Summer works continue

I know I don’t post much anymore but I hope people keep up with news from the Club through all the other means, including twitter, the website and the local press.

Things are seldom quiet at Wealdstone, whether during the season or through the summer months. Here is just some of the things I’ve been doing; as well as the usual Board meetings and other day by day business (including letters and emails) I have attended a supporters club meeting, a joint Ruislip and Wealdstone marketing meeting, and last Saturday the Ryman League AGM in Brighton followed by the Annual Banquet & Ball, where my wife Katie and I were joined by Paul, Peter, Andrew and Miriam together with respective partners.

Next week we look forward to the Ruislip Manor Fun Day, where the Club comes together to really make a show to the local community. Members of the football club, the social club, the supporters club and the junior club come together to talk to residents, hand out flyers and generally show the local population what we are about. This will include handing out a flyer with an offer for admission for the Wycombe and Crewe friendlies and money off the price of a drink in the club house. Hopefully this will attract a good number of interested residents and we are following that by attending the local residents committee meeting next week.

Meanwhile Attic and colleagues work hard on jobs around the ground and as always could do with people to come and give a couple of hours, especially ahead of the forthcoming friendlies against Watford and the others which are not that far away.

So if anyone wants to come and help either on the stall in Ruislip Manor or at the ground then this coming Saturday (2 July) would be a great time to be available, even if for a short amount of time – all help will be massively appreciated.

We are going to make a big push to have a Sunday later in July, early in August when we get people from all parts of the Club, including playing and management staff to come down and get involved in some general help around the ground but don’t wait for that – please come down this Saturday and if you can help share the burden we will all be grateful.

New Year’s Eve spectacular

I’ve been asked to mention the event taking place on Friday night at the Social Club.

The New Year’s Eve spectacular is a big evening for the Club. Last year approximately 350 people were there and I know enjoyed a great evening.

We are expecting a big crowd again. With a disco and hot food included in the price of a ticket please contact Leo Morris to get you ticket. Details can be found here.

Have a great night.

A kick in the proverbials

The statement that we have put out this evening makes for some tough reading.

With our landlords KSIMC telling us that they will not extend our lease, or even contemplate selling us the freehold to the Grosvenor Vale site it feels, as the title of this post suggests, like quite a hefty kick in the proverbials.

And coming in the week that Jermaine signs for Everton for nothing, it just makes this a very painful few days for the Football Club. To get so close but not to hit the jackpot is deeply frustrating; to apparently not even hit the board is another thing all together.

Enough mixing of metaphors! It’s at times like this that you look at yourself and what you / us as a Board have done and wonder if we have made the wrong calls. That will ultimately be for others to judge. It would be easy to get depressed and give up, to feel that the football gods are always going to make life difficult for us. But this is Wealdstone, and we’ve known enough adversity in the past. We came back before and we will come back again.

As far as the lease goes we need to remember that we still have eight years to run. We are not being kicked out now. So there is time to sensibly plan for what we need to do in the future. Perhaps that will be at Grosvenor Vale, perhaps Prince Edward and perhaps somewhere else.

Let’s not give up on Grosvenor Vale either. Things can change. We have supporters, the Council, the residents and much of the community who have engaged positively with us since we moved in just two years ago. Our discussions with KSIMC have until this point been positive and we were led to believe that a lease extension was not going to be an issue. Their first communication with us after their AGM when this was discussed told us that this had been rejected for now, but a follow up email suggests that the lease will not be extended at any time in the future.  Quite why they have changed their stance so dramatically is difficult to understand and no doubt we will find that out in good time. But just as they appear to have changed their mind this time so we can hope that our future discussions with them may lead them to change again in the future.

On a personal note I will not bullshit, receiving this news is a huge blow. As always with Wealdstone we seem to climb a mountain only to find one even higher lurking just behind it. I suspect that in the great traditions of our club we will roll our sleeves up and get on with it – but I am sure we will need more help and expertise to help the Club forward and anyone reading this who wants to get involved should let me know.

We have a new season to prepare for, and we will do what we have always done, try to support Gordon and look optimistically to the new year in the Ryman Premier.

There is a long way to run with this one yet – don’t lose the faith!

Thanks to so many

Rather than write a new post thanking so many people I thought I might post my article due to be in today’s match programme. So if you are not at the game or didn’t get a programme read on.

Programme notes for Carshalton game (ever so slightly updated)

A warm welcome to all for our final game of this memorable season, and a special welcome to all our successful juniors, both boys and girls who are with us today.

In many respects I can’t really believe how quickly this season has passed. So much has been packed into it, as always at Wealdstone, both on and off the pitch.

The good news is that coming into the 42nd game the season is still alive with hopes of getting into the play-offs resting on today’s results here, at Boreham Wood, at Kingstonian and at Aveley.

So the best memories may be yet to come, but whatever happens it will take something very special to beat the fortnight back in late October / early November that followed us winning at Aylesbury, beating Harrow and then culminating in what was such a great day against Rotherham. It took us 23 years to get to the First Round of the FA Cup, hopefully we can do it again next year. Other highlights include getting to a Cup Final (if not the penalty shoot out), and a Leeds United themed set of memories that include the pre-season friendly, the pride of Jermaine’s performances against Manchester United and Tottenham though also the disappointment of realising he was not going to be sold after all. I bet they wish they had done now!

