personally I don’t think it is for the best. This week we hear of Liverpool going mad and calling the FA, Fabio Capello and England a bunch of amateurs. The crime? Playing England’s best player for more than 60 minutes????!!!

I do wonder…last week’s football news was all about Ian Holloway getting in trouble for not playing his best players. If only these well paid (albeit you may argue deservedly) players, officials and managers could see what clubs at our level go through to get to places like Cirencester and Salisbury on a Tuesday night.


This Saturday we face a strong Hednesford Town side, it’s going to be a tough game, but we desperately need to lift ourselves from the lull we currently find ourselves in.


I’ve spoken many times about what a great start to the season we’ve had and how we have enjoyed the honeymoon period of our return to the Premier Division. That period appears to be well and truly over and we are now experiencing the real rough and tumble of being back in a higher division.


If we are genuine in our intentions of being the perfect role model supporters run club then we need to learn how to mix business with pleasure, we need to learn the differences between being professional and being practical, we need to know when the head has to rule over the heart – no matter how hard the heart is being tugged. There is so much to learn and it is perhaps a shame that we have had it so easy for the first few months, because it makes it all the tougher now. One minute you are a football fan running your club, the next you are running a company that turns over approximately quarter of a million pounds.


The kind of day-to-day trials and tribulations I find myself embroiled in you would not believe; sometimes I feel like a school teacher dealing with tales and gripes, reminding people of expectations and how to behave and just facing up to whatever might be thrown my way – that might be a call to say the bank balance is running low; a disliking to a negative comment made in the press, match reports, on the coach, the terrace, in the boardroom; a Dad from the opponents of our youth team taking exception to something said…whilst all the time on the look out for people to help with the overall task of running, managing and financing the club.


The typical football supporter is difficult, if not impossible, to please. I know that because I have been a disenchanted fan of Chesham United for all of my life. When we were running away with the Ryman Premier Division in 1993, watched by average crowds of over 900, I, and others, still found things to moan about. I still produced fanzines that criticised the club, the manager and even the team. It was most definitely critical, but it was passionate, enthusiastic and a voice crying out to be listened to. I confess, it may not always have been pleasant for those people running the club, but it was never negative. It was never without hope. If anything it was born out of frustration that I thought we could do things better…I still do.


Today, my football supporting days have gone full circle and I now sit proudly – yes, I think that word is still appropriate – in the chair of the football club I love. Am I enjoying it? It has it’s ups and downs, you might not be totally surprised to find that the up’s tend to follow wins and the down’s closely follow a defeat, but there is much more to it than that.


Football is about opinions and facts. We can all have different opinions, but the facts are there in black and white, and the most disturbing of these is the fact that we have only won two of our last fifteen games. Surpassing expectations for the season overall or not, that is not a run that can continue. I know that, Andy knows that, the Board know that and you as supporters know that. What is done about it becomes the challenge.


We could hit the panic button or we can work our way through it. I honestly don’t know why, but we seem to have gone through a bad run like this for each of the past few seasons around this time of year. This year it has come even earlier, probably no coincident in that it is the year that we have a shorter FA Cup run and no doubt there will be those out there thinking that we took a gamble and budgeted on having a good FA Cup run, and as that has not happened we are in trouble. That’s simply not the case. What has happened, is we have been hit heavily by the blow of the FA Cup defeat; followed by the three games against Salisbury that we have lead in and not won any of; a cup defeat at Windsor that ended our League Cup interest, and all of a sudden it is very easy to see a glass that is now half empty rather than half full. In that period we have scored three unlucky own goals and all the games have been very tight, the odd deflection in the other direction and we could all be looking at a different picture.


I am not trying to say that we should all be happy about the current run of results, but we need to get ourselves back on track collectively. We have a manager that has steered us back to the Premier Division and is competing on a budget that is far from one of the best in the league, but one that has enabled us to prove that we can compete at this level, we can even compete against the best teams in our league, but what we perhaps haven’t managed yet is to sustain that ability for long enough periods to pick up more victories. Andy knows that more than anyone, and the managerial challenge he faces now is how to turn that around…just like he did after the dip in form this time last year.


It is almost as though we need a 1-0 win with a lucky rebound off Dave Fotheringham’s backside, something to restore that belief. We have an incredible bunch of players, some of which have been with us for many years. They are relishing playing in the higher league on the better pitches, in front of bigger crowds in nicer surroundings. It is what we all wanted. We worked bleeding hard to get here, and now we are facing a true challenge to make sure that we do not let a poor run of form send all of that spiralling backwards.


To make that work we need to get the rest of the club ticking over and not lose focus of the ambitions of the club. I made it perfectly clear over the summer that we expected to see an improvement in discipline, in particular on the field. As things go against us, there is a danger of this slipping and we cannot let that happen. Picking up bookings after the final whistle or for off the ball instances is just ridiculous in my mind – maybe it is natural frustration, but we need to contain that because it just stokes the feeling of negativity and opens the door to criticism.


Similarly, off the field, we all need to be aware of our responsibilities and be aware that there is a time and a place for everything. Those of us involved in the running of the club are privileged to be, if you like, “in the know” about everything at the club, but as a result sometimes we have to act different to how we would if we were fans because we carry a weight of responsibility to those we employ, those who help us out as volunteers and those who come and watch the team.


We will never make everyone happy (I refer once again to my comments about my youth back in the early 1990’s!), but I think we are building a reputation for listening to people’s views and doing what is right for the club as a whole, and certainly financially we are maintaining the management accounts set-up by my predecessor. Directors get a weekly headline report on income and expenditure so there are no surprises and there are no excuses for not being aware of where we are ahead, behind or bang on budget.


But maybe that is the crux of the whole matter. We are being financially vigilant (past wounds are still sore) and we can’t / won’t just throw money at the playing budget to try and turn the results round. I don’t think that should be the answer, maybe deep down I wish we could – they say money doesn’t buy happiness, but it can’t half help at times! The club is about so much more though, isn’t it? We have, I believe, a fantastic management team in Andy Leese and Jon Meakes, I genuinely believe that and trust them to use their skills and experience to fix whatever needs fixing on the field. We have enough challenges off the field to contend with over the coming months.

One of these is to get through the FA ground inspection to enable us to stay in the Premier Division. Whatever happens on the field, if we mess that up we can say goodbye to Premier Division football next season. The biggest project is improvements to the toilet facilities in the ground, something everyone should benefit from and one that I am happy that we need to improve. There are other things too, some more costly than others, some more annoying than others. We need to spend money to fix the dug outs that were broken by an angry players a couple of years back and we need to buy new green running man exit signs for around the ground because some bright spark thought it would be a good idea to pinch them from us – very funny if we were to be relegated because of it.

Maybe I’m still living in this idyllic world that has no room for any other residents, but I want us to get back to being the club that was praised for the way we helped out with the recent charity football match; the club that plays host to the British Legion, Chesham Action Volunteers and Heritage House; the club that has a successful mini, youth, reserves and ladies set-up; the club that has successfully hosted Business Partners Evenings and local company events… all of which have directly or indirectly helped us to build the club and generate the income to keep it going. Self-generating and self-funding, it’s the ideal, and it’s happening. However, it is a strain and when that strain starts to show, that’s when we need to work even harder and remember that we are supposed to be enjoying what we do.