Firstly, thank you again 1st team for proving me right.  I did say last week that I expected that the defence would sort it out again, and no better way to do it than with a clean sheet.  So, well done and good to see the confidence back, especially given next Saturday's top of the table clash at Old Finchleians.  Well done also to the 8's for their substantial victory, and how nice it is to see our 7's and 8's lying 2nd and 3rd respectively in that division.  Good work from the 9's also with their 2nd victory over Old Wilsonians.

With around a third of the season gone, I wanted to reflect on progress so far, and I do think that we have already made great steps forward so far this season.  The top of the club is certainly the strongest it has been for quite some time and the feedback from training has been positive.  Also to be able to get a ninth team out has been a great achievement and has shown that we continue to attract players to our club.  There have been a couple of issues along the way (as you would expect in any club our size), but these have been dealt with swiftly and efficiently and we are better for the action we have taken.  Off the pitch, the website has been developed and the members section gets very positive feedback, so our communication throughout the club is improving.

However, we are not there yet.  We still need to improve on a number of things and improve how we communicate to players and perhaps improve still further the growing unity within the club - remember last week I said that we must ensure we are a club with 9 teams, and not nine teams that make up a club, and this must be our continuing mantra if we are to continue the goodwork and hard effort and great steps we have taken.  Also, if you are a member, look at our stats page in the members section.  Here you will see that on the pitch we have actually lost more than we have won (although draws have kept the results barometer on the plus side), but we can only say that we have really achieved our goal if we start to reverse that.  Discipline has been good over the past couple of seasons, yet last week we had an off day accumulating 7 discplinary points.  Six of those were for dissent based offences, and that is 6 points too many.  There will always be bookings for mistimed challenges and I accept that, but dissent is something that can always be avoided and something that we must cut out.

At the start of the season, and at the AGM, in the style of the advert I said that we were on a journey, and invited all of our club to come on board.  I am pleased to say that many people did.  Now we have to complete that journey, so lets make sure we all arrive together and bring back the silverware, the continued enjoyment and the pride to the Cope!

Steve Martin-Lawrence, Chairman