Here is a brief May 2019 update to replace the one that disappeared.

Monthly Branch Meeting

There are no further monthly branch meetings planned for this season. The next meeting will be the AGM on Sunday July 7th. 7.30 pm for an 8.00pm start please.

Annual Branch BBQ

Currently on hold until we know what is going on. I am sincerely hoping that it will be cancelled because we will be playing at Wemberley on that day.

Memberships

The Membership Secretary remains incognito at present but we will be fully expecting him to emerge like a butterfly from his chrysalis for the AGM. Renewal forms will be formulated and then sent out sometime in June. Please return with a stamped addressed envelope (that actually sticks otherwise we will charge extra for the sellotape) for the return of your LUSC membership card and your LUSC Centenary wallet. Renewals will be accepted at the AGM, cold hard cash/cheques/postal orders but not blood this year. Please note, even though you have been a branch member for the last 20 years, you STILL have to fill in and sign the renewal form which ensures your details are current!

Away Games

Currently taking bookings for Derby. We will deal with the final when we come to it. If you are NOT a paid up member, you will NOT get a seat on the bus.

Sponsorship

We are sponsoring (top goal scorer u23s) Ryan Edmondson for the rest of the season. Should we be allowed to sponsor him next season, we will need to raise a lot of money. The branch is a non profit organisation, and we have always kept the travel down to a minimum, but we will need to raise funds to achieve this. Anyone with any ideas, please contact us. The Centenary merchandise will be with us shortly. Thanks to Makaela for volunteering her assistance. I’m not asking for anyone to go out and sell blood, eggs, sperm (or any other bodily fluids), organs, their bodies (!) etc. but any workable ideas will be greatly appreciated. We do have signed shirts and other donated goods to raffle off, anything else is most welcome.

Thorp Arch

Congrats to Makaela and Jack and Brent Ward who won the raffle to attend the Thorp Arch event with The Deputy. A good day was had by all even though Ryan wasn’t there because he was at Selhurst Park playing in the u23s. Hopefully Leeds United will let us have another shot at meeting him to give us our certificate of sponsorship. The photos from the day will hopefully be added to the Gallery section soon.

Website

It currently costs the branch £20+ for the annual fee and £8+ monthly for the website. It also takes a lot of hard work to run it as well. According to GoogleAnalytics, people are regularly looking at it, so it is probably worthwhile keeping it running, even if it does piss some people off. If anyone wishes to contribute to it, any help is very welcome.

LUSC AGM

The main LUSC AGM will be held on the afternoon of Sunday July 7th. It will be 11.30am for 12 noon start please, Eddie Gray Suite, East Stand (tbc). If anyone wishes to attend, please bring along your LUSC membership card. Hopefully Josh will be there again this year with his new belt.

Finally, thanks to Lesley Hope and Jane Taylor for this – HarrogateWhites’s very own Bielsa…. Happy Birthday Steve Mawtus

March 2019 has come way too quickly. The last 8 months have gone by in a flash and now we have arrived at the business end of the season. My prediction of being promoted by February did not prevail but no one could have predicted that we would beset by so many injuries to so many of our players. Still, here we are, 2nd in the league and our fate is all in our own hands.

Monthly branch meeting

Thanks to all for the good turn out last Sunday. The LUSC exec minutes were read out and reported on. The Away Ticket Charter was discussed briefly, and to quote Abba – neither you nor I’m to blame, when all is said and done. Other items discussed will be detailed in AOB.

Memberships

The Membership Secretary has been sighted, so all is well. The Chairman mentioned that March was the time to vote him back in, however, it has been recognised that the time for a formal vote has passed, and the role of The Membership Secretary is for life, not Christmas. Plus at least he can say, hand on heart, that he has always been the Membership Secretary and not just coming back now that we are doing well.

Away Travel

A massive loss was made at QPR – no more needs to be said about that. We are still awaiting details re Birmingham and Preston ticket allocations and sale dates. With any luck the rest of the games will be done on the tracker. Ipswich Town plans are afoot re departure times seeing as it is an early kick off, further announcements TBC.

A.O.B

LUSC Annual Quiz will be taking place on Thursday April 4th in the Eddie Gray Suite at ER. Our branch has enough for 4 teams this year and Ripon will also be joining in the fun. The branch will be paying the £10 entry fee per team. Teams will need a name, so please start thinking of an appropriate name for your team and get revising!

Teams are Team 1: Deputy Yates, Ricky Greenwood, James Proctor, Callum Brook, Team 2: Karen Webb, John Webb, Sean Hunter, Dave Rowson, Team 3: The Chairman, The Secretary, The MPO and Dave Poole, Team 4: The Littlefair Bros, Smuff and a.n.other, Ripon: Morro, Jordan and Mark and Bev. Mick and Geoff hopefully will be coming along, so if anyone else fancies coming through, please let us know and we could get another Harrogate team.