As always, and in his testimonial year we need to salute our manager Gordon Bartlett with his excellent team behind him. Gordon puts so much time into the Club and yet his passion burns as brightly now as ever. In this packed last week of the season a bumper crowd celebrated Gordon’s testimonial on a great Wednesday evening – it was all so well deserved. I am delighted that Leo Morris will be celebrating his testimonial next season.

It has been a hard season in many respects, especially with the challenges of the weather and Fingers particularly has done an amazing amount of work, often with little recognition or reward. The pitch remains a big issue for us and one we will look to get right – though it will take time and money and patience.

Off the field there are so many people to thank as always – so I won’t even try and thank everybody – other than divide it into three groups.

First to my Board of Directors for all the time, effort and energy they give without much thanks – but in some respects with everyone’s thanks. We have so much going on at the Club and I really believe that with the right breaks anything is possible and much of that is due to the work of a few on the Board.

Secondly to everyone who helps, whether on match days or not, in the Social Club, the Supporter’s Club, the Stewards, the ball boys, those who help with the Board Room hospitality, the press, the programme, the tannoy, the photography, the gate, the Reserves, the Youth, the Juniors, the catering, the kit, the works in the ground and so on (apologies if I missed you out). So many people, giving up their time to help our Club. That is why so many others will always be jealous of what we have in abundance – passion, a desire to succeed and a love of the Club. Dare I say, more of the same next year please?

Finally, a huge thank you to all our supporters, young and old.  Thanks to everyone who contributed to 100:400, to all our Club sponsors, match sponsors, kit grid donors, match ball donors and so on. Thanks to all those who travel home and away, or even just to home games. You have been immense and of course, we need you all, as much as ever, starting in August when we do it all over again.

But you know, as much as we need volunteer labour down at the ground through the summer months, and we do, I urge you all to take the opportunity to spend some time with your loved ones and get some brownie points because the new season will be with us before you know it.

Have a great summer

A good day today

A quick update on today’s meetings – it’s been a long day.

This lunchtime Peter Worby and Paul Rumens accompanied me to the Stanmore HQ of KSIMC, our landlords.  We had a very encouraging meeting which carried on over lunch.

We are due to meet again on 9 March at Ruislip to discuss various possibilities. Let’s hope this is the start of proper and frequent conversations leading to a long term agreement. I am encouraged by our discussions but I think we all know there is a long way to go.

This evening Peter and Leo this time came with me to Ruislip Manor Library to attend a meeting of the local residents association. Although we were expecting the worse, in terms of complaints about parking and noise we were to be surprised, as in general the residents were very complimentary about what we have achieved so far wished us every success in the future.

It is important we have a working relationship with the residents that we can develop in the future so that when we are in a position to invest in the site we do so with their support. Again this is an investment in a long term plan which I think is very important to our future.

A good day.

Big day tomorrow

We have two very important meetings tomorrow.

Believe it or not, we finally have a meeting with our freeholders KSIMC. Paul, Peter and I will be going to their Stanmore HQ to meet with them and follow that with lunch. We are not necessarily expecting any decisions tomorrow but it will be important to try and get some commitment for ongoing discussion.

Then in the evening Leo and I are going to a meeting in Ruislip with our local residents association. This is the first time we have appeared in front of them and it is an opportunity to begin to forge a relationship here as well. That said, I respectfully understand that they will have issues they will want to raise with us, so we will doing probably more listening than talking.

I see quite a bit of similarity between the two meetings, both are important and having got the opportunity to get in front of these groups we don’t want either to be one-offs.

More tomorrow

Giving something back

Over the next few home matches we will be welcoming various members of the community to the Vale.

On Saturday we are hosting our friends from the Harrow Stones Stars and holding a Mencap awareness day and at our following home match against Canvey Island on 3 October we will be holding a cancer awareness day, with as I understand it members of various cancer charities present including from the Bobby Moore fund.  We will also take that opportunity to remember our former player Jomo Faal-Thomas.

I want to thank Dominic Whyley and Barry O’Sullivan who have been instrumental in getting these days organised.  I have said many times that it is very important for us to truly be a community club, and this means thinking of others less fortunate than us at times.

As well as thinking of others we also must consider our own, and in that spirit we will also be doing something for Steve Hughes when we have the next free Saturday home game (likely to be against Margate in the FA Trophy).

Steve was struck by a bad injury which ruled him out of much of last season.  Having worked hard to get back during pre-season he broke down again when sustaining a cruciate ligament tear, remarkably in his other knee in the pre-season game at Beaconsfield.  This was a bitter blow to Steve, who I know, felt as fit as he had ever been when he started playing again, and coming immediately after the previous injury this was a bitter blow.

Wisely Steve got a scan immediately, and once the bad news was confirmed he decided to get reconstructive surgery and this took place at the beginning of this month.  The operation was successful and the surgeon is confident that Steve’s knee will be strong following intense rehab within 6-8 months.  What this means, of course, is that Steve’s season was over before it started.

Many of you will have seen Steve regularly watching the team during the period of his last injury.  He is very popular at our club and I know he is committed to coming back and scoring lots of goals for us in the future, and his determination to once again battle back to full fitness speaks volumes for his character.

Financially though this is a tough break for Steve, who has a big bill to pay for his medical expenses and is, I believe, currently out of work.  Therefore we will be holding a collection on behalf of Steve, I know from the reaction of some of the Directors to this story that it will be well supported.

Most regular supporters will be used to Peter Worby shaking a bucket at them at the end of a home game, particularly if we win.  Most of you give generously.  over the next few home games you will again be asked to give generously but not for the football club, but for people who need our help.  I know we will all dig deep and do what we can to help.