We are now into the last ten games of the season, and our thoughts are turning towards next season. We are well on the way to achieving our objective of retaining our Southern League place, and so we can plan with a reasonable level of confidence for another year at this level. As I have said many times before, I think the club has done extremely well this season, given that we basically had to start from scratch last Summer. I know that we have had a bit of a sticky run in the last few weeks (with the exception of two fine away victories, at Burnham and Godalming Town), but we should judge ourselves on the season as a whole. We set a target of staying in this league - which looked very ambitious at the time given where we were - but we are now on course to not only achieve that, but achieve it comfortably. This is down to the efforts of very many people at this club - thanks to you all for your individual contributions on and off the field, I think we can be proud of what we have achieved in the last 9 months.
 
Our biggest challenge remains the financial situation, which I have to say is still very stressful for our treasurer, Andrew Cox, myself and the whole committee. There are all sorts of initiatives being worked on behind the scenes to improve this for next season, in particular we are almost able to confirm a lucrative pre-season friendly, we are in talks with a potential major sponsor, and we are working on some creative proposals with the Inland Revenue to clear the historic tax debts. If some of these initiatives work out, we will be able to raise a significantly larger budget for Andy Leader next season so that we can continue to build on the progress we have made this year.
 
The other aspect of the club which takes up a lot of my thinking is our facilities here at the Denplan City Ground. In the next few weeks, we have a few jobs to do around the ground to ensure that we get our ground grading certificate to enable us to play another year in the Southern League. The main job is to complete the installation of the toilet block, which most of you will have noticed between the clubhouse and the old committee portakabin. We might need some help from some of you to make sure we get it all done in time. Obviously, we could lose our league place if we don't get this done, so we would be very grateful for any help that we can get.
 
The second priority at the ground is to get the pitch in better condition. For the last two Summers, we have paid good money to get contractors in to do the work, but both have really failed to do what we required. This year we have got specialist advice from Steve Robinson, father of Reserves manager, Danny, and also groundsman at Newbury Racecourse. We now have quotations for the Summer work from the groundsman who has also been working on The Portway at Andover this season. Anyone who saw the pitch up there on Boxing Day will have seen that it is looking good this year, after years of being one of the worst surfaces in the Wessex League, and it's our hope that we can achieve similar results here.
 
In the longer term, I think we would all agree that our facilities here are not the best in the league by any means. You may have heard a rumour about a possible move to a new ground. I can confirm that there are some talks going on, but I must stress that these are at an extremely early stage and we cannot be sure that anything will come of this. As an alternative, the committee will be creating a plan to develop our current ground as far as we can (dependent on finance and planning permission). There is grant funding available, but before we rush out and spend it, I want us to take the time to think through our plans carefully, because we can only spend it once and so we have to make sure that we spend it on the right projects. The most important first step is to gain agreement from the City Council that we can remove the running track, this is now in progress as the athletics club will be catered for at the new development at Bar End in the next few months. We will then be able to consider what we really want to do with the ground without the limitations of the current track which, in my opinion, is currently a blight on the whole ground. 
 
We look forward to seeing you at the Denplan City Ground soon - in particular, we have two first team matches at home over the Easter Weekend - Bridgwater Town on Saturday 22nd March and local rivals, Andover, on Easter Monday 24th March, both kick off at 3pm. We are running an Easter raffle over the weekend, and let's also hope for some untraditional fine weather! Look forward to seeing you there.

Derek