St Martins
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What Next?
“2019 needs to be the foundation building for our
next period with a new manager, potentially new faces
in the squad and new challenges off the pitch with our
ongoing ground requirements for the club. We have a
new U18’s team being founded which will give strength
to the club and hopefully we can bring through some
footballers, not only for us, but the area as I feel
not enough players are being produced
to sustain grassroots football.”
Youth
“Youth development is
massively important to us,
eventually we would like
teams at all age groups and
for us to be a real club from
top to bottom but to do that
we need to have control of our
own facilities, and that is going
to take time.
I think good coaching and
management are important to help
players transition into the senior
game, but so are the people around
the young players. People need to keep
youngsters grounded but confident. I have seen very
good 16-year-olds play at step six, but I have seen it
swallow players up as well. It’s about time, trust and
good judgement.”
Community
“From our point of view, we are absolutely a
community club, we try and support local business as
much as possible by holding events and buying things
we need from there. Unfortunately, as we have had to
move the club out of the community to progress, we
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have that held against us now and again, but if we can
play FA Cup football in St. Martins in the future, it will
all be worth it!”
Challenges
“The two main challenges are finance and our
ground. Our ground is so important as to get us back
into the village and playing at home will get
people through the gate, which means
support and finance, which is huge.
Our average gate this year was
about 45 people, we cover the
costs of the referees from this
and the sundries but there is no
player budget and I can safely
say 90% of teams in our league
pay their players.
It’s a huge challenge and
we are lucky to have a good
bunch who are good players
and enjoy the club, rather than
£20 somewhere else. We work
so hard to finance the club and
we rely on good businesses with a
lot of corporate social responsibility
to help us. We have to keep improving
otherwise we will move backwards.”
Ambitions
“I would say over the next five years we would want
to be back in the village playing our home games there.
We would also want to be secure financially so we have
the ability to make the club last for generations moving
forward. Ideally in that time we would want to play FA
Cup football and have won a few trophies along the way
as well.”