Watching the images and video footage come out from Japan following today's earthquake and subsequent tsunami's threatening the Pacific, it's difficult to get worked up by the day to day running of a silly little football club. World tragedies have a horrific way of bringing some perspective to everything you do, I'll never forget watching the Twin Towers disintegrate as we went out onto the field to play a match at Kingstonian. When you see these tragedies, strewn out across tv screens and the internet - houses, buildings and vehicles being washed away; ships caught up in whirlpools; houses being burned to the ground in seconds and huge waves making their way inland, destroying all that gets in it's way...should I really be worrying about a trip to Didcot Town tomorrow?
For Chesham United FC the on-field developments continue to blow all pre-season expectations out of the water. We travel to Didcot on Saturday hoping to complete a hat-trick of away wins in the space of 8 days, leaving us with 6 home games out of our remaining nine matches. We currently occupy a play-off spot, squeaky bum time.
I was looking through the Tiverton away programme from January this week, at the time we were 22 points behind the league leaders, as I write this today we are nine points behind the leaders, with a game in hand, and they still need to come to The Meadow. Is it too absolutely stupidly ridiculous to start thinking about winning the league? I think so, but then you get the odd moment when you start to...no, no, no, stop there Alan, you are just being silly.
I spoke with Andy Leese again last night, there is no doubt that the confidence and belief around the squad is on an all-time high. The 1-0 win at Hemel Hempstead Town on Saturday was not pretty, but we had to dig in and grind out a result in a really tough match (in front of fantastic travelling support). That was three points we might not have picked up three month ago; defensively the rest of the league are now aware that we are incredibly difficult to break down, which must make it all the more frustrating for our last three opponents - Hemel, Halesowen and Cirencester - who have each found themselves a goal behind within 75 seconds against us, an amazing statistic (don't be late if you're travelling to Didcot!).
Since last posting, the game against Evesham United that was due to be preceded by a lunch for our Life Vice Presidents had to be postponed due to a waterlogged pitch. What a nightmare of a morning that turned out to be. Mrs Calder was flying out to Portugal that afternoon, leaving me at home with the two boys so it was going to be a bit frantic. The kids hate it when they have to come down for a Saturday game with Mum at 4.00pm, the prospect of turning up at 12.30pm with me had not thrilled them so I had already had to promise them a Sunday trip down town for some "Dadda Shopping" - this generally involves trips to music, games and books shops buying things for me that they will want and if I don't want it they talk me into it! With Heather already down at the club preparing food for the players and boardroom whilst the Harts prepared a meal for the Life Vice Presidents, I received the call to say that the pitch is not looking good and an inspection was being arranged.
The inspection took place at 10.00am. Still too wet, but the forecast wasn't looking too bad. Evesham were leaving at 11.00am and the referee that carried out the pitch inspection had already had his game called off so was prepared to wait another half-an-hour. It was still too wet, the forecast was rain up until 3.00pm and there was no choice other than to call the game off, and cancel the Life Vice Presidents lunch. Did I have everyone's contact number? Did I heck! A couple of frantic hours later I had managed to contact just about everyone that was due to attend, with the exception of Ron Lee who was on his way from Colchester especially. Ouch.
Dadda shopping was brought forward twenty-four hours.
We have now re-arranged the lunch for the next Saturday home game v Cambridge City (this might be a bit of an exclusive as invites will not yet have gone out as it was only decided last night), I've got a feeling a couple of people cannot make that one, but it is the next (only) best available date - on the Saturday of the Salisbury City game I will be docking at Southampton after an 11-day cruise to the Canaries, rather amazingly I'm only missing one game through that holiday...after being stranded out in Tenerife last year because of the Icelandic ash cloud and then having a flight to Prague cancelled on me a couple of weeks later, taking no chances with flying this year. Do I feel guilty going on holiday at such a crucial stage of the season? Well, I guess I do a little. Did I expect us to be in promotion contention when I booked the holiday? Well, let's move on...
Off the field there have been plenty more meetings to attend, and discussions to have. The Sitar Indian restaurant in Boxmoor seems to do quite well out of Chesham United meetings, last week it was Mike Dragisic, Brian McCarthy, Andy Leese and myself meeting up for a curry and a chat about some of the footballing decisions about next season, including continuing to put the best possible structure in place for the Reserves to prosper. We have some exciting hopes and ideas for this which we will share with you just as soon as appropriate.
Last Saturday morning before heading up to Halesowen, Mike Warrick, my Dad (should say Neil Calder, but that doesn't really feel right!) and I met to re-address the figures in the cash flow budget for the next three months. It's no secret that it is going to be really tough still for the next three months as we continue to chase our tail from the shortfalls of lost sponsorship, a decimated Christmas fixture list and lost bar takings from the adverse weather. There are lots of irons in fires, and we need to make sure our blacksmithing skills are such that we can make good out of them. In fact, it is fair to say that Thursday night's Board Meeting was very much focused on finance rather than football.
