Senior Football Report 2023

Football Newsletters  •  Posted 11th December 2023

2023 has been a challenging year for Senior football at the Old Wilsonians.  We ended the 2022/2023 season failing to fulfil two key 1st XI fixtures due to lack of player availability, and indeed had struggled through the season across all sides to produce enough players to fulfil all 8 fixtures on any given Saturday.  As a result, we also struggled for results on the pitch and all but our 5th XI had fairly dismal seasons.  Financially we hadn't done a very good job of capturing annual subscriptions and match day subs were also well short of target.  In both cases, we had fallen victim to players saying they would transfer to the OWFC bank account which was difficult to track and ultimately not enforced.

This season has been something of a rebuilding process. We took the difficult decision over the summer to go from 8 teams to 6 teams and dropped our 1st XI down from Senior 1 in the Southern Amateur League to Senior 3, where sadly they have still struggled to get results, but at least the matches are competitive.  We have invested in card-machines which have had a very positive impact on our ability to capture match day subs, and as a committee have become much more actively involved supporting team captains to ensure their sides have paid all subs and are running their teams to the standard, we expect from the Old Wilsonians.   

We have also doubled-down on our efforts to attract Wilson's Schoolboys into the club and Old Wilsonians Junior footballers, achieving some success with the school and greater success with the Juniors, with several of last year's U18s coming through to play consistently through the sides this season.  As part of this effort, we brought back regular weekly training for the first time since 2017, starting in pre-season at Ravensbourne School before eventually switching to Coloma School in Shirley as a location that suits both OW's coming from the Sutton / Carshalton direction and the Juniors coming from Bromley.  Whilst this is expensive, we are able to cover some of the cost by taking £5 per player on the card-readers and attendance has been pleasing, averaging around 16 players per week.  Next year our ambition would be to run pre-season training at the club from mid-July to mid-Sept while the light allows and provided, we can facilitate this without damaging the cricket outfield.  This is critical both to attracting more Junior players and to giving us much needed on-field success which in turn helps us bring more and better playing members into the club. 

On a final, positive note, we were awarded the Hamilton Trophy for Hospitality earlier this year.  It is an award we have won a few times over the decades but is particularly pleasing given we aren't winning many trophies on the pitch these days and is recognition for the work we put in to ensure that referees and visiting sides are well looked after.  It is also credit to Steve Millward for the condition of the facilities and Jasper GW and his team for creating a welcoming environment in the clubhouse.  We continue to receive positive feedback from visiting sides and this as much as anything else makes us proud to be Old Wilsonians.

Dan Harris