Hi All,
As some of you may or may not be aware we have struggled mightily with the school over the course of this season over many things. We have witnessed some staggeringly petty acts such as banning us from using the goals for training, to actually removing our playing pitch before the end of the season. Chris and I have been requested to meet with the principal and head of sport in the next few weeks to ‘dicuss a few issues’. I fully expect to hear something along the lines of ‘thanks for playing, now f*ck off’.
I firstly would like to say that this is coming only from the school itself, the old scholar’s association has given us nothing but support over the past few years, fighting successfully for us on a number of occasions. It may also suprise you to learn that one of our most vocal supporters has been the Old Scholars Footy club, we have defended our use of the oval for training, and offered significant financial help in our quest to put lights up on the soccer pitch, or down at Montrose so that we can have our own training area.
The negative attitudes from the school centre around our use of the soccer pitch, and football oval. It is their opinion that we put excess strain on these facilities without really giving much back to the greater college community. To some extent they are correct in this, over the past few years the club has not been particularly well run, and we have been very lucky to cover match fees, and purchase basic equipment like balls and playing strips, however I think the school believe we run on a much higher budget that we actually have. They see 30 odd blokes training on a Wednesday night, which is about half the playing roster of the Footy club, and so deduce that we must have about half their resources. They have an annual budget of around $100,000, we had our most financially successful season with $6,000.
Chris and I have done around 85% (with about 80% of that being done by Chris on his own) of the work running the club this season, and as such have started to turn the club around. We hope to build ourselves into the kind of organisation that can give the donations and support to the college community that I believe the school wish us to be. During our meeting with the principal I intend to point out that this is not a change that will happen instantly, and that we are being seriously hamstrung by their petty attempts to make this difficult for us, and that while that continues we will never be able to grow to the size we need to be a meaningful contributor.
In order for this to work, we really need to be able to show further progress on last year’s efforts.
CHRIS AND I CANNOT DO THIS BY OURSELVES.
In short we need to form a committee that meets regularly (I am thinking I will get a set of keys for the pavilion and we can just meet before/after the first training of every month) and consists of more than 2 active members and a few more names we chuck in whenever anyone looks too closely. We need at least 5-8 people to be involved in this. The people on this committee will need to fill a few roles. At the minimum we need:
Someone with experience and skills in website design/computers to initially revamp, and then maintain our section of the college website. It would be helpful if this person(s) also maintained our blog site.
An Old scholar to be our link with the Old Scholar’s Association. This will take up roughly 2 hours of your time 3-4 times a year in meetings, and also makes you the first contact point when the association has a request to make of us, which would then be brought back to committee.
One or Two people to be our link with the CSL, this involves a similar commitment of about 2 hours 3-4 times a year attending the CSL committee meetings.
Help with organising and promoting fundraising events/initiatives as well as seeking out sponsorship.
Help with organising closer ties with the college community (particularly with the first XI)
With these positions filled, and a regularly meeting committee in place I can make a strong argument for our continued use of college facilities, and I intend to argue, send letters, call upon every favour within the old scholar’s community I possess, and make full use of any and all of my father’s considerable contacts within the college community in order to give us a team to play for next season.
This is not something we can afford to ignore. You cannot just read this and hope that somebody else will do it. If you know you have the skills and/or the time we need you to step up and get involved. We also cannot wait long to get things started, we need people to start sticking their hand up in the next week or so.
OTHERWISE THERE WILL NOT BE AN OLD COLLEGIANS SOCCER CLUB NEXT SEASON.
It is as simple as that, get involved NOW or we cease to exist.
Call me (0432961653), text me, facebook me, or e-mail me (alasdairrodgers@yahoo.com) to get involved.
Cheers,
Alasdair |
