Community latest

Mishi Morath had his regular piece in last weeks programme, and there will be another tomorrow. Here was his bit from the Staines Town match

Good afternoon… here we are, back at Champion Hill for a new season in a league with a new name. Bostik League it is….once we’ve got out of the habit of saying ‘Ryman’ which shouldn’t take too long. I’m sure it will stick in the mind…

To be perfectly honest, as this is my fourth column, after doing three in pre-season programmes, I’m not entirely sure what I have to say…for the simple reason that our Football Committee Chairman Liam Hickey appears to have ‘cribbed’ most of his column elsewhere in todays edition from my previous pieces. Still…at least he let me see it in advance, to prove we do communicate with each other sometimes! Enough jesting…onto some more ‘serious’ stuff.

For those of you who like Quiz Nights there’s going to be another one here at Champion Hill, staged by our old friends and last season’s official charity partner ‘Football Beyond Borders’. It’s here in the clubhouse on Thursday 17th August, all the questions are on football, so should appeal to everyone, and the fun starts at half past seven. I must confess I’m not sure what the cost is to enter a team, as it didn’t say on the poster they put up, but it’s always good value for money for a very good cause. So have a chat with your mates, be they from the terraces, or perhaps from work and sort your team out. As soon as I find out more details I’ll put it all on the official Dulwich Hamlet website, which is www.dulwichhamletfc.co.uk

Some of you will be aware of something called the ‘1893 Club’ that appears in this programme now and again. It’s actually a monthly raffle which fans pay into, with any money raised after the prizes being paid going directly into Football Club coffers, helping to pay bills on the football side of things. It’s very similar to the Supporters’ Trust ‘100 Club’, where all the money raised from that is stored in their account to help the Club in future, with the idea being-and I am happy to stand corrected-to be used in the transition over, whenever that may be, to Dulwich Hamlet becoming a supporter owned entity. Ideally there shouldn’t be two very similar schemes running and there will be talks later in the season to hopefully merge the two, to be run under the wing of the Supporters’ Trust, by next summer.

In the meantime the Football Club run ‘1893 Club’ will continue to run over the coming season and in a couple of weeks we shall have forms for you to sign up and improve it…the more people join…the BIGGER the prizes! And why do we want that… I am pleased to say, with the full blessing of the Chair of the Trust Al Crane, as we’re not in competition with them, or anything like that, the reason we are pushing a re-launch of the ‘1893 Club’ is to ring-fence any money made from it over the new 2017/18 season for the ‘Inter City 125’ fundraising, which has the sole aim of raising enough money to take the full First Team squad & management team to Germany next summer as part of our 125th anniversary celebrations with a special match away to our good friends from Altona 93, who were formed in the same year as us. The date for your diary is SUNDAY 13th JULY, with a 12 noon kick-off at their historic Adolf-Jager-Kampfbahn stadium. The very same place where we were victorious, led by Edgar Kail, way back at Easter 1925!

There will also be a friendly match two days before, on Friday 11th July, against another local Hamburg side, yet to be sorted. We need to raise around eight and a half thousand pounds to get The Hamlet to Hamburg, and we are well on our way, but we still need to find another couple of grand over the next eight or nine months. Together we can do it, I know we can and will, especially if you sign up to the ‘1893 Club’ next week, and give your bank the details…it only costs a pound a go, so it won’t break the bank..and the more goes you have the more chance you have of winning….and it helps the fundraising so it really is a ‘win.win’ situation.

Thank you again for your support, please buy a programme again next week, when we will be telling you more about our plans for ‘Non League Day’ later in the season, when we have been fortunate enough to have been cast a home fixture. And if you can’t get a programme then we’ll share it on-line too, on the Club website, so keep your eyes peeled, as Shaw Taylor would have said…oh dear, showing my age there!

Mishi Morath (Football Committee, community liaison lead)