News 

You may recall the club statement back in June reporting an incident of homophobic abuse directed at one of our players during a match. We can now report that the matter has been concluded. The club involved has been found guilty and appropriately penalised by the FA. The player who was subjected to the abuse is satisfied with the outcome. They would also like to thank Ashby United Community Football Club for the support provided during what has been a difficult period. There is no place for this or any other discriminatory abuse in football or in any sport. Ashby United Community Football Club continues to draw attention to homophobic abuse and is delighted to announce the club will host a charity fixture in support of the Stonewall Rainbow Laces Campaign. The fixture will be held on Saturday 4th December 2021 at Hood Park in Ashby with Kick Off being 1pm so please come down and show your support!

We are delighted to announce that we have a Charity Rainbow Laces Match on Saturday 4th December at Hood Park Vs Leicester Wildecats. The match will raise money for Stonewall, an LGBTQ+ charity who are global movement for change made up of LGBTQ+ people, allies, families and friends. You may be aware that each year Stonewall organise the rainbow laces campaign which takes place over a number of weekends in early December and this year we will be supporting the campaign with this match. You can find some key facts below around the campaign and read more details online here: https://www.stonewall.org.uk/our-work/campaigns/rainbow-laces • More than two in five LGBT+ people think public sporting events aren’t a welcoming space for LGBT+ people. (Stonewall LGBT in Britain 2017) • One in five LGBT+ young people (18 to 24) experienced discrimination while exercising at a fitness club or at a sport group in the previous year. • Three in ten trans people have been discriminated against while exercising at a fitness club or taking part in group sport in the previous year. We hope you will join us and show support for this cause by coming down for what is sure to be a great match for a great cause!

The first AGM for Ashby United CFC took place on Thursday 26th August at 7pm at Ashby Hastings Cricket Club. We would like to thank everyone who attended either in person or via Zoom. You can watch the meeting below now, find a copy of the clubs annual report and also find our Financial Statement ending June 30th. Annual Report Ashby United Community Football Club 2020 – 2021. Ashby United Community Football Club (AUCFC) was founded on the 1st June 2020. It was primarily set up to serve the ever expanding market town of Ashby-De-La-Zouch and its surrounding areas. The new committee that was formed under the chairmanship of Murray Blair-Park quickly set about promoting the club and recruiting players and coaches for the new season ahead. Some of the original teams had already played together for a number of seasons but soon new teams were being formed coming from parents and players that had expressed an interest in joining the newly formed club. At the beginning of the 2020/2021 season we entered 10 teams (8 juniors and 2 seniors) into a number of leagues around Leicestershire, Staffordshire and Derbyshire. This amounted to a staggering total of 160 players signing up for the club in a matter of weeks after being set up. At the start of the new season some of our teams had been only running for a few weeks and the committee thanks those coaches who stepped up initially and were thrown in at the deep end of coaching and organising a brand new team having never had done anything like that before. The season started really well but then COVID struck and towards Christmas time there was no football at all. When matches began in the new year everyone was raring to go again. The season was a real learning curve especially for our newer teams. We had many successes on the football field this season - players playing their first ever game for the club and scoring their first ever goal. We also won two cups in our first season – our under 16’s won the Derby City Football League Saturday Challenge Trophy and our Sunday Senior Side were runners up in Division 3 of the Burton and District Men’s league winning 20 out of 26 games and scoring 115 goals. On the back of this the team have secured a double promotion. The under 16 team also had a brilliant season winning 9 out of 14 of their games. We now need to find a trophy cabinet for those two cups! Hoping for many more this season. During the Autumn the club set up its first ever soccer school run by two coaches on a Saturday morning starting at Prior Park road and then moving to Hood Park in the colder months. This was an instant hit and we had over 35 players attending these sessions. Most of these founding players have moved into our new under 7 teams and we are fielding 3 new teams this season. The soccer school is continuing again in the new season and already have 20 children signed up. Moving forward the club has expanded enormously over the last few months and new teams have been set up in age groups that we didn’t have before and also we have been able to set up more than one team in a lot of our age groups. This year we are running 16 teams in numerous leagues from our newly formed under 7 teams all the way up to our vets team. AUCFC is represented on the LRCFA Inclusion Advisory Board and is also a member of the NWLDC Inclusive Club Scheme. As part of this work AUCFC launched the Community Kickabout. The weekly sessions provide a free and friendly environment for people of all ages and abilities. The response has been overwhelming. The event typically attracts 20 to 25 people each week and is funded and staffed by AUCFC. The club has recently agreed to support this initiative for a further 12 months. The committee would like to say a massive thank you to all the clubs coaches for your commitment and giving up your time to run your teams. A special thank you to all our new coaches for getting involved with the club. We seem to be very lucky in that we have managed to fill all of our coaching needs at the moment so thank you for stepping forward. The CWO has carried out over 30 DBS checks since the club was founded. So what else have we been doing and what else is to come? We have secured a new playing and training area at Ashby School enabling us to now have a base where all teams can train and for some of our teams to play their games on. From grants and fundraising we have been able to buy new equipment and goals – we had nothing on 1st June 2020 so have had to set everything up and thank you to all the people who have helped with that. We have managed to secure sponsorship from many companies in and around Ashby and thank you to them. Also we have been able to tap into numerous grants and thank you to those that have spent hours working on them. AUCFC continues to work with local partners, property developers and the FA to improve facilities the whole community can enjoy. The recent partnership with Ashby School to better utilise the Range Road facility is a good illustration of this collaborative approach. AUCFC has grown significantly in a short space of time. It is very important that growth is managed but to reflect this early maturity, AUCFC will be launching a Senior Saturday team for the 2022/2023 season. Andy Topham has been appointed to oversee this important step. Andy is one of the most qualified and well respected coaches in the region and AUCFC is delighted to have him on board. We are always looking to expand and are hoping to fill the remaining two gaps (under 12 and 14) that we have in our age group teams in the future. For the first time this year we have girls playing in our teams. There are at least 5 playing in our new under 7 teams. One of our other aims is to get as many of our new coaches as possible a fully accredited FA qualification. This will be the ‘Introduction to coaching football course’ which was formally known as the ‘level 1 coaching qualification’. We had our first very successful club presentations in June and August. Our social secretary organised a Christmas raffle which was a great success. We have our first ever dinner and dance on September 18th. Social media wise we have 972 Facebook followers with average post views of 1500, 218 twitter followers and 380 on Instagram. The average website hits are around 100 per week and average google views are 375 per week. Moving forward we would like to build up our followers on all social media platforms. We also want to provide quick and easy ways for people to keep in touch with us as a club and make things such as the registration process as quick and easy as possible. We have a commitment to follow GDPR rules on all data as do the FA. The last thing to say is a massive thank you to all our volunteers who without them our first year would not have been such an enormous success. Suzanne Windridge Chair AUCFC August 2021

Our Sunday Seniors recently held their presentation evening at The White Hart in Ashby to celebrate their double promotion to the Burton & District Sunday Division 1. You can find a selection of photos below:

We recently held our first Junior Presentation Day at Ashby Hastings Cricket Club on Sunday 4th July. It was fantastic to share in all of our teams achievments and hear the fun stories from each team for the season of 2020 / 2021. You can find a selection of photos below: