Despite being close season, there is still plenty going on at and around the football club. We now know what league we are in next season (or who else is in with us more importantly), we know we have a Reserves side playing within the pyramid for the first time next season and we have done some re-orgainsation within the structure of the club to introduce a new committee to look after some of the major financial and commercial decisions of the company. As I say, busy, busy, busy...
On the field it is fantastic news that both Shane Gore and Steve Wales have signed new two-year contracts with the club. A bit of a gamble? Yes, most definitely, we don't have the biggest budget in the world and committing chunks of it to players under contract terms does run the risk of leaving us very short of funds to replace them if they were out injured for any length of time. On the other hand, in Steve and Shane we have two of the best players in the league, their injury record is good (touch wood) and with Chesham being located in an area densely populated by non-league football clubs, many with more financial clout than ourselves, it is settling for the whole squad to know that key players are staying, we are looking to finance a promotion push, and we are looking to move on from last year.
I'm not the sort of person that tells the manager what he should do. We talk, I have an opinion, but as long as things are going reasonably well, within agreed budget, I believe we employ a manager to do a job and he should be allowed to do it. Others may disagree, but that's how I see it. We have expectations that Andy knows about, and that includes developing young, local talent and bringing them through into the first team...by doing this, it enables you to be able to afford the blend required in the senior squad i.e. We can accommodate some of the best players in the league.
Achieving this has been made easier by the excellent work being carried out at Youth and Reserve level, the news that we provisionally have a place in South Midlands Division One is excellent, in my opinion, and one that I am very excited about. I believe it will help us attract the best local talent around, it will give the Reserve team players greater support and recognition and it will help to provide that conveyor belth through from the mini-league to first team squad.
However, with that comes greater responsibility. Reserve team matches must now be treated like First XI games in terms of professionalism, we need turnstiles opened, programmes available and guests hosted. Ourselves and St Albans City (Reserves) will be the biggest club in the South Midlands League and I think it is important that we live up to that reputation. Again we are going to need help in making this happen, but I believe we can do it.
In the Southern League Premier Division we come face to face once again with old rivals St Albans City, both clubs have taken vastly different paths since our amazing battle for the Ryman Premier Division title back in 1993. Many supporters that are still around today were first attracted to the club during that season as crowds averaged over 900 for the season and the two league games between ourselves and St Albans totaled an official 4,500 people...although some people I speak to reckon that there were that many at the Clarence Park game alone!
This was an era when we had an English side that played midweek, and then at weekends half a dozen players travelled from Wales to play. We lost the first game of the season at Hendon and I remember writing a quite shirty letter to then Chairman Tony Aplin expressing my disgust at the chop and change tactics...we went on to win the next 14 league matches!
Come the end of the season we were crowned Champions and earned the right to go up to the Football Conference, but as we all know, it never happened for various reasons; primarily ground grading (it was a much easier/more common excuse back then), but realistically it was to do with the finances and accounting. This did mean that, as runners-up, St Albans City were entitled to a shot at promotion, but, they too could not be promoted because of two famous oak trees on the terrace that ensured they failed any ground grading! In subsequent years, the Saints did go on to have a season in the Conference, whilst we headed on a downward spiral that was to last several years, despite many a false dawn, we have never got back to that position of footballing clout within the non-league world - and we probably never will.
I recall back then that Tony Aplin - very wisely in my mind - declared that he never wanted promotion to the Football League, but instead wanted Chesham United to become one of the top four clubs in non-league football. This statement alone - which I tend to agree with - never adhered us to the Football Conference who at the time were fighting for automatic promotion places into the league, the last thing they wanted was clubs coming into their league that did not want promotion out of it...
