We have not been fining people for being late because we have been unable to have committee meetings and the lateness has got worse every week culminating in last Sunday's match against Northmet.
Darryl was the only player at the ground at 10.00. Jim Arrowsmith was next at 10.01 and Stuart and Conor were next at 10.10. That is the earliest Stuart has arrived for ages as he lives in Enfield near the ground. Conor has an excuse as he travels from Leigh on Sea. Others arrived but by 10.15 we were still missing 5 players. Rob Brown and Terry Brown arrived at 10.25 after going to the wrong ground. We kicked off at 10.35 and Kizza arrived at 10.38 just as we conceded the first goal. Tem Adil and Daniel Daley didn't arrive or phone.
Fortunately we had 3 substitutes and were able to start with 11 players although I had no opportunity to give any team talk. Also, thanks to Martin Loveday who acted as club linesman despite being injured.
Our opposition were all in their changing room before 10.00 having a team talk, they had a pre match warm up and were 2-0 up after 6 minutes.
I am posting this on the Forum to seek constructive comments about how we address this problem.
Most of our players DELIBERATELY aim to turn up at about 10.15.a.m., especially at Hazelwood, because they know it only takes 5 minutes to get changed, you don't do long team-talks Trev, and we don't do organised pre-match warm-ups.
So...ideally, it's get to the ground at 10.15., go into the changing rooms at 10.20, come out onto the pitch at 10.25 and do five minutes of stretching and whacking balls willy-nilly at whoever is in goal before kicking-off at 10.30 on the dot. In fact, most games kick-off at 10.35 because the Refs in our League take 5 minutes to instruct the Linos, so what's the rush ?
The problem is when players get stuck in traffic or get lost. If they had been aiming to arrive at 10.00 and turned up at 10.15 instead, then we could cope with that, as to be fair to all our players, they do let us know when they are running (what they themselves perceive to be) 'late'.
The only way to stop it is to do what Northmet (and loads of other teams in our Division) do and have an organised pre-match warm-up (organised by Barney ?) starting at say 10.10, whereby everybody has to go in and get changed at 10.00. on the dot and if anybody is late for that, they are dropped to the subs' bench.
With the players we have got at the moment though, we simply cannot do that because of family commitments.
We have too many players whose kids won't let them out of the door on a Sunday morning. I bet it takes Stuart 30 minutes to say goodbye to Harry, and I'm sure we have numerous other players in the same boat ?
Northmet's players were all youngsters who don't have those sort of commitments...same as up-and-coming teams like Abbey Youth Old Boys, East Herts & Turnford Geese.
Getting there early and doing a warm-up works for them, but all we can do is just carry on as we are I think.
I don't know if the Ref did us for a late kick-off on Sunday, but he should have done !
That's what frustrates me the most, as it will be the first fine we have had this season...and bang goes our chances of winning a League Admin Award.
