We welcome to Champion Hill the young Eagles from Crystal Palace, and hope that some of their fans will like what they see & come back when one of their games have been moved for television, or you can’t get a ticket for an away match. Or even, if we’re brutally honest about the top echelons of the game…you simply cannot afford to go to all of your matches.

Non-League football is choc-a-bloc with supporters who enjoy the intimacy & hassle-free friendliness of going to the game at our level whilst still being loyal to whoever their ‘first love’ in the professional game is. Believe it or at any ordinary Dulwich Hamlet match you will have a Palace fan standing next to a Charlton Athletic one; or Arsenal supporters ribbing their Tottenham Hotspur neighbours, whilst all being united in supporting The Hamlet. Even in a rivalry-based professional football sense we can still unite, and genuinely bill ourselves as ‘Football For All’!

Good news from the Supporters Trust has reached my ear, as the Community Lead on the Football Committee, in that after their recent Annual General Meeting their Board has allocated roles for the coming season, and on the community front Dave Rogers will be continuing, and he will joined by one of their newbies, in Pete Campbell. Here on the Football Committee we have enjoyed an ever-growing and closer working relationship with the Trust Board, with changes of personnel freshening them up. Wehave some really exciting ideas to work on & share with them, as I am sure they will for us, to build a programme of community involvement over the coming campaign.

On this front we are holding another of our open, easy-going Community ad-hoc meetings with them in the Boardroom and this will be on Wednesday 9th August, commencing at seven o’clock….and hopefully over to have plenty of informal chat afterwards in the ‘Cherry Tree’! This meeting is open not just to Football Committee and Trust Board members, but to any fans who might have a community idea; or may want to help formulate and/or work on some of our community initiatives as the season kicks in. So make a date in diaries for this. If you are unable to make this then please feel free to speak to me personally at any game you see me, or drop me a line to my email at therabblers@yahoo.co.uk

Closer to that, only a few days away in fact, this coming Friday, our Commercial Lead on the Football Committee Andy Greig has been extremely busy setting up an even for all of our sponsors large & small, as well as anyone from the local business community, as well as from our fanbase, who might want to get involved in some form of sponsorship. The new kit will be officially launched in the Clubhouse, with our major sponsors from Picfair being present. If you know anyone who has expressed an interest in sponsoring The Hamlet please let Andy know & I’m sure he will get in touch. You can email him, via his own business email at: honoroakhandyman@hotmail.co.uk

We also have an exciting event coming up, especially if you have youngsters who follow The Hamlet. On the Tuesday evening prior to the opening of the Bostik League Premier Division season, which is the 8th of August, Gavin Rose & his team will be holding a rare public training session on the Champion Hill pitch. It will be a great opportunity to ‘see behind the scenes’ so to speak, and our official Club Photographers will be busy taking the official team and individual players shots for 2017/18 too. All fans will be invited, once the session is over, to have their own photos with the players, so make you’re your cameras & phones are well charged! Keep an eye of the official Club website www.dulwichhamletfc.co.uk for more details over the next few days.

In fact, please keep an eye on the website as much as you can...it’s the ideal, simplest & most informative place to go to for all things Dulwich Hamlet. Easy links to our DHFC-TV You Tube FREE channel; as well as unofficial messageboards & the official Supporters’ Trust page. We try to put something new on our website at least once a day, and even when news is slack, or we are busy [as ALL of our social media team, be it the website, Facebook or Twitter are voluntary] there are updates several times a week during the season. And we’re always looking to improve. Under the all-encompassing ‘Watch this space’ we shall we revamping the website in the near future, to make it even more user friendly to provide a better service for you all…we are always looking for new features, and one we have just added, if you click on the ‘information’ link, is a guide for both away fans & first time visitors to Champion Hill, so have a look and feel free to point any newcomers in that direction. Another project we are currently working on is a guide on how to get to all of our opponents in the Bostik League Premier Division.

Having whetted your appetite with this column it’s time for me to sign off once more, thank you for reading…and we look forward to seeing you all back here at Champion Hill on Saturday, when we take on the B team from Brentford, for our last home pre-season before the ‘real thing’ starts on Saturday 12th August with Staines Town coming to South London.

Mishi Morath (Football Committee community lead)