There has been a delay in distributing last season's kit to those who paid to sponsor them, we hope you understand as we explain why

I would wish to apologise on behalf of the Club for the delay in getting last season's shirts to those who supported the initiative and assure you all that matters are in hand to be able to release these shortly.

By way of explanation, it is clear that we could have planned this better but that also none of us imagined that we would be crowned champions when we decided to give this a go.

Because of this some of the players decided to take their shirts as keepsakes and I'm sure none of us begrudged them that. However, we do not have vast quantities of kit and so it has been necessary to order in replacements for the team before being able to provide you with what we promised.

To add to this, we were also unable to secure a new main sponsor until much later than we anticipated because our original target could not secure the funding at the last moment.

Because of the above, we were late in ordering this year's playing shirts, both home and away for the First Team, and have had to continue to use some of the kit that we promised to you as a temporary measure.

We should be in a position to provide you with the away shirts no later than the home game against Carshalton Athletic on 24th August and hope to have the home shirts available sometime in September, as soon as we receive dleivery of the new Winkworth ones.

Once again please accept my apologies for the delay and rest assured we are working hard to rectify the problem.

It is our current intention to run the scheme again this year and to obviously improve it to ensure that we are not faced with this situation again. However, whilst we are happy for people to express an interest in taking part in the scheme this year, we shall not take any money from those who have pledged their continued support until all the outstanding issues are resolved.

Thank you for your continued patience and understanding, we hope existing sponsors will understand and contact us, along with any new potential individual home or away player sponsorships, to let us know if they wish to help the Club in this way again for the new season, via email at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Whilst not defending the delay, or some lack of communication on this matter, I trust that Dulwich Hamlet fans will take into consideration that we have never run a scheme like this before, one which very few non-league clubs do at our level, to offer something back to their loyal fans as a thank you for their sponsorship. It is a learning curve for us too and it is inevitable that some things we do will not quite pan out as envisaged. All we aim to do is to help the Club as much as we can voluntarily, while holding down full-time jobs ourselves.

Sometimes we will make errors as, like you, we are only human after all. And if any problems arise, or you have any ideas that you might want us to implement, then please get in touch with any Club Committee member and we will see what we can do, whether it's something positive or dealing with anything you may not be happy with.