At the Blues Annual General Meeting, Blues Chairman Andy Crisp launched the Summer Community Challenge. Over the recent years, Leiston Football Club has seen several successful seasons culminating in last season’s Premier Cup win. The ambition of the club is to continue this success and all our financial resources are focussed on achieving success on the field. But to do that we need to look beyond the playing staff – as good as they are.

In Tony Kinsella we have an excellent coach who is able to bring the best out of our players, what we are lacking are comparable training facilities – in Leiston. Therefore, it has been agreed to focus this summer on developing a high-quality training area at Victory Road. Not only will this help with our development teams, as they will be able to train as a group with the first team, but it will ultimately save the club money. At the moment we pay to use all-weather training pitches in Ipswich and East Bergholt; bringing training in house will remove that cost from our already stretched budget.

We are often being asked how individuals can help the club financially, other than attending games and paying to get in. So, this is your chance! The Board are challenging the Leiston Football Club Community (i.e. Committee, Vice Presidents, Players and Supporters) to raise £5000 specifically to be used to develop the training area. We are not asking for huge sums, unless of course you want to become a major sponsor, but even £5 a head from everyone who came to our last home League game versus Hendon or the Premier Cup Final or play-offs would soon mount up. And if the friends and families of all those supporters also joined in the challenge just think what we could achieve.

Andy will be sending/giving out sponsor forms to many of the supporters and Vice presidents but if anyone else would like a form could they contact either Andy Crisp, Peter Douglass or Jill Douglass and a form can be sent over via email. The challenge will run from early July to 30th September so we really need to get things moving on this as quickly as possible.

The clearance sale of kit after the Annual General Meeting saw the first contribution to the Challenge fund, making £85 which has been submitted to start the ball rolling and various sponsored events have raised very important funds but we are still looking for a final push until the end of September so any support will be greatly appreciated.