Centenary Merchandise: The branch will order Centenary Membership Card wallets (one free for every member next season but options to purchase more at 50p per wallet), LUSC wristbands, canvas shopping bags, car stickers and pint / half pint glasses. If anyone can think of anything else, please feel free to get in touch, usual channels.

Annual Harrogate & District BBQ: Following the howling success of last years, we will be having one this year sometime in May. The Secretary will get in touch with the Londesborough re booking upstairs again. We would like anyone who can volunteer to help out to form a BBQ committee by next branch meeting. The branch will charge a nominal entry fee of £1 members, extra non members.

Raffle prize for two tickets in hospitality for the Millwall game are still on sale for £1. The draw will take place at the LUSC exec meeting on the Thursday 14th March. We will be selling ticket on Tuesday on the way to Reading. This will be your last chance.

 

Well, I was wrong at the start of the season. We’re not up by February, but we’re 2nd on goal difference and that is better than most people thought we would be. We’ve had a ridiculously bad season for injuries again, Bielsa’s rigorous whip cracking, slave-driving regime, notwithstanding, I blame the pitch and the training facilities (hahahaha – joke honestly). Apologies for no January update, we had the branch meeting late because of QPR in the Cup and then January descended into the usual nightmare of paperwork, IT problems and number crunching as it does. Not to mention the small piece of work that was the charter…. February update cumulative then.

Monthly Branch Meeting

Thanks to everyone who showed up even though there wasn’t any free alcohol this month (January was free drink on the branch month). The majority of the meeting was spent discussing away tickets, the LUSC exec meeting about away tickets and the Charter, and then the Charter. There was an overwhelming majority in favour of option one (publish and be damned) and the branch recorded the vote by the Monday deadline date set. There is very little else to be said about the matter, all we can do is wait and see what happens next season should we get promoted. The branch as always will endeavour to order tickets for the branch members who cannot order them on their own due to work commitments or just general incompetence with technology. I would like to take this opportunity to point out that the myth that we order vast, industrial numbers of tickets to pass on to all and sundry is perpetuated by complete utter total wasters who know f*** all. It is hard enough to get tickets for those who haven’t missed a game for years, and we didn’t get any for Stoke, so please desist. On a lighter note, the Hospitality Raffle prize of two tickets for the Millwall game has commenced. See below in AOB.

Memberships

The Membership Secretary had his evening of drinking ruined by The Chairman, Deputy Yates, Dave Poole and Dave Rowson the other Sunday. The photo attached shows him fully conversant and acknowledging the fact that The Membership Secretary position is for life, not just Christmas. We are still receiving requests to join the branch, but given there are only 3 months left of the season, it seems a bit harsh to charge anyone the £7, so these new memberships forms (as opposed to renewals) will be deferred to next season. In the event of a play off final at Wembley (and if we get any tickets of course) , travel will be run strictly for branch members only, NO EXCEPTIONS. Just a pleasant reminder that EVERYONE needs to fill in a renewal form, EVERY year. Just passing the money onto The Secretary does not guarantee that the form will be filled in, and the Membership Secretary does like to see all those forms. That’s the thing he looks forward to every year, just getting a proper stamped, addressed envelope makes his day.

Away games

Bus times for Boro are available on facebook. Expressions of interest for QPR on Tuesday 26th February will now be accepted. Unfortunately due to the away ticketing situation, it has been very difficult of late, I’m bored with it all now. No further comment. Actually I’m not bored at all, I’m still really hacked off with it. But trying to have proper debate with people who have just decided to start following Leeds again after they cleared off when we dropped to Division 3 (or even earlier) gets tiresome and boring after a while.

A.O.B

The away ticket Charter – what can I say?

Tickets for the Hospitality in the East Stand for the game against Millwall Saturday March 30th were picked up by Dave Poole last Thursday. We have ordered some more and these will hopefully have arrived in time for the Boro game on Saturday. Anyone wishing to enter can contact The Secretary, usual channels, remember STRICTLY LUSC MEMBERS ONLY. £1 per ticket.

Fake news that Ken hasn’t filled in a membership form this season has been quashed by The Secretary. Said form was completed in August and membership card was issued. The Membership Secretary may have been a little flummoxed by Dave thrusting a candle into his face in a Kim Basinger 9 and a half weeks type manner.

Harrogatewhites website is still doing OK. The googleanalytics have been received from Paul Yates and there were 2,058 new users according to the info from Feb 2018 to Feb 2019. So that means about 170+ new people per month. Considering the content is patchy at best, dependent on how busy / annoyed / tired / hungover the MPO is, the figures are pretty darned good. Unfortunately this also means the MPO needs to carry on with it. If anyone wishes to contribute anything, please get in touch via The Secretary.

 

 

 

Ho Ