Thanks to the continued excellent regular payment of subs by our players, we currently have approximately £750 in the club funds.

Out of that, we have to pay the second instalment of this season's pitch fee for Hazelwood shortly (which is £350), so that leaves us with £400.
We will undoubtedly need another 5 or 6 new match balls before the end of the season, but with further income to come from match subs, we can easily afford that and we should also be able to afford the minimum order of 60 custom-made Prostar Jade socks that we have been quoted £360 for.
If we get these socks, they will last us for at least four seasons, while the current shirts are only one and a half seasons old, so they should last at least another two seasons.

However, we are still getting players moaning about the Prostar shirts being 'too heavy' and 'nipple-unfriendly' when wet, and that Nike kit is 'the bollocks' for all weather...but as we know, Nike do not do a Jade & Black kit.

Personally, I am dead against changing our colours to a standard green because there are too many other clubs wearing that Nike green & black kit.
I would prefer us to have our own unique identity, particularly as my business colours and logos were designed in jade & black to tie in with my sponsorship of the club website & videos.
Also, for all we know, Prostar may well have re-designed the quality of their fabrics to match Nike's specifications by the time we get round to buying new kit from them.

I would like to order the 60 Prostar jade socks asap so that we get them in time for our first match after Xmas. The state of the socks at the moment are appalling. They are all full of holes !

Your feedback please ?

i personally think that 360 notes is a bit much just for socks where for the same money you can get a whole new kit. im the person who started this one off but i dont have any issues with the brand of the kit i just find our shirts heavy in rain and with sweat. have you looked at other brands such as addidas, umbro and puma aswell as another pro star strip?

If other brands did jade & black, then we would go for whichever one did the best quality kit in terms of comfort when it rains heavily, etc.
There are several 'unknown' kit manufacturers like this one who offer custom-made kits in whatever colours we want, but the quality may well be very ropey.

What I would really like is for a major company such as Nike to use us as a publicity tool (because of our videos) for grassroots football and design a custom jade & black kit for us. They can then use my footage in advertising campaigns in return.
Major kit manufacturers have certainly used grassroots clubs before in advertising campaigns. It's getting hold of the right person to speak to at these comnpanies that is the problem.
If you look on all their websites, there are no contact details at all.

If we cannot get a tie-up like that with a kit manufacturer, we should be looking at finding a sponsor if we are going to buy a whole new jade & black kit (if we can find one) rather than spending £360 of the club's money.
There is no point in spending the club's money on a whole new kit when the shirts are still in perfectly good condition...except for when it rains heavily.
A sponsor would pay for a whole new kit (with their name on the shirts), but they would not pay for 60 jade socks.

Is anyone still in touch with Peter Sutton?? Didn't he work for Reebok? perhaps he could give us some contact details.

I'm with Dan tho, £360 is a fucking lot for 60 pairs of fucking socks, although Magoo probably spends that on one pair of under crackers.........

Perhaps a change of colour would be a good thing, a new start etc, and at the same time we could change the badge, that well needs a fucking update.

Also on the sponsorship front.... who works for a largish organasation? Perhaps we could sort something out there, i.e. get sponsored by Orange and then get Nike to use us in a commercial for them at grass roots level FOC if they do us a kit Then everyone is a winner, Orange get free advertising, Nike get free footage and we get to ride a mans cock in the bushes.......I mean we get a new designer kit that cost nothing and is far better quality. You could explain the benefits to both companies in the process.

Thoughts.........

If I'm not mistaken, liverpool had Jade and black, adiddas, so surely they must do it.....

I think it was an away Champions league kit

http://www.catflapfootball.com/Football-Blogs/Football-Blog/content/binary/gerrard1.jpg

This looks pretty Jade to me, even though it says green.

http://www.prodirectsoccer.com/prodinfo.asp?PID=PDS-052-001-357&DEPT=052&BRAND=001&SS=1&GROUP=LS

Here is a direct link and a better picture with more info.

The question is whether it retains more water than the Prostar kit or not...which we wont know until somebody who has worn it in torrential rain tells us...and whether the League/Referees in our League tell us we can't wear that shirt against the numerous teams who play in green & white hoops because it has too much white in it. (Our current jade & black shirt is not a problem against green & white hoops).

Being a bit picky I know, but...

this is the exact same kit that crouch end vamps have but in claret and blue....its very comfortable and not heavy http://www.prodirectsoccer.com/prodinfo.asp?PID=PDS-052-009-E08&DEPT=052&BRAND=9&SS=1&GROUP=LS14PACK

Like I said tho....we could just change and go to something like this....

http://www.prodirectsoccer.com/prodinfo.asp?PID=PDS-052-001-538&DEPT=052&BRAND=9&SS=1&GROUP=LS14PACK

Personally i like the idea of sticking with the green/jade, don't like the idea of total change. Dan's green link is the old minch colours which is pretty good but the best so far is lol's link with the picci of that twat SWP. £360 for socks? just buy ten pairs bollocks to 30 pairs at that price.
In a nut shell a new kit please, the less weight to carry around the better!!!!

