The "Little Things"

First published in the Hungerford programme on 10th December 2013...It’s been nearly twenty years now since a young Rob King and a young Alan Calder, so used to watching Chesham United every Saturday, chose to take a weekend off and head to the coast. For some inexplicable reason we chose Margate (back then a more desirable resort than our most recent visit from what I remember). Young, free and single, we pitched up on the train, popped into Tourist Information and booked ourselves a B&B for the weekend. We had a Friday night out, and then on the Saturday we chose to catch another train over to Dover and watch Dover Athletic, they were playing Stalybridge Celtic in a Conference League match.





A few months earlier Dover had come to Chesham United in the FA Trophy. These were the days before the Conference North and South, when the Isthmian and the Southern League’s used to feed directly into the Conference National. Dover were top of the Southern League, and very proud of it – they considered themselves invincible. Chesham were top of the Ryman Premier Division, and despite losing the opening game of the season, had won the next 14 league games and quite fancied ourselves as fairly invincible too.

The match was billed as the Southern League Champions to be against the Isthmian League Champions to be. It was a massive occasion at The Meadow. Dover must have brought the best part of 500-600 fans. The bar was jammed, the ground was packed as over 2,000 supporters witnessed one of the most memorable games in my lifetime. Not for one second did Dover expect to lose – convinced that the Southern League was stronger than the Isthmian.

It was a tense affair, “more tense than a campsite” as my mate Squibby said at the time, but the game was won by one of the most vivid memories of my 30 years of supporting Chesham….Darren Coleman rising in the box to head home the only goal of the game…I can picture now the packed crowd down the Cricket Ground End leaping to the air in unison. Drinks went flyers, half-eaten hot dogs and burgers flew into the air as arms raised and supporters hugged and jumped up and down with anyone and everyone. It was a momentous occasion. It was not just any old Chesham United win, it was a win for our whole league. Dover Athletic, the big boys from the “other league”, so confident, so certain that they would walkover their equivalent from the Ryman League – Beaten, stunned. Their travelling army, despondent; defeated and shocked. Chesham United went on to win the Isthmian League, and unsurprisingly Dover went on to be Southern League Champions. There the similarity ended. At that point our paths set off in completely different directions. Our 90 minutes of glory, completely overshadowed by their promotion and our failure to be able to be accepted into the Conference.

So Rob and I arrived at Crabble and headed for the bar. At the time the pair of us were very heavily involved in the running of the supporters’ club and we had a close relationship with the main club, although we were very much seen as second class citizens in the grand scheme of the club – there to help, but knowledge about what goes on behind the scenes was kept to a minimum. Fair enough, but we were not afraid to ask questions, and, yes, criticize if we saw fit. Nobody likes to criticize, and maybe there are different ways of doing it, but we were prepared to stand up and be counted, do our bit for the club, make a difference, help to right the wrongs.

I can’t remember the score of the Dover v Stalybridge game, but I remember taking in what we saw around us. To meet ground grading requirements Dover had built a 1,000 seater stand - The crowd on the day was just over 900, over 800 of them were standing up; the new stand looked very empty. Honestly, back then, ground grading rules really were bonkers! But that was one thing, the real difference between Dover Athletic and Chesham United FC twenty years ago was the “little things”.

Rob and I spent a couple of hours in the bar post-match, chatting with the Dover fans, identifying the “little things” that really are, as an isolated thing, so simple to rectify, and, collectively, could make such a massive difference to the club, and the enjoyment of it’s supporters. Maybe we need to start a public, collective list of these “little things” so that as a club we can work together to get them right, because amazingly, twenty years on from that conversation in the bar down at Dover, those “little things” are still hindering our progress. It’s the golden goal selling, the raffles, publicizing matches, getting into schools, website advertising, ground maintenance, clubhouse development and maintenance, reviewing beer prices, looking at other income streams (car parking?), encouraging volunteers, social events, community involvement, bringing different elements of the club together, Christmas cards, calendars for sponsors…The list goes on, and on, and on.

I received another email from a supporter this week that highlighted many of these points, and it was that email that reminded me of the trip to watch Dover play and the issues identified then. The email also suggested a pooling together of these ideas from the board and working towards doing something about them.

Makes sense, complete sense really. Some might even say it is ridiculous that as a club we have not already done that, be it as a Supporters’ Trust, a football club or just a bunch of people sitting in the bar having a drink. For twenty years, two decades, we have, if we are being brutally (and maybe harshly) honest, completely and utterly failed to sort some of the most basic aspects of being a successful non-league football club, the “little things”.

That is not to say we are a bad club. Far from it. We are competing at a very high level and have no debt. We have a very strong youth set-up, a Ladies team playing at the highest level, we are an a Community Charter Status club, our First XI have progressed on the pitch every year for the past six years. There is a lot for other clubs to look on enviously at us for.

The surface of Chesham United is, dare I say it, pretty damn impressive. Scratch below the surface, and the “little things” start coming out. Maybe now, twenty years after first identifying the problem, we need to look at prioritizing some of the more basic aspects of the club, not necessarily in place of chasing the dream, but part of the plan.

Behind the scenes there has been some structural changes made to the Board, aimed at improving effectiveness, better decision-making and clearer areas of responsibility. One of the things that will fall into my category will be trying to address some of these “little things”, but I won’t be able to do it alone. And we may not be able to achieve it at all, after all, I doubt it will be the first attempt over the past two decades.

The intention is to host a meeting at the clubhouse in the New Year, inviting anyone and everyone with an interest in making the club a better place. We can look at identifying the “little things”, maybe share insight into why they are not happening now, or any problems we may face in trying to achieve it, but hopefully by the end of the meeting we can come away with a plan, some actions, and maybe a few extra helpers to bring the plan into action.

The bigger picture, the financing of the club, it remains a priority at Board level…but you can become swamped by it. Maybe the email I received last week was right, we need to step outside of the box for a minute, take a look around and have a go at fixing the things that should be easily fixable before worrying too much about the things we might be able to do at some point in the future if certain things happen…Back to basics if you like.

We are better than a lot of clubs at many things, but there are a lot of areas where we fall behind. Maybe we have been spoilt over the years. Twenty years ago the club did not want our help, supporters’ help, they wanted to do it their way. And it worked to a degree. Who cared what was going on behind the scenes of the club at the time that Chopper Coleman rose to nod home that goal against Dover? As I jumped up and down, hugging my friends, anticipating a heavy night of celebration…who cared? Things were brilliant on the pitch. We were better than Dover Athletic, everything must be good.

As we know now, they obviously were not good. They could have been, and it probably would not have taken a lot to make those great days, truly fantastic days that really changed the history of the club. Nothing dramatic, just addressing those “little things”.