Good afternoon,

I hope you are all enjoying the interesting weather that makes up what we call “summer” in Leeds!

I have to start by mentioning the sad loss of one of the club’s Vice Presidents Margaret Lobley. Margaret was genuinely one of the nicest ladies I have ever met, always smiling and happy to tell me to go and do a job that needed doing. She unfortunately hasn’t been able to be at the club much in recent times, but in my first couple of years at the club she was regularly there, and I have nothing but fond memories of her and she will be sorely missed by all. 💚🤍

As the close-season is drawing to and end, with the dress rehearsal that is pre-season well underway, we have continued to be busy behind the scenes, pushing as hard as we can to get as many things in to place before the season starts as possible.

On the pitch, the guys have as you know, have still only played three bit part games together as a team so far, with a number of triallists and youth team players given the opportunity. As we know, results in pre-season mean very little, it’s about the new players gelling together, then building and developing to be ready for Saturday 5 August. For me it’s been interesting to see a different style of play emerging, and the management team along with Pav have certainly had a lot of new ideas and tactics to convey, which are showing signs of being implemented on the pitch.

We have also been able to begin integrating our highly talented deaf squad into our first team training activities. The first of those, Charlie, has been superb thus far and we are looking forward to bringing in some more of his team mates.

Much credit has to also go to Paul Glover, who has got the pitch in a superb condition! Certainly one of the best pitches I have seen here in my time at the club.

As you will have seen from our recent announcements, we have linked up with a number of new business partners to help support the commercial development of the business and to help improve operations and the levels of service offered. You can expect to see this continuing in the near future with a number of other partners coming on board over the next few weeks who will assist in taking us to the next level.

The pre-planning that was submitted last month for our site development is continuing to progress through the council’s processes. We are providing the information as and when requested, so we hope to be able to report something more on that in the next two to three weeks.

You will also have seen the launch of our commercial brochure for the forthcoming season. We believe we have a lot to offer and have (as with everything else we have done) priced this very competitively. So please help support us if you can or if you know anyone who might hold an interest, please contacts us at commercial@farsleyceltic.com.

The new kit is out and available, as are the season tickets. Sales thus far have been very slow, but we hope that will pick up as we get closer to the new season.

Our emerging talent squad has also begun its pre-season training. As previously mentioned, we will be featuring a member of this squad on our bench every week to assist in their development. We have very high hopes and expectations for some of the players in this set up, and we have genuine belief that by the end of the season a few of them will be first team squad regulars.

Registration is now also about to begin for players in our grassroots and development sections, which is always an exciting time! We hope they can continue where they left off with the successes of last season.

Finally from me…We have been working hard to arrange a special one-off game at The Citadel for a weekend in September that we think will be something a bit special and a lot of fun! So look out for that announcement in the next couple of days!

Hope to see you all this Saturday for Huddersfield, if not then the following Tuesday for York City!