Welcome all to The Welfare for the start of another season.
On behalf of Brodsworth Welfare AFC I would like to welcome players, officials and supporters of Saturday’s visitors CLAY CROSS TOWN.
On Saturday we can also welcome a couple of our new signings Graeme Severn, Anthony Corner and a few of our development players who I am sure will make their CMFL home debut's. Good luck you all.
As you look around the ground you can see a few developments some good some bad. The bad news is that we had the fence blown down during the spring and we will be putting in a whole new section from the stand to the turnstile. The good news is that the new changing room facility is now up and running. The age of the ground and facilities means the committee are always chasing our tails trying to keep the place in good repair. James and others have spent a number of days over the close season giving areas a good paint and it definitely brightens up the place.

I will use my column this year to get a few things off my chest.
First and foremost I will make this clear to all players past and present. We will chase all monies owed to the club from fines, bookings and sending off. The policy of the regional FA is to expect the club to pay all fines then claim it back from the players. This works perfect in 99% of the time. However there have been a couple of players not ‘played the game’ and left the club when still owing a substantial amount to us. We will pursue the money through the FA and my understanding is the player will be disqualified from playing till this money has been repaid.
That leads me on to the player merry go round. It’s fair to say we have had a change of personnel this season. Under manager JI and assistants Vanny and Kenny we will play our youngsters with our club stalwarts in an attempt to carry on the club development programme we have in place. Mercenaries aren’t welcome at Broddy. We are building a club!
Our secretary (Mark Bell) and I attended the CMFL pre-season meeting the other week; all was going swimmingly, good presentation by MOLTEN football manufacturers and new league sponsor. Good stuff. Then we got onto the 10 free match day passes. An hour later it was decided to keep to the current system. Now I can see it from both sides.
On one hand we all are volunteers who get no remuneration for the jobs we do. A free into an away game is a small reward. Then again when you are a small club and the player, coach, physio and 16 players walk in followed by 10 freebies and the gate man says I took £10 or £15 as gate receipts it’s a bit of a mickey take.
We all struggle to make ends meet in local amateur football. Why 10 freebies. Far too many! The representative of neighbours Bentley FC got a good laugh when he said ‘we only need 3’! That’s because many clubs are like Bentley and only have three volunteers/committee men.
Our own committee is made up of less than a dozen and of those the managers and coaches are at least 50% of the total. I think there should be two GOLDEN PASSES for each club which allows the 1st team managers plus one to all CMFL matches for scouting or looking at opposition etc. There then should be 6 match day passes for the game your team is playing in not for any CMFL game.
One guy stood up and said we get in for free with our passes but we spend at least £5 each in the canteen / bar. Sadly the evidence doesn’t bear out this claim. Most present themselves for a cup of tea and that’s about it.
My point is without our home game revenue most clubs would be struggling. We encourage all supporters and officials to use our facilities and support our fundraising events this helps Broddy survive.
That’s just about it for my first column of the season. I would just like to give the CMFL new sponsor a plug and bring your attention to the MOLTEN match ball.
BRODDY do a SPONSOR THE MATCHBALL package. Ask for details.
Enjoy the game today and good luck to all!

Barrie Abbott
Chairman