Good evening everybody and welcome to Imperial Fields for this evening’s game against the Metropolitan Police. Tonight we are playing for a place in the final of the Velocity Trophy. I would like to extend a very warm welcome to everybody associated with the Metropolitan Police FC.

I must of course thank everybody at Tooting & Mitcham United for their fantastic support during these times. They have been absolutely brilliant to deal with and I cannot praise them enough for the speed of their responses to us. I would also like to thank the many other clubs who offered us help. However, for ease of travel I believe this is the best location if we cannot be at home.

Well, I am not sure I ever thought I would be welcoming you to Imperial Fields, but have to say that since the moment we were asked to sign a new licence at Champion Hill, I knew that our landlords would invent some trumped up reason to move us out. However, their other attempts to silence the club and its fans through taking the rights to our name are something else.

I am also extremely grateful for all the support that we continue to receive from Southwark Council and assure you that we will be challenging the grounds on which we have been excluded from the stadium.

In brief, the reasons given for our licence being terminated were our lack of Public Liability insurance, which is in fact provided through the Bostik League, our inability to meet the costs of Meadow’s legal action against Southwark (taken in our name), which Southwark are not asking us to pay, the payment of back rent that Meadow conveniently “forgot” to take when they handled our finances on behalf of our majority shareholder. Finally, we apparently didn’t pay our rent for the last home game but have clear evidence to show it was not due. All in all, it’s a load of trumped up nonsense to achieve their aims.

We always knew that they wanted us out at the end of the season at the latest.

Whilst the above is shocking enough, to receive papers saying that we could no longer use our name was just ridiculous and shows that Meadow Residential have lost all sense of reality in their attempts to destroy our club. This was a flagrant attempt to silence the club and its supporters that has made them look ridiculous. None of us buy the excuse they came out with that this was done to protect us and to be handed over to the club. Despite what they think, we weren’t all born yesterday.

On this note, they have been served with papers asking for the immediate return of our rights to use our name, together with the other forbidden phrases of “The Hamlet” and “DHFC”. We have also asked for further adjustments to other entities that use the phrase Dulwich Hamlet and which they own.

As I write this on a Sunday morning, I continue to receive offers from our fans to help us run our match day and I cannot thank everybody who has offered help enough. We know that our fan experience at Champion Hill has not been as good since all the “professional services” were brought in so that Meadow could increase our costs and the club’s losses. Now we have a chance to create our own blueprint that we can take back home with us when we return to Dulwich.

As part of taking back control, we have reduced entrance prices for Adults back to the price we always wanted to charge, whilst also maintaining all our other community prices. This is business as usual as far as we are concerned.

On the field, we continue to challenge but it will take a monumental effort for us to continue to do so with our gates naturally going to be reduced by our absence from the community that we represent and also, I think, serve very well. We can do this, but we really need our 12th Man buckets to be filled up.

Needless to say, we continue to fight for our club at every turn and if you have skills and expertise, or just enthusiasm, that can help us then please step forward. All offers will be accepted.

I am also happy to continue to answer any questions you may have via email or at the match.

Thank you for your support. It is you that will ensure our club has a bright future.

Liam