The latest from Chairman Ben Clasper, from the programme of our Home game against Eastbourne Borough on Tuesday January 25th.

I always try to avoiding commenting on matters on the pitch mainly to avoid exposing you to my dreadful predictions but also because like many football fans I am extremely superstitious and so always fear some off the cuff comment I make about a game will be the reason for jinxing it (on Saturday I had to throw away one half of the lucky underwear set due to holes in the socks but seeing as their last appearance was Dorking the magic had clearly worn off anyway). So, I knew I shouldn’t have discussed injuries in my last column, I knew it was asking for trouble and the angered football gods saw fit to deprive us of three more players with Tyrone Sterling and Jordan Higgs both needing medical treatment after the match and Charlie Grainger joining the list of unavailable players before the game and we wish them all the best for a speedy recovery.

So, at the time of writing as we prepare for tonight’s game against Eastbourne Borough we are literally down to 11 senior players plus our emergency loan goalkeeper from Charlton Athletic, Nathan Harness. We are fortunate that we can add a few more of the younger players who have made the step up from the academy and have already performed well when they have featured but hard work is going on behind the scenes to add the players I spoke about in the last programme. If injuries were covid we would be unable to fulfil the fixture under the current rules but our focus is on continuing to play and keeping the push for the promotion spots going. It was great to welcome Nathan into the team on Saturday and he helped matters enormously with his Charlie Grainger impression pulling off the type of extraordinary save we have become used to seeing. We also welcomed back Ibra Sekajja for another spell and I doubt there are any better goals per minutes played ratios out there after the last few minutes produced a final result that was more comfortable than it felt like on the terraces for much of the second half.

It was amazing to see the support for the club again with another capacity attendance, we continue to look for more ways of tweaking the facilities to make things work as well as they can but it underlines again the need for more substantial changes to bridge the gap before those changes are delivered on a more permanent basis by the new stadium. Of course, to invest we need to know were we stand and this will be an increasingly common theme now. We are aiming to meet with Southwark Council in the next few weeks to discuss what the club and the supporters need, in short, if we see a clear timetable and are confident there are no nasty surprises coming in the journey to build a new stadium, we can then make a case to be allowed to make changes to the current stadium to cover however long we expect the transition period to last.

In the past week we have started to circulate internally a vision document for the management of the club which will extend to include the day-to-day management, the three-year transition plan to ensure we keep moving forward even before a new stadium is delivered and the future of how we want to own and run the club. If you are a shareholder, season ticket holder or Supporters’ Trust member you will be invited to take part in this review, if you don’t fall into one of those categories I would recommend joining the Supporters’ Trust to ensure you do have a voice.

We have three very different match day experiences to look after for our fans with the Saturday men’s games becoming a hugely popular community event, the Tuesday men’s games offering what is probably closer to the pre-pandemic attendances and experience and the Sunday women’s games attracting a growing, younger, family crowd. We are appreciative of all of the feedback we receive on each of those and even though the atmosphere and crowd management on Saturday was another huge step forward with the experience on the terraces when compared with the problems of the first sell out games we know there is always room for more improvement, and we are committed to acting on all suggestions.

Keep them coming and I hope you enjoy tonight under the lights against our visitors from Eastbourne Borough.