SECRETARY ANNUAL REPORT 2024/25

Fortunately, the weather was the best it has been for quite a number of seasons, which meant most teams were finished by April. 

The biggest disappointment for me this year was some people still think it is acceptable to play players who are underage. Clearly the £250 fine is not working as a deterrent. Hence, we will be asking Clubs to increase the penalties for playing under age players, which will include additional points deductions. 

The other part of these sagas was people knew teams were playing underage players. The Committee introduced team sheets solely for the purpose of enabling teams to challenge players who possibly shouldn’t be playing. Frustratingly teams did not use this challenge process. 

Had the challenges been made it would have given me enough information to catch people sooner. I am confident about this as we caught offenders when a club gave me a small piece of information, in itself it wasn’t proof of underage players, however it gave me something to go on and I was able to go back to 2016/17 and found information that was proof. 

If you have doubts about players, please use the team sheet challenge process. People with nothing to hide happily complete the information. If they object you just ask the Referee to witness you have asked and report the matter to me. It makes the opponent AUTOMATICALLY ineligible, regardless of whether they were eligible to play or not. 

On the field.

We plan to continue with the policy of deciding the Constitution in August, this appears to work, although when teams drop out they always seem to be from the same Division which is frustrating. 

There were some incredibly tight Divisions this year with a number of winners/runners up only being decided very late in the season. Congratulations to Blackmore on finally winning the Essex FA Saturday Veterans Cup and becoming the fourth team in the League’s history to win the top Division three years on the trot. Chigwell Over 45’s from the Second Division were the Cup team of the season, they created a major shock when they defeated the holders Harold Hill in the Essex Veterans Trophy Final and they won the over 45 Division Two Cup. Chapel United became the second team to complete the Over 45 Premier Division League and Cup double. 

Discipline and Fair Play

Discipline across the competition improved again this year which is excellent. We will always end up with the odd issue here and there, purely due to the large number of games that are played. 

Cup Finals

Again, we had some fantastic Finals and we are incredibly lucky to be able to use the excellent facilities at Aveley. Generally speaking, teams listened to the request to keep children off the pitch and wore the correct footwear, so thank you all for that. Sadly we had one major problem, as a result that team will not be participating in their Divisional League Cup next season. 

Administration

When writing my report, I look back over the previous reports to see what I have written. In my last three reports I have commented on the ridiculous amount of fines we collect from teams each year. I appreciate we have more teams, however having over £8000 in fines is mind blowing. As a League we would prefer not to collect a single penny in fines. We only issue fines where opponents or Committee members have been inconvenienced or been caused extra work. To have over £8000 in fines we wouldn’t expect any teams to complain about the cost of playing football. 

Referees

This year the Referee Appointment Secretaries appointed officials to over 1300 games which is amazing. The League used 182 different Referees to cover the games. Again, some Clubs were fantastic in their support of Chris, Ryan and James by either finding Referees themselves or willingly moving kick off times so one Referee could cover two fixtures, so thanks for that 

Running the League

We are very fortunate to have such a fantastic Committee. As volunteers they put in hundreds of hours of work for free to run the League, a large amount of this goes on behind the scenes without being noticed. We are fortunate to have a brilliant Chairman in Brian Sayers, who provides so much support in his own unique style. Geoff Harwood, the Vice Chairman is out most weeks watching games and sorting out all the medals and trophies takes time and effort. Stephen Newlyn, our Fixture Secretary, spends hours every week arranging/re-arranging fixtures. Fred Thickbroom, our Registration Secretary, goes out of his way to ensure players are eligible to play, so there is never an excuse for playing an unregistered player. As mentioned above, Chris Crawford, Ryan Anderson and James Holloway our Referee Appointment Secretaries do an amazing job. We also have John Watts, our Treasurer, Russell McGill, our Governance Officer and Simon Marshall our Discipline Secretary, spend hours doing unglamorous work but without their efforts the League could not function. We are also lucky to have Club Representatives who attend Committee Meetings so we have Club input into decisions 

I hope you all have a great summer and good luck for next season

Martin Berry

Secretary