Being on the eve of the league season restarting was something I didn't expect to be writing about in September. At the height of the Covid lockdown the prospect of this was unthinkable and even as things began to relax we were expecting the season to be postponed. But credit to England Hockey, North and Yorkshire leagues, Sheffield Hallam University and all associated with Rotherham HC we are starting on-time for our Ladies 1's, Men's 2 and Men's development.

Management Committee update
As a new Chairman the past few months have flew by as I've got to grips with the requirements of the role and looked to challenge some of the 'way we do things' in hope of driving the club forward. The committee and I have set ourselves a number of objectives to keep ourselves focussed this season, these are broken into three key themes; Player recruitment, Club Communication and Club Development, we will report on these throughout the season. I hope from things already introduced you can see what we are aspiring to achieve both in the short and long term.

The increased responsibility and workload Covid has brought has unfortunately slowed down some of the progress we hoped to make but as that becomes more of a routine we will continue to make progress. It is not just myself that has been devoting time and effort to the the club through the off-season though, the whole Committee have worked tirelessly;

James Swinscoe, Vice -Chair has been developing a new Schools Coaching Strategy that formalises and builds upon some of the great work we have done in the past with a view to increasing this when we are able. James has also been refreshing our GDPR (data protection) policy to ensure the clubs handling and retention of data meets requirements.
Pete Sorsby, Playing Representative is at the pitch at least four days a week, currently coaching the Ladies 1st team, Youth sessions on a Sunday and continuing to help with the Men's first team.
Lee Cooper, Club Captain has worked with Pete and our Senior Player reps to individually contact over 80 players that played for the club in between 2015 and 2018 in a hope to get some to return to playing for the club.
Sarah Ward, Secretary has been tidying up our membership database and ensuring all our players are registered with the relevant leagues
David Woodward, Youth Co-ordinator has helped me with the creation of our Covid risk assessment and associated documents. As you all likely know David has a lot of hats as Youth Co-ordinator, President, League rep and South Yorkshire Hockey Development Group Chair so I am keen to share out some of his club workload. We've also seen exceptional numbers at our recent Youth coaching sessions, which David and the team have managed well.
Matt Berry, Treasurer developed our recruitment poster with Becky Lee and manages our online marketing. In addition, Matt as always manages all incoming and outgoing club payments, which at this time of the season as you can imagine is no mean feat.

Coaching
I hope you will all agree that the appointment of Danny Berry sets out the clubs intent to progress. Danny will be working with all our existing coaches to develop more structured sessions to support both the development of senior players and the transition of youth players from Sunday morning into Thursday evening sessions.

Khalid Nasseem returned to the club last year and this year has stepped up to coach the men's first team and as already mentioned, Pete Sorsby is coaching the ladies first team. These three appointments have seen some excellent sessions already this season and the attendance at all sessions is significantly higher than this point last season.

Player recruitment
Inevitably every year we will and do lose players. Where this is when players go to University or to seek playing at a higher level there is unfortunately little we can do,but we must do all we can to avoid our players leaving to play at other local clubs at a lower level than we can offer.

Thankfully though this year we have seen more players join or return than we have in previous seasons. I'd like to personally welcome the new players I've had the opportunity to meet so far: Craig Malcolm, Steven Gilfillan, Keir Tate, Olly Burton and Harvey Joce, as well as the returning players: Mark Vaughan, Kelly Robinson and Emma Mavin. We have had a number of other enquires so are hopefully to add more players to the club in coming weeks.

As it stands we are hopeful of fielding four mens teams and two women's teams, on paper we have the numbers to do this but as always player availability each week will play a part. So please help us by informing your captain of you availability as far in advance as possible.

To end on a few thank you's; to Jackie Newbould and Sarah Ward for their significant support in administering the attendance sheets for our Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday coaching sessions, to Fraser Andrews and Pete Sorsby who are two coaches who are at our pitch four days a week, every week, to all the management committee for their continued commitment to the club and to you, our members.

If you have any comments, suggestions or would like to help out your club please email me here

Good luck to all our players and teams for the season ahead.

Many thanks
James Thomas

Chairman
Rotherham Hockey Club