This particular board meeting was the first in a new era. With so many of us on the board doubling up as Supporters' Trust committee members it was becoming increasingly apparent that there had been a lack of Trust meetings; I think we all felt the guilt about this, but had a certain reluctance to do anything about it because of the amount of time already taken up with club activities. I had long been thinking about the way Board meetings operated. Since the summer they had been starting at 7.30pm, and by 10.00pm everyone was starting to fade and items on the bottom of the agenda were either skipped or did not get the attention they may have warranted. During Charles Manchester's time he introduced a method of having Directors submitting reports prior to board meetings so that everyone has had an opportunity to read up on information ahead of the meeting, ideally shortening the meeting length. We still do that, maybe even more so, but in reality, the meetings can still drag on and head off in all sorts of tangents.
From now on, I have come to the conclusion that we can address a couple of these issues in one go, killing the proverbial two birds with the one stone. Thursday was the first board meeting with a definite finish time of 8.30pm, starting at 7.00pm (a tight schedule, not helped by me suddenly remembering as we were sat around the table at 7.00pm that I was supposed to pick Giles up on my way through town at 6.50pm!). At 8.30pm Supporters' Trust members were invited long to have an update on what was being discussed and ask any questions, make suggestions, whatever. There was only limited notice given to Trust members so the turn out was low, and with a pool match going on we moved the meeting into the Boardroom rather than the clubhouse, but I actually think that added to the relaxed atmosphere for an informal discussion (if you've never been in the boardroom before it's more sofas and snooker tables than meeting tables, but that's another story for another time...).
To make this work, we once again had reports circulated on the Monday before the Wednesday meeting and then a very specific agenda was set out for discussion. Others may disagree, I actually thought this worked really well, cut out the waffle, dealt with the issues, or certainly raised the important issues to the forefront of our thinking and hopefully created productive outcomes. We still seem to have had a collective struggle to grasp the fact that because we have certain areas that we look after, it doesn't mean we have to do everything, the idea of categorising responsibility was to try and attract new helpers, rather than always relying on the same people. We are starting to get there, and the buzz word from the recent board meeting is "sub-committees" - we need small teams of people helping to make things happen.
Whilst the Supporters' Trust is living in this sort of grey area between owning the club and being a supporters' organisation, it is clear that we have not been fully utilising good old-fashioned fundraising as a means for generating income. It's too easy to get bogged down in things that have a more corporate feel - advertising, sponsorship, matchday income, donations; but actually, some decent social events, sponsored walks, raffles, auctions etc can generate just as much invaluable income. We haven't done enough of that, largely down to the simple old matter of lack of people. I firmly believe that if you want something doing, ask a busy person, but everyone has a capacity. With that in mind, the challenge over the next couple of weeks is to set up a fundraising sub-committee who can help to come up with ideas, organise events, work with others to promote events, liaise with the management accounts on income expectations and form an important cog in the football club wheel. As always, we are not looking to burden people with loads of work and expectation, but I genuinely believe that it can be hugely rewarding playing such an important part in helping the club, and, if you get it right, you will end up with enough helpers to make it a lot of fun.
I'm also hoping we will see a sub-committee formed to manage the Corporate Patron Scheme (CPS). Without a doubt this has been hugely successful and innovative in creating a closer bond with key business partners and generating our shirt sponsor each season. There are downsides in the fact that we need to purchase new shirts each season, but the benefits massively outweigh the negatives and if we get it right, it could be a huge income generator. We currently have 24 CPS members, I want to see that hit at least 50 between now and the prize draw in mid-May. To do that, I think we need a sub-committee that can attract some help with selling; we have some great marketeers and administrators, but if we lack anything, we lack sales people. I envisage us being able to create a bit of a sales environment down at the club office, a whiteboard on the wall tracking the sales targets, a list of prospects with initials by the side and even a competitive edge as we strive for more and more members. That takes a certain type of person to get involved in that environment, some people thrive on it, and the task of any sub-committee is to find those people.
All these sub-committees, they need to involve fresh faces, there is no point in fractioning off the existing management board, ideally each sub-committee will have only one, certainly no more than two, people from the current management board.
The third sub-committee that is definitely going to come about will be looking at future developments down The Meadow, in particular involving the clubhouse facilities. We need to turn what we have into something that can fund the club without us going through an annual highly stressful struggle to make ends meet, only to get to June and then go, ok, let's start all over again...
I want this development sub-committee to meet with Southern League approved architects and project developers to turn all the different visions we have, all the different conversations that have taken place and all the silly fantasy ideas into a real life project that we can then look seriously at tasking a sub-committee to look at a possible business plan for making it happen. We will need to work with partners that are experts in making maximum use of space and facilities, opening our eyes to commercial and community possibilities for the premises. It may be that this ends up as Operation Pipedream or Mission cuckooland, but until we tart to look seriously at what we want want, and how much it might cost, how can we say we can't afford it?
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