Chance to finish on a high
So here we are then, the final few weeks of a very eventful season but not yet the end of my stint as Secretary of Wick FC. Just six games remain to be played, but we added an extra one to that list on Tuesday night with victory in the Southern Combination League Division One Cup semi final, although we didn't make it easy for ourselves!
Cruising at 3-0 and 4-1, a sloppy few minutes into the last 10 allowed our opponents to get back to 4-3, but more resolute defending saw us keep our nerve and book a place in the final on Good Friday. Without a doubt this was the best performance of the season, energy and exuberance in the middle of the park, pace on the wings and a striker well able to hold the ball and bring others into play. Credit must go to those players who have stuck with the club when quite a few could have followed others to our competitors, a winners medal would be richly deserved.
The final six league games give us four at home and still very much able to finish sixth in the table, again the upheaval throughout the year would represent a decent end. Dan Cox and Luke Cooper together have done a fantastic job in settling the squad and getting results at the same time, they aimed for the cup final and they've got there.
What's it been like off the field? Bloody tight, bloody hard! Whilst we made great strides in 2018 financially, 2019 has come back to bite us on the bum! The lack of games not just for us in the first couple of months, but also for The Unicorn and Littlehampton Under 18's who provide us with extra pitch income really put the squeeze on. We're not talking thousands here, just a couple of hundred pounds a week to add to the account. At the same time we encountered a lack of function bookings, no one's fault it happens. I won't lie with the fact we've sailed pretty close to the wind but we've just about gotten away with it.
That's not to say we're completely out of the woods, not by a long shot, we have to keep working at it. Four more games of income from ourselves, a couple more each from our ground sharing teams and we begin on 2019-20, well actually that begins next week! Our diary is beginning to fill up with bookings from now until the middle of May and with that we might just about be in an almost stable position when we properly kick off in August.
Juggling secretarial admin, the money and social media, the latter I've always looked after for the club, has certainly given me plenty to do this year, in all honesty too much. We are still looking for our Secretary for next season, we can't run efficiently without one. As a club we have lots of ideas we still want to implement but there are only so many hours in the day and the proper job gets in the way! You'd be amazed how much 2-4 hours a week from 4 more people would really help us out.
The other thing we need is supporters on the sidelines. Will the fact we're in a cup final bring people in? I hope so! On Wednesday morning, I posted onto our club Facebook page (www.facebook.com/wickfootballclub) details from the semi final. To date over 1200 people have seen the post, but we barely get 30 people to come and watch. Now I appreciate some of those people live miles away, some have connections and commitment to other clubs on a Saturday afternoon, 1% of this total would be huge for us to see every week.
We delivered out 2000 flyers locally in the past three weeks for free entry to a home game, it would be fantastic to see just 5% of those flyers come back through the turnstile, more I wouldn't complain at either! It's not the Premier League, it's proper honest football, cheap and with food and beer available at every game, you can even take your pint pitchside! Give it a try if you haven't before, won't cost you to watch if you have that flyer...….
Top image supplied courtesy of Andrew Hazelden (https://www.flickr.com/photos/123320724@N05/sets/72157679451179118/with/46511533355/)