The Grampound Times
Easter 2007 (Edition 44)
Our community in Cornwall
Grampound Football Club
The extremely wet weather has made life difficult for the football club since
Christmas, but the effects of the rather expensive work done on the pitch last spring has helped and no home matches have been postponed because of the weather at the time of writing. Our friends at other clubs have not been so lucky and a number of matches have been called off. Those postponed away matches will be causing problems later in the season when I can see both our teams having a terribly congested end to the season to get all the fixtures played. Further visits by mindless morons (as I have described them elsewhere) in their cars on the pitch has not helped, but the Hall and Recreation Ground committee has been very sympathetic and with them we are installing a gate and some more posts around the entrances to the field from the car park. This will stop unauthorised cars from driving down, but will allow pedestrians free access and the gate will be able to be unlocked to allow admittance to vehicles when needed.
On the playing side, the First Team has had some difficult games in recent months, but the postponements and some unexpected fixture arrangements by the league mean that there will be some catching up to do. The club remains optimistic about the team’s promotion prospects, especially as some of our rivals have had a few indifferent results, but with only 4 matches played in 12 weeks there is some worry about maintaining all that hard-earned fitness and manager Glyn Leaney has put in some additional training sessions for his players. The Reserve Team has had similar problems, but after travelling all the way to Bude, an excellent battling draw against title favourites Stratton United under difficult circumstances showed that manager Tim Topham’s team are very competitive and its indifferent league position does not properly reflect its real ability.
End of Season 2007
As usual, we will be celebrating at the end of the season whatever the outcome of the rest of our matches:-
Saturday 12 th May : End of Season Awards Dinner
This year we have decided to hold our end-of season awards night as a formal (or fairly formal) dinner. We hope that anyone who has had an association with the club over the years, from playing to watching to having kids who play or have played, will want to support this annual event and come along and celebrate with us. It will take place at the Trewhiddle Inn, St Austell and we expect it to be a very nice evening. Tickets, priced £15, are available from committee members. All village members will be most welcome to join us.
Saturday 19 th May : FA Cup Final Day
Assuming all our fixtures are over by then, we will be inviting back some former players to join us in our traditional friendly match in the morning, followed by a short walk to the Dolphin Inn where we will have lunch and enjoy the afternoon match on the TV.
Committee 2006-7
Roger Paynter (President)
Allen Webb (Chairman)
Alastair Woodman (Secretary)
Tony Ford (Treasurer)
Glyn Ford, Dave Juleff, Richie James, Glyn Leaney, Tim Topham
Developments at Grampound Football Club
In January, the club finalised the first draft of its development plan and the committee then discussed this with Cornwall County Football Association officers Phil Cardew (Football Development Officer) and David Bray (Youth Football Development Officer). The club’s plans were met with enthusiastic approval and further talks have taken place to help us get underway, resulting in some immediate funding to support what we need to start.
The full development plan can be viewed on the club’s web pages at www.grampound.org.uk/football/documents/development_plan1.pdf, but its main themes are
1. To develop a high quality football club as a focus in our community
2. To work in partnership with other community organisations to use football to promote social inclusion and community development
3. To recruit, train and develop coaches, leaders, officials, administrators and volunteers
4. To develop football and community facilities to permit the other parts of our plan to take place.
Having the support of our county FA there are some things we feel we can do straight away, and we plan to these started in the coming months :-
start a boys youth team to play in a league in season 2007-8, and
start mini-soccer (for primary age boys and girls)
Adverts for these two initiatives can be found elsewhere in the Grampound Times.
To help us, the county FA will be running mini-soccer coaching events at Grampound in the Easter school holidays and publicity for these will be circulated through our local primary schools. Although we have several qualified coaches at the club, the county FA will fund us to get more members trained and a number of current players are taking advantage of this.
We will be recruiting for our Youth Team from the end of April, when training and coaching sessions will begin and carry on through the summer. This will be aimed at boys who are currently in Years 9 and 10 at school, but boys in other age groups should not feel excluded and a different age-group team will be run if there is demand. If interested, parents or players should contact club secretary Alastair Woodman (tel 01726 882332), who will be able to pass on details when finalised. With this increase in participation, though, we hope that further volunteers will come forward, be they parents or just people who would like to help. Please contact one of our committee if you are interested.
Once we can show that we can increase participation in football we expect that further funding will be available to develop facilities and the ground we now use. Large parts of our development plan have a community focus and we hope that the village will back us in order to gain the substantial sums of money we will require to improve the Recreation Ground for everyone and to give our young people facilities that they will want to be involved with.
Allan Webb
Chairman, Grampound Football Club
© 2006 Grampound with Creed Parish Council