Community Chat

Here was the most recent column on 'Community Matters', from the programme last Monday, penned by Mishi Morath, on behalf of the Football Committee

Good afternoon everyone, both home and away fans, who have all been eagerly anticipating the first of our two local derbies, since Tooting & Mitcham United won the Ryman League Division South, a mere four years after we were champions of that division.
Hopefully, and we take nothing for granted, there will be another bumper four-figure attendance this afternoon…usually are crowds are quite ‘sleepy’; fans ‘waking up’ later in the season as the summer period sees lots of our core support, namely local people with young children, away on holiday. To have such big opening gates in August are certainly unprecedented in my lifetime…and I turned fifty last year!

Our fans flocking through the turnstiles isn’t something we take for granted, and it’s something we continue to want to grow organically. And by that we mean a combination of attractive football on the pitch thanks to Gavin Rose and the rest of his management team; and off it the combined work of the Football Committee, assisted by members of the Supporters’ Trust Board on many projects.

The thing that makes me so proud of our community work is that I like to think we don’t just restrict ourselves to ‘token gestures’, which stop at the odd poster or piece in the programme supporting League or County FA values, but not putting much work in to show this. This season, for the fourth consecutive season now, we are proud to work with our local community by holding another ‘Pay What You Like Day’, with the generous agreement of our Club backers Meadows Residential.

This season it falls on ‘Non League Day’, fortunate to have a home game on this wonderful initiative that clubs at our level, and much further down the pyramid even, promote up and down the country. This year it is on Saturday 7th October, when we host Needham Market, and the beneficiaries of the excess profit made through the gate will be the ‘Copleston Centre’, who are our 2017/18 season long charity partner & ‘Lambeth & Southwark MIND’. That is particularly fitting as three days later, 10th October, is World Mental Health Day, and we shall be using ‘Non League Day’ to highlight mental health issues & involving local mental health service users in the day.

Prior to the match we shall be staging a ‘Mental Health Football Roadshow’ on the all-weather surface on Greendale. We’re working on this at the moment, but hope to stage a friendly six or seven-a-side tournament between local mental health organisations as well as having various stands highlighting the work that they do.

At the match itself we will have a table staffed by Lambeth & Southwark MIND for you to look at, maybe take away some leaflets or chat to them, if you yourself have mental health issues, but have not known who to talk to about them.

It’s going to be a cracking community day out from start to finish…and we hope to have some match posters specific to this match produced by the Dulwich Hamlet Supporters’ Trust in early to mid-September for this big ‘Non League day’ occasion. In the meantime, spread the word, speak to your friends and work colleagues and get them to put the date in your diary. The more people who come to the game and make a donation on the day, the more money we will be able to hand over to our chosen charities.

Last season we shared around three thousand pounds between them, it would be marvellous to match or even beat that figure this time round.

On Saturday (2nd September) we start our journey in the FA Cup, hopefully it will be a rare half-decent one! In all honesty our record in this competition isn’t historically the nest, to say the least! But you can say you were there from the start when we take on Hastings United…crowds tend to drop for cup games, for a variety of reasons, but it’s still all kids Under Thirteen FREE and all of our wide ranging and cheap concessions at a fiver are still valid. So, even if the match isn’t included in your season ticket (as cup games don’t allow this as gates must be shared with the opposition) please make the effort to come along, and invite a friend or two. There really is nothing like the magic of the FA Cup…even in the first qualifying round!

Mishi Morath (Football Committee, lead for Community Initiatives)