...Today the Conference has got it's wish and is an incredibly high standard of, pre-dominantly professional football. I do, all these years later, and despite all the fall outs, go along with Tony Aplin's theory (after all he was, genuinely, a marketing genius) that - in my words, not his - I'd rather be recognised as the pinnacle of non-league football, than be the arse-end of the Football League. (Though Stevenage remain a glowing example how circumstances change as a club gets bigger and bigger, during that Championship season of 1993 we beat Stevenage 7-1 in a league game at The Meadow).
So, 18 years later, despite different paths, we are back playing against St Albans City, something that I find hugely exciting. Elsewhere in our division for next season we have said farewell to three of the five clubs that finished above us - Salisbury and Truro promoted, whilst Hednesford Town have moved to the Northern Division, and we have also lost another of our longer trips, relegated Tiverton Town. On paper it all looks good, more local games with Hitchin Town and Arlesey Town coming up, a couple of new grounds to visit at AFC Totton and Frome and still a good ol' seaside weekend at Weymouth.
Next weekend is the League AGM at Torquay where all of this will be confirmed along with, I'm guessing, an announcement as to who the new league sponsors will be. Again, I have a reasonable idea, but will wait until the announcement.
Off the field we have been doing some tweaking. I mentioned in my last post a few weeks ago some positions I felt needed filling. They are not filled yet, which concerns me, but there have been other developments.
At our last board meeting I presented a three-page review of what I thought needed changing and how we might go about implementing them; it left many of us with tasks to go away and report back on at the next meeting (next week) and much has happened already. As I alluded to in my opening paragraph, we have introduced a standing committee, an Advisory Committee, Finance Committee...call it what you will... to scrutinise company finance and to look at new ways of saving money and increasing income (sorry, but however glamorous you make running a football club sound, it all comes down to money). To do that we needed to introduce an outsiders view, get somebody involved who has not been as close to the club as the rest of us, somebody who will find the fight between heart and head easier to fight, experienced in business and familiar with the town.
To that end I am delighted that we have enlisted the involvement of Mike Winn, a very local resident who can see the club from his window, but until we started talking around the time of Fireworks Night last year, had never been down to the club. We set about rectifying that fact and subsequently Mike himself has introduced new faces to the club and already we have seen a glowing example of how things can snowball, and how we cannot assume that everyone knows about the club's existence. Our new committee has already had it's first meeting and there are some exciting things to come out from it, some new initiatives that we will be exploring and some new methods for manging the company's budget.
Elsewhere I know Dave Jeffrey and Colin Beton have been working extremely hard looking at The Chess Suite and how we can increase usage, improve the offering, improve profitabilty and, yes, make more money for the club. Similarly we are looking closely at our advertising and sponsorship packages, both in terms of making the whole sponsorship experience vastly improved (living up to how it is advertised) and in terms of the various packages available. The football club remains a fantastic asset for the town, our sponsors should be able to, and wanting to, use it to host their customers, suppliers and acquintances.
In terms of attracting new business, we are tasked with setting up a commercial committee that can manage the activity, seek out new sponsors and grow the whole commercial area further. We are looking at new software that will help us manage sponsor contacts, both existing and prospects and hopefully, again, generate more income.
The other area where I'm hoping to see development is within the Supporters' Trust; both as a fundraising body to support the club and celebrate the fact that we are one of the few clubs where supporters have great power, but also to help build an identity of it's own for the Trust, somerthing that supporters can relate to and want to be a part of. I've talked before about the fact that there is no real difference at the moment between Trust and Club, it's all the same people and as supporters if we think something needs to happen, if we can afford it, we can make it happen.
However, following several conversations since the last Board Meeting followed by an open Trust meeting (with an appalling turn out) I am becoming convinced that actually there remains an identity for two bodies; one to look after the running of the club/company, another to deal with Trust business - which is more about the fans. I may be alone in this thought, it's not something I have discussed at great length with fellow current Trust committee members, but still something I believe needs addressing over the coming weeks if we are going to get the new season off to the sort of start we want.
All in all, I sometimes wonder how we ever manage to fit any football in when the season gets underway!
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