One week ago we launched the Crawley Town Supporters Alliance. Since then the twelve of us have hardly had time to draw breath, and I thought you might like an insight into what we’ve been doing. So here goes!

We’ve had a week full of media interest, membership applications, travel preparations and website discussions. We’ve arranged premises at the football club, put together content for our website, ordered membership cards, opened our Facebook group, designed forms and databases, and began to formulate proposals for how we hope to strengthen links between the club and the community. We’ve agreed our communications strategy, defined our individual roles, sorted out insurance, and tried very hard to keep up to speed with the email traffic (sorry if I’ve sent too many!). We’ve had congratulatory calls and good wishes from across the community, and they have been absolutely inspiring and helped to keep us going. Oh, and we’ve managed to do our day jobs too- Ron, for example, seems to have painted the entire football club from one end to the other and has now started on the new Training Complex. For CTFC read Forth Bridge!

But not only are we not finished, in truth we’ve hardly started. If we are to achieve our aims, the hard work is still to come. Initially, we’ve membership allocations to process, membership cards to distribute, databases to compile, publicity to sort out. We have to get our premises- a cabin opposite the Club Shop- up to scratch. We need to take travel bookings for Port Vale (and hopefully soon for Crystal Palace though I’m aware I’m getting a little ahead of myself there!) and liaise with Bruce Talbot and Sergeant Darren Taylor- as well as with Crawley Luxury Coaches- regarding the arrangements, which are much more complex now we’re in the Football League. I’m not sure that Alain Harper ever got the appreciation he truly deserved for all of his efforts over many years! We need to liaise with the Chief Executive regarding the scheduling of our monthly meetings and make some proposals to him and to the board which we believe will help both the Alliance and the club meet our aims and objectives. Oh, and we have to make sure that our website is full of interesting, informative stuff, sort out the proposed reintroduction of golden gamble, allocate matchday roles, make decisions on fundraising initiatives………enough already?

At this point a Committee member reading this is likely to pick up the phone and tell me that I’ve forgotten to list something important. Undoubtedly they would be right. The truth is, there is so much to do that if human cloning was possible we’d have a twenty four person committee with only twelve members! So, if any of you have the time and the inclination to help out-particularly with matchday activities- your assistance would be warmly and gratefully received. Please contact us via chairman@ctfcsa.co.uk . Oh, and if any of you are qualified in the art of translation, that would be useful too. Ron tends to break into rhyming slang, and I apparently “sound like the bloke off Big Brother”. So we’re looking to produce our own Chairman’s phrase book  just to ensure that the rest of the committee can understand us- I divvint want them thinking am a bit of a divvie, like, I might get evicted from the Alliance House!

By the way, if you’d like to travel on an Alliance coach at any point this season, booking is simple. You can book at any home game, by telephone on 07843124845 (1800-2100 Monday to Friday) or by email to travel@ctfcsa.co.uk (emails only up until two days prior to departure please!). We will have our prices and departure times for the entire season (subject to fixture changes) on our website at www.ctfcsa.co.uk shortly to enable you to plan effectively. At the moment we are taking bookings for the opening game of the season, at Port Vale on 6^th August, and whether you are a member of the Alliance or not, the cost is only £10. Can I ask that you make your booking as early as possible, as we expect demand to be high? Thanks!

Thanks very much for all of your support. The positivity that has greeted the formation of the Alliance has been both heart warming and inspirational. Together, we can make our football club the centre of our community and do much to ensure its success.

Look out for regular updates on our work at www.ctfcsa.co.uk.

Take care, Ian, Co-Chair.