Community Corner

It's been a while since our last home match at Tooting & Mitcham United, we haven't had time to share our community page with you yet

Here's what Football Committee member Mishi Morath had to say in the programme from Sunday 18th March, when we hosted Worthing:

COMMUNITY CORNER

It’s a pleasure to welcome old friends of The Hamlet for our old friends from good old Sussex by the sea this afternoon, though none of us envisaged the game being staged here at Tooting on a Sunday when the fixtures were cast last year!Thank you to them for agreeing to the switch.

Speaking personally, we’ve always had a good relationship with their fans, being regulars in their Supporters-6-a-sides, so it’s good to see them picking up result wise, after a return to their home themselves, having had to groundshare for reasons very different to ours, I hasten to add.If I had to hold up an example, and I hope this doesn’t offend as it’s not meant to, of a club slowly dying on their proverbial then they were a prime example. But through the tenure of George Dowell they have become a shining beacon of a local club reaching out and embracing it’s local community once more, where crowds are on the up, and local people genuinely feel they are part of something special.

That is a spirit we have tried to grow in SE22…and I do believe that if so many of us hadn’t put in the work we have done over the last few years, you would not be reading this column, as if we had stagnated, for lack of a better description, stuck in the pre-Gavin Rose era, with crowds of a couple of hundred, rather than thousands upon thousands flocking through the turnstiles over a season, I believe without a doubt we would have been trampled on and be murdered by circling vultures.

I’m writing these notes after Southwark Council have said they wouldbe prepared to follow a compulsory purchase if Meadow Residential don’t do the decent thing and sell their interest for a fair price, and before yesterday’s rally and march and rally back home in East Dulwich. Hopefully the weather was kind to us and we had huge numbers and media exposure…and we fight for our future on so manyfronts. I have no crystal ball, but one thing is for sure, no matter what happens, my conscience is clear-the Football Club Committee that I am honoured to serve on has done everything it can, working alongside the passionate fans that we and you are, to get this far.

Now that we are outside our traditional catchment it’s time for us all to literally go that extra mile and get to home games here at our new, hopefully temporary home, at the KNK Stadium in Mitcham. But we don’t just need you. YOU are clearly one of the more dedicated fans if you have bought and are reading this programme, but we need each and every one of you to reach out to our more occasional followers. Encourage them to come to matches here, and make that extra effort to invite your family, friends and neighbours along. We really do needthe income from every single person through the turnstiles more than ever if we are to maintain the level of football that we have become accustomed to. So please, spread the word.

The facilities here are excellent, whisper it quietly, I’d say even better than our own that we were used to back at Champion Hill.On our community outreach side that’s something we may not be so active with, as we’re not in our locality. No matter how short or long we are here at the KNK Stadium I wouldn’t want to try to build our fan base in this area. The last thing I would want us to portrayed as is a club that muscles in and steps on their toes, when they try to build up their own attendances.I’ll close my column for today with mention of our landlords.

For me football would not exist without local rivalry..and the one between ourselves and The Terrors goes back many decades. It’s the spark that excites, whether a Tooting fan or a Dulwich supporter. I won’t pretend to particularly like them, sometimes a few of our more recent fans ask where the rivalry stems for. I cannot answer that, I simply say that on the terraces “It’s the way I was brought up as a child”!

But not liking your rivals does not mean that I cannot respect them…and words I thought I’d never say: Tooting and Mitcham United Football Club I salute and respect you for taking us in. Whilst I have no grind to axe against the other clubs near the relegation spot I am rooting for Tooting to pull clear and stay up. And that’s something I thought I’d never say!

Mishi Morath (Community lead, Football Committee)