Wickers pushing forward

It's been a little while since I blogged on Wick FC, yes I'm still involved there! So what's been happening then?

We're almost at the end of the second month in the season and ahead of a trip to the division new boys Roffey at the weekend third place is where the team currently sits with one defeat from our five games which came in the opening game of the season. Since then only one further defeat has been suffered in the FA Vase when it took Colliers Wood an extra 30 minutes to knock us out.

By the way, since that game on the 31st August the next round has taken place and no surprise to me we're still waiting for the prize money, same as last season, yet if it was the FA wanting the money for a fine they'd be all over you in an instant if payment was late and I'm sure they wonder why they've got a bad reputation throughout the game of not helping their members adequately.

We have had cup progress in the Peter Bentley Cup and also the Sussex RUR Cup and still await our first games in the Sussex Senior Cup and Division One Cup, yes we have six cup competitions and had we finished high enough last season the FA Cup would have made seven! Next month we're almost playing Saturday-Tuesday right through to the beginning of November.

We've made our Senior Cup tie at the beginning of October our first 'pay-what-you-feel' game, hopefully it will result in a bigger crowd than usual especially as we play one of our local rivals, we're always open to new ideas and trying something different from those around us.

Our partnership with Your Instant Replay who video our home league games is proving to be an excellent way to showcase the work on the pitch. This is our first season of having the games filmed and we average over 200 views on each game which I think is a good return so far. We're still looking for a sponsor for the channel, not only does it get seen by our 200 odd, but thousands more through YIR's Instagram and Twitter channels. I'm sure there is more we can do with this, but as with everything within a club there are learning curves all the way.

Off the pitch we're in ok shape, or better than ok in some areas. We've just appointed our first bar manager and with that it takes away some more things from me to have to deal with such as stock ordering, function bookings and meeting hirers to complete the booking paperwork.

Our function bookings have been coming in on the same scale as last year, vital for us to support the football side of things as without that money there wouldn't be a football side to the club. We have 3 youth sides using the pitch on Sundays, once again vital revenue this year where in previous years that day wasn't making us any money.

Financially we're doing ok. We're servicing everything we need to this year and there are some added bits we didn't have last year, the filming, paying a physio etc, but things we need and things that enhance the club to push it further forward.

Recently we had some work done to the floodlights for the second year running and thats landed us with a bill of nearly £2500, a huge amount for a club of our size. Luckily, the company we use are fantastic with us paying the bill and give us a great service every time we need some work doing. What does annoy me though is the club were given a huge sum of money about five years ago which would have set it up for the following ten years or so, time before I was involved on the main committee side, and instead of spending it on sensible things like replacing the floodlights which are in need of upgrading, it was squandered completely and left the club with nothing but a hole in the finances.

Slowly but surely, it's on track to be in a sensible place come the end of this season after just about stabilising last year and if we manage that I'll be more than happy! With less administrative work to do this year I get more time to keep up with the social media side of things and you can never publicise the club too often, all our social media channels are useful in different ways, the club website for delivering changes, promotions, news etc, Facebook reaches on average 300 people with each post and has reached over 2000 on some posts while Twitter is our best matchday tool.

Around this time last year I was running the club on my own, just about to change managers and wondering what I'd let myself in for! Twelve months on things are very different and much less responsibility, what price things to be unrecognisable in another twelve months? Hang on for the ride...…..