Myself and Tim Bond, who is the other joint-manager, decided to set up Chesterton AFC over a year or so ago.
I’ve known Timmy all my life and we grew up and have always lived in Chesterton, so we had a chat about it and decided that we wanted to try and set up a team where it was a bit more challenging and testing, so we started the club up from scratch.
It took about a year to get everything finalised but we got there in the end and we’re now in our first season.
Obviously, a kit is pretty important for any team. Tim got in touch with Scott Milne at the Gloucestershire County FA saying how we were looking to start up a new team and that funds were tight and to see if there was any help available and he helped us massively.
There was basically a few emails between us and some paperwork to fill out before we were granted the growth fund. This managed to get us new balls, bibs and a few other bits.
Furthermore, Scott is currently helping the club to secure the FA Charter Standard award which hopefully should be all done by January, which is another thing for the club to look forward to.
It was really that straightforward. Everyone was really helpful and talked us through what we needed and within a couple of months it was sorted and we got the kit that we needed.
In this area in particular, it feels like football has been slowly dying off as we’ve had some big clubs that have been around for years folding.
But if people knew where to go they would be surprised, because it was fairly straightforward. So for some clubs, perhaps the ones who haven’t been established for long, I’d just say to get in touch with your County FA and see what help there is.
For Chesterton, we’re ten games into our first season and we play in the Cirencester & District League, which is a feeder for the Cheltenham leagues. Hopefully, if we do well this year we’ll be able to get ourselves established and keep progressing so that’s the aim.
Me and Tim are the joint managers and it’s going well. We split everything down the middle, from training to washing the new kit.
I used to manage a team called the Cirencester Pilgrims and we played in the Cotswold Churches League, but I was only the player manager there and I didn’t have to do any of the background work which we have to do now but it’s been enjoyable if not a little busy.
Tim had previously played at quite a high level until a bad leg injury meant he could no longer play, so that’s not ideal for him but there were players he’d played with previously who came along to join us.
I would say the other 60 or 70 per cent of the players we already knew from the area and they were all playing for other clubs last year. But they wanted to come over to join us.
Now, we’re essentially a huge group of mates who have all played with different teams together over the years, everyone’s enjoying the ride and it’s been a great experience so far.