I have just been having another look for some jade socks and found Ray Lewis !
Most of our players will be old enough to remember him as the Premiership Ref from Great Bookham !?

He now does custom-made kits and if you scroll down to the bottom of the page on that link...custom made professional heavyweight and padded feet socks.
I have e-mailed him for a quote and he says he can do jade socks for us with exactly the same design as our current prostar socks.
Minimum order for those are only 35 pairs (as opposed to 60), a total cost including VAT and P & P of approx. £185 (as opposed to £360) and a four-week turnaround instead of eight weeks (which was what we had been quoted for Prostar socks).

I say we go for it (to last us the rest of the season and probably next), then hopefully in time for the 2011-2012 season, Nike will have brought out a jade & black kit !?

Any objections/thoughts ?

Sounds sensible to me.

I was thinking the other day, is there any chance of us getting some new warm-up tops / jackets? The ones we have at the moment are quite heavy, not very warm, and not water/windproof. If you look at the type of thing that clubs use these days, they're a lot more modern and comfortable. Not sure about anyone else, but I'd be happy to pay for my own one (if we can get a job lot in club colours), and bring it along / wash it myself.

Just a thought, as we're on the subject of kit...

Yup agreed.

just like most cricket clubs, warm up tops, training shorts trackies etc all available but you buy your own.

I have been saying for years that we need new warm-up tops but I have always been shot down in flames by the rest of the Management Committee saying that new ones are 'unnecessary'...even with sponsorship !

If I make enough money from filming Cup Finals and Tournaments this Summer, I may sponsor a set of new drill tops myself, although if somebody else can find a sponsor to get a new set 'now', then fine.

I say the club pays for the Ray Lewis socks (and three new match balls I have just ordered) and a sponsor pays for the drill tops.
If anybody wants to start looking for some suitable drill tops and posting the links on here, please do so.

Once we get the drill tops, players can then buy their own in addition/instead of the ones the club keeps. We can get players initials stitched on to certain-size tops for them when we are getting the club badge and sponsors name printed on.
We actually did this when we bought our current drill tops. I have got a worn-out one in my loft somewhere with LH on !

Does buying drill tops mean that people are gonna turn up early to wear them and warm up in good time??

Something along these lines is what I was thinking about, but this was the first one I came across, I'm sure that there are better options out there:

http://www.discountfootballkits.co.uk/prostar_football_kits/blizzard_fleece-lined_jacket.htm

Actually, looking at the prices of these drill tops, I don't think I will be sponsoring them...ahem !

I spoke to Trev very briefly last night and he agreed that drill tops must be paid for by a sponsor and it's up to you the players to find one.
If x amount of players agree in advance to pay for their own initialled drill top, then the likelihood of finding a sponsor will probably be greater.
For example, we could order 20 drill tops. 10 players agree to pay for their own to keep and bring to every game...I certainly would...and the sponsor is only paying for 10 drill tops (which are brought along to every game in the 'green sack' as the current ones are).

Can somebody get something sorted here asap ?
...just in case we get through to the London FA Sunday Intermediate Cup Final !!

I have just received three more match balls (the same Nike Premier League ones Tony King got during the Summer), so hopefully that will keep us going until the end of this season.

I have also now ordered 32 pairs of custom-made jade socks from Ray Lewis and he will get them done as soon as possible. He has quoted 4 weeks, but we may get them sooner than that.

http://www.radlettcc.com/pages/page_4703/RadlettKit2009.aspx

The above link is the type of stuff we do at Cricket, I'm sure that there will be footy people doing the same....

Cheers

Ray Lewis has informed us that the jade socks should be with us sometime next week.
Originally he said we would get them this week, but they seem to have been delayed.

Has anyone found a sponsor for some drill tops yet ?

The new jade socks are here.

Actually, they are more a 'bottle green' colour than jade, but at least they are new and look quite comfortable !

Today's football headlines

Edmonton Rovers in bottle green sock shocker
Portsmouth go in to administration
Rafa Benitez likes a pie

Comfortable?! COMFORTABLE?! People moaning about nipple chafing?! Next thing you know, we'll have players wearing gloves...

The new Nike 2010-2011 catalogue is now out and can be downloaded and viewed from here.

No sign of any jade kit though...of course.