Welcome to your all from your new Chairman for what we all hope will be a successful and enjoyable season for yourselves and all those involved with our football club.

As incoming chairman, I think my first duty should be to thank the outgoing Chairman, not only for his conduct in the role but also his commitment to the club; in addition I want to personally thank him for his kind offer to assist me as Vice Chairman - something that has definitely benefited my sleep of late. So thank you to Brian Ritchie for his unwavering service through some testing times for the club. There are in fact a number of changes to inform you of this year. Jon Child has stepped down from the role of Secretary and Rob and Alison Peck are also relinquishing their purchasing duties. Jon, Rob & Alison have given excellent service and selfless commitment to the club and we are all extremely grateful to them for that; likewise we should express our gratitude to Pete Ward and Rob Pollard who will be taking on the duties of Club Secretary (from Jon) and Purchasing (from Rob & Alison) respectively. May I also give special thanks to Bill Jackson for again keeping our finances in order and to Richard Swan whose hard work, persistence and diligence enabled us to gain Charter Standard status this year.

And now onto the football matters; the past season was not our most successful but the U9 Lions were runners up in the League Cup, Tony Mongey's U14 lost in the Cup semi-final and Steve Randall's U14's were league runners up. Though no one brought home any silverware I would like to thank all of the Managers for their dedication and hard work throughout the season. For the coming season we have, with the help of David Ashlee, been able to secure some winter training slots at the new 3G Astroturf training facility in Dunstable which should be a great training aid for the teams that are on there - Luton Town will also be training on it which gives, I think, a measure of it's quality.

With regard to the financial side we posted a loss of £1896.42 last year which we must try to address through the coming season - expect plenty of sponsorship requests and fund-raising activity to come as we need to try to raise our income if we are to push for improvements in the facilities that we have. The club accounts are free to view to any of you - I am sure that you have questions as to how money is spent and hopefully this will give you an insight as to how tightly things are run.

Despite the loss made last year we have once again, for the third year running, voted to freeze subscription rates and also the 'early bird' scheme will once again apply whereby payment in full be the end of July will secure a healthy saving. All the information you will need should be contained in your Member Pack, so please read this carefully.

There are regular updates on club matters from our monthly meetings so please take the opportunity to question your Manager at any time and he or she should be able to give you any of the details from those gatherings.

Finally may I wish you and your children all the very best for the coming season - I hope that it proves an enjoyable one and that the club is able to support you all.

Jake Kirby
Chairman