"I truly believe that we simply had an off day at the back on Saturday (and looked great going forward), and that we will sort it out at training on Wednesday and be back to business as usual on Saturday." (Last weeks Chairman's Notes)

Thank you 1st team for proving me right! A fantastic 1-0 victory over fellow promotion rivals Bank of England which puts us right in the mix, and it was indeed a solid defensive performance that laid the platform.  What a buzz in the changing room afterwards, things are certainly looking promising.  And its not only at the top of the club - well done to the 8's, to get a victory against a side 2 divisions above is one thing, but to comprehensively beat and outplay them was a tremendous effort and you deserve all the plaudits you are rightly getting.

And then there's the 9's. What a story this is.  It was becoming clear that we were building up a surplus of players and to keep everyone interested we decided to create a 9th team friendly side.  The idea was that we supplement our spare and fringe players with players from a team that may not have a game that weekend, but yesterday for the first game we came up with an unsupplemented squad of 15, all ultra keen to get out there and prove a point or two.  A mixture of old hands and new players (exactly as it should be) played a great game against Old Wilsonians, who deserve a lot of credit for the way the game was played, a competeitive friendly played in a great spirit, with both sides staying on in the bar afterwards.  The icing on the cake was a 5-3 victory, but in truth the victory was actually seeing a 9th team playing again.  Three years ago we wondered whether we had done the right thing putting an 8th team in the league as we scraped a side together vitrtually every week, but the seed grew and has blossomed, and is just another example of how far we have come. Thanks need to go to a number of people for making yesterday happen, but I would like to thank especially Gary Borrett and Mike Kelson who have stepped forward to take on the captaincy of the 9's for the rest of the season.

So, short and sweet this week, but big on content.  I left the club yesterday on a real high filled with the buzz and enthusaism charged by sides at the top and bottom of the club.  I wanted to bottle that and give it to every side in the club, but you know what - I think we may be quite a bit of the way there already.  Lets hope I'm proved right again next week!

 Steve Martin-Lawrence, Chairman