Brakes Trust End of Season Review

by · Published · Updated

As the season draws to a close we reflect on the progress the Brakes Trust, the supporters club for Leamington FC, has made particularly having joined forces with the Volunteer and Supporters Club during the summer with the aim of combining resources and expertise and adding new vigour to the Trust.

Some highlights of the Trust’s activities include:

  • Pre-season ground preparations – Several members of the Trust, together with other volunteers, participated in the Club’s annual pre-season “clean-ups” to prepare the ground for the new season.
  • Programme Articles – For the first time the Trust published an Article in every match day programme to improve communications with members and non-members alike. We also had an advertisement for membership in each programme. Our thanks are expressed to the new programme editor, Harry Cross and his team, for accommodating us and for forming a productive relationship.
  • Increased social media profile – We have vastly expanded our exposure on our facebook, instagram and X sites including earlier in the season initiating our “Behind the Brakes” video series interviewing key people within the club.
  • Club shop and pop-up shops – At the beginning of the season, the Trust team took over the management of the club shop including staffing it on match days. A new range of merchandise, including some special edition T-shirts and replica shirts, was introduced and we also held a couple of pop-up shops in Leamington town centre including at the Christmas market.

    One of our pop-up shops displaying new merchandise

  • Macmillan Appeal – At the end of August, Brakes Trust member, Graham Hobbins, organised an appeal for products to be donated that would contribute to care packages to be delivered to cancer patients living locally by MacMillan as part of an initiative being supported by his employer Welcome Break. As usual there was a generous response from Brakes fans enabling 25 high quality care packages to be delivered.
  • Fans for Diversity Initiative – Also in August following liaison with the Football Supporters Association (FSA) of which the Trust is a member, we held a Fans for Diversity day to encourage those who do not normally come to the ground to attend the Chorley match. We had an encouraging response and intend to run similar initiatives in the future.

    Our Fans for Diversity Day enlisted the support of both managers

  • New Ground – We have taken an on-going interest in the developments towards our new ground and produced a summary of the update meeting held in November and encouraged all supporters to participate in the subsequent public consultation as well as helping to run a pre-match survey of fans’ travelling habits before the Chester game in February.
  • Fan Representation and liaison with club – We have continually liaised with the club on matters of interest to fans, potential changes to the food offering at the ground being just one example. As part of this we have taken a keen interest in the provisions of the Football Governance Act and have encouraged the club to adopt the principles of this.
  • AGM – We held our AGM in December and in our endeavours to get new blood and ideas into the Trust we nominated Jack Godbert-Brown and Naomi Morgan as designate Trust Board members.
  • Minibus Runs and Appeal – We have continued to run our minibus to the majority of away games and some mid-week home games when the club-organised coaches have not run. However at times this has been a struggle and accordingly in February we launched our minibus appeal for more voluntary drivers, encouraging sponsorship/advertising on the minibus, and promoting it’s availability for hire by associated community groups.

Trust chairperson, Boris (Andrew Calcutt), concludes:

The above demonstrates that this season the Trust has benefitted from renewed vigour and has undertaken a range of new initiatives which combined have reinforced Brakes Trust’s commitment to support the fans, the club and the community. COYB!