If you missed out on a programme last night...

You will have missed out on our latest 'Community Column'. Here is what we had to say:

Good evening,
Tonight we welcome to Champion Hill Harlow Town, who we have already visited this season. Though not everyone who travels from the Essex town this evening will be cheering them on…it particular lifelong Hamlet fan Malcolm Meredith, who has been a regular on our terraces since the early part of the nineteen sixties, his first match being an Amateur Cup game against Harlow, long before he moved to the new town!

It’s fair to say that we haven’t hit top form yet, I am sure that even manager Gavin Rose would agree that we haven’t hit top form yet, so it’s good to see how crowds are holding up here, especially for our last run-out here, when over two thousand two hundred flocked through the turnstiles for the biggest gate throughout the entire Ryman League so far, never mind just for our fixtures. That sort of crowd certainly vindicated our decision to hold a Trade Union Day, and I am sure even the pocket of our fans who might not have necessarily agreed with the promotion cannot argue about the success of it.

On Saturday we are at home once more, against AFC Sudbury, making their first ever trip to play us here. Remembrance Sunday might seem a fair way away, but this is currently our last scheduled home match before then, so we will have collectors from the Dulwich Branch of the Royal British Legion here, with their poppies & assorted merchandise, as we do every season. The Football Club Committee will also be handing over the club portion of the ‘50/50’ tickets sales. Armistice Day falls on a Friday this year, and we as a Club have decided to hold our non-denominational wreath-laying ceremony in the Boardroom that evening at seven o’clock. This is an annual event where wreaths are placed at the Club War Memorial, which was instigated by our founder ‘Pa’ Wilson after the First World War. You may recall that one of our fans, Roger Deason, wrote an excellent booklet, produced by the ‘Hamlet Historian’ stable, last year…and you can still purchase one of the few remaining copies of this from the Supporters’ Trust Mega-Container.

Following the ceremony the Club Bar will be open, with the big World Cup qualifier between England & Scotland lives on our big screens. There’s no need for you to be squashed ten or twenty deep in a local pub, full of ‘fans’ who have in all probability never been to a football match in their lives, but are ‘experts’. Come to Champion Hill, and enjoy the game alongside your fellow Hamlet fans!

Following on from the AFC Sudbury game we have two of our longer-distance away matches on consecutive Saturdays…namely Lowestoft Town, in the FA Trophy, on Saturday 29th October; and an Isthmian League game the following week at Needham Marker, on Saturday 5th November. Dulwich Hamlet Committee member & one of the founders of the “12th Man” scheme, Shaun Dooley, is again organising one of his totally independent ‘Dooley Buses’ as they have become known, to both of these. The Lowestoft coach departs Champion Hill at 9.30am &Lowestoft coach, with a cost of £18 for adultswith a £10 concession rate for over 60’s &under eighteens. For Needham Market coach on the fifth of Novemberthe aim is to leaveChampion Hill at 10am with the price being £16 for adults and £9 for concessions.

You can book your seats on TONIGHT or on Saturday at the “12th Man” stand or via the “12th Man” Twitter account. Also you can contact Shaun directly on 07931276118.
For those of you who read this column, note I don’t dare say ‘look forward’ to it, I am handing it over on Saturday to our Club Chairman Liam Hickey…so he can tell you about his current take on things, both community & commercial, as well as how his role is going in general.

I am away on my ‘annual birthday holiday’, thus missing both Saturday & the League Cup match at Greenwich Borough. For those who don’t know me well, I choose to have a little break when it’s my birthday, as a ‘pat on the back’ for reaching another year sober, as I am a recovering alcoholic. This year I am back in the Netherlands, where I aim to see seven matches. The real reason I mention this at the end of my column is not to show how wonderful I am, or anything like that, nor to have a pre-birthday ‘pat on the back’ this evening (hopefully you won’t be reading this until you get home!)

No, I mention it because drinking alcohol is not a problem…unless you realise you had a drink problem, like I had. I was fortunate to have the support of a fellow Hamlet fan, in my early days of sobriety, way back in the Autumn of 2002, and once I accepted I had a problem, he was very supportive, as I chose the ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’ route to help me keep sober. If there are any of my fellow Hamlet fans out there reading this & you think you may have a problem with alcohol, then please feel free to chat to me in confidence, or send me an email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. I am more than happy to go to any meetings with you, if you want help. Alternatively, if you don’t feel you can talk to anyone about it there is always the FREE CONFIDENTIAL Alcoholics Anonymous national helpline, 0800 9177 650; or send them an email to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

I will finish my column on that, and hopefully come just after half-past nine, we shall all be raising a glass and saying ‘CHEERS!’ to three Hamlet home points, with either your usual tipple, or a soft drink like me!

Mishi Morath (Dulwich Hamlet committee member for community initiatives)