Chippenham Town Football Club at Chippenham Pride 2023
A huge thank you to everyone who joined us at Island Park for Chippenham Pride 2023.
Chippenham Town Football Club (as many of you will know), spent Saturday at Chippenham Pride 2023 and as a club, we are pleased to say the afternoon was a complete and total success. Not just a success for us as a club, but a real testament to our wonderful community of Chippenham as all of us came together to celebrate.
As I have previously stated, we really wanted to come down and lend our support to this event. It’s strange to think that except for Swindon Town, CTFC are the highest ranked club in Wiltshire in the footballing pyramid and with that comes a degree of responsibility to lend our name and pledge our support to these causes that we feel are important not just in football but in life.
Well, if our intention was to support the event, it definitely returned the favour and supported us as a club. Our stall on Island Park was arguably one of the busiest areas of the entire event and received incredibly high praise. It was truly amazing to see so many local children (and in some cases, eager adults) coming along and having a couple of penalties against our various goalkeepers throughout the day, leaving with a smile on their face and a handful of goodies!
With so many representatives of the club present on the day, you’ll have to forgive me for this, but I felt it very important to thank the people that gave their time up to come and support me and support the club in making this a fantastic start to our Community Initiatives for 2023!
Megan Williams and Martin Searle for not only putting up with me all day, but your enthusiasm in talking to families and children about the football club and handing out tickets to our friendly matches as prizes was fantastic all day!
Kirsty Noakes and her amazing family for coming down with the merchandise and creating a wonderful point of display for people to come and get involved with. It is worth mentioning that despite it not being our primary objective for the day, Chippenham Town FC made £419 in retail sales alone from the event, and we cannot thank enough the people that came along and bought hats, scarves, car stickers and shirts etc.
Tom Tiner, I couldn’t have done this without you, providing a table, the gazebo and the goal in which we had so much fun. It was so great to have the CTFC Youth Chairman in attendance, and even better to see so many young children speaking with you about starting their journey in football.
Matt Chappell, coming down and taking pictures, filming throughout the day and helping the local youngsters by showing them how NOT to take penalties whenever the chance came up.
To the Chairman Neil Blackmore and his wife Jane, Andy and Elaine, Barbara Godwin, Tom Jones and all of you amazing people that came along to see us throughout the day.
And last but certainly not least, Will Henry, Caine Bradbury and Luke Haines for giving up your Saturday afternoons to come and support the club in a slightly different way than you usually do. I cannot thank you guys enough for coming down and particularly Will for putting his body and reputation on the line by taking residence between the sticks, Caine for being an expert ball spotter and giving some sound advice and Hainer for coming down, taking pictures and chatting with the local kids about his time at Swindon and now how happy he is to be playing again for the Bluebirds! All three of you were a total credit to your manager, your club, and it was a pleasure sharing the afternoon with you all, having a laugh and engaging with our fans both old and hopefully new!
With so many people coming along to the stall, buying merchandise and taking spot kicks, we gave out some 500 tickets to our PSF matches as prizes to kids in the local area, and it was absolutely fantastic to talk to so many people that seemed genuinely interested in their local club, learning about CTFC and football outside the Premier League, and we are really hoping to see many of these faces again at the Thornbury Surfacing Stadium very soon!
All in all, a fantastic day had by all, a brilliant celebration of Pride in Chippenham and hopefully, our fantastic Bluebirds can give you and all of our new friends something to be even more proud of over the coming season. Watch this space for more updates regarding Chippenham Town in the Community!
Yours in Sport,
Simon Lawrence.
