Things are all starting to feel a bit more real now ! Matt has given us his pre-season timetable, leading up to the first scheduled friendly and, of course, we are developing a programme for him and the players that will allow them to work through the mandatory five-stage programme that will allow our league season to start in October.

As well as having an appointed Covid-19 Officer we are required to have a club Medical Officer and were delighted to fill that role this week. That really is an important step as the MO is responsible for reviewing and agreeing all of the measures that we propose to put in place. Together with our own H&S Adviser and the local authority’s licensing officer we will be developing plans that we hope will maximise our attendance whilst keeping everybody; spectators, players and officials, safe. There is no denying though, that we are operating in a very complicated landscape and that when football does return it will be a very different environment from what we all remember, certainly in the short-term.

Last week we were delighted to welcome to the Club two new signings that Matt had identified as priorities, goalkeeper Dean Bouzanis and striker Tobi Sho-Silva. Let’s hope that their first season at Sutton is memorable for all the right reasons.

We are talking to a local firm about the possibility of using the stadium to show a movie. Attendance will be limited by social distancing measures of course but hopefully it will prove popular, perhaps for the novelty of listening to a movie through headphones. Think ‘silent disco’ if you want an idea of how it will work. Please keep an eye on our website for details.

This week Surrey FA announced their Grassroots Football Award and we were pleased to see our Head of Disability Football, Steve King, named as Adult Coach of the Year. Our disability football section also picked up the Project of the Year award. Well done to Steve and all involved (link). On the subject of awards, congratulations again to Omar Bugiel, whose wondrous volley at Woking on Boxing Day was voted as BBC Radio London’s Goal Of The Season.

Many of you will have watched the friendly between Sutton United Women and Wycombe Wanderers on SUFCtv last Sunday. There were some teething troubles, particularly with sound, but a lot of work is going in to ensure those snags are ironed out and at this stage it is definitely our intention to make the preseason games available on a live-stream. We would like to be able to offer this service for league matches as well but that will require a change in existing regulations. We have six friendlies planned, two of them at home but, of course, all will be behind closed doors.  

This is probably a good time to thank the team at SUFCtv for putting so much work into this and also for keeping us all informed and entertained throughout the summer, so take a bow James and James, Connor, Greg, Ahmed, Olly, Will, Sam, Cameron and Tom.

Season ticket sales continue to come in steadily; we now have just over 150 remaining of the 750 initially allocated before we know what our temporary stadium capacity will be at the start of the new season.

Remember too that the Early Bird offer will be flying the nest at the end of the month so you only have a little over two weeks to take advantage of these superb prices www.suttonunited.net/season-tickets and receive priority access to the ground when crowds are permitted.

Don’t miss out!

#inittogether