Refreshed and eager to go again.

 I have always disliked the close season as you go from full on football to nothing overnight. This summer I was looking forward to it massively as I felt a little burnt out and the need to rest. I promised myself a full month away from Plough Lane as I didn’t want it to become a place of work and lose that magical feeling every time I visited Plough Lane.

Away from match-days I am Team Lead for the WiSH volunteers for the Stadium Tour and run everything in the background. When I gave up work in the Winter of 2022 to care for my wife and son, I knew that I needed to have something to give me that work satisfaction that I was used to, so volunteering for something related to the club was a no brainer and I quickly become a Tour Guide as I love to talk! I quickly become to love it along with the feel WiSH has for its volunteers and started to organise and try to continue the work already done by loads of people and look to take the tours to the next level. Volunteering for something you love isn’t work really, but it can mean you work longer hours than you anticipated and also some random hours as I had to do it around my care work.

Match-days I am Team Lead for the Pre & Post Match shows on DonsTV with a dedicated volunteer team of 6 and we finished our 2nd full season in April after starting way back for the Morecambe home game in January 2022 after doing some ad-hoc live shows when Covid broke out in 2020 and games behind closed doors in the 2020/21 season.

The live shows are way out of my comfort zone, but I have always loved a challenge and get stuck in. I spent hours and hours back in 2022 researching equipment, software and trying to get a team of volunteers with the skill sets needed to make a go of it. When I think back to where we started, I am extremely proud of where we finished in April.

Then there is the podcast that Nick & I started back at the beginning of the 2015/16 season, which I love and is my bread and butter, but more about that later….

Anyway, long story short, I needed to rest and make sure I stuck to it!!

Two weeks into my break I was itching to get back, but I managed to resit and did just over 3 ½ weeks before the I was desperate to get back into it.

We continued the Stadium Tours over the summer, and they were extremely popular and the other four volunteer tour guides, Ray, Jan, Matt & Howard covered them during this time. Plough Lane in the sunshine is an even better spectacle and when I returned in June, the pitch was being relayed after a constant stream of events on the pitch during May. Loads of charity games, fan led games and even a Helta Skelter Slide had been placed on the centre circle for a private event with the theme of fairground and circus

When I returned the beginning of June, the top layer of the pitch had been removed and reseeding had begun.

During June I advertised for a volunteer role required for our live shows on match-days as we needed a technical person top support the team. I instantly got a response from a producer who had the skills, was a West Ham fan but was now coming to Wimbledon games as he had moved to South London.

Another challenge this summer was integrating the live shows to the new club website which meant I was back to researching on the internet how to do it. The new website looked really good during its build stage and the capability compared to what the club had previously was really apparent.

Once it went live in at the end of June, I was ready and spent hours testing liking the live feed I used last season. Because it was a live system, I regularly tested it around midnight as I knew that it would hardly be used by fans, but anyone who did may have seen random live show graphics and calendar entries, so if it freaked you out, it was me!

The plan was to test the new website integration for the Brentford and Charlton home friendlies as I have always realised practice makes perfect. Typically, most of my volunteer team were on holiday for the Brentford game and then we also had the pressure of not only having the live shows integrating into the new website, but a live feed for Brentford game going straight after the pre-match show.

Whilst I love a challenge, this was a big one so once again I started testing at random hours in the night and thankfully it went ahead with no trouble, despite on the day me being the director & host which meant for some random graphics being uploaded whilst I was trying to multitask.

With the matchday stadium tours starting again it was great to have 25 people on the Charlton tour and I can honestly say that I get a great thrill seeing fans experience Plough Lane behind the scenes and it can often be the biggest highlight of the day.

The 3 ½ week break I had was great, but I realised also how much I miss my volunteer roles and also how fortunate I am; however, I am sure in 10 months time I will need to force myself to have a month break.

Oh, I nearly forgot, the 9yrspodcast returns Wednesday 7th August after we finished a bit earlier than normal in January this year. Can’t wait to to get going again and have my normal 40–50-minute chat with my good friend Nick, that we just happen to record and share for whoever has that sort of time to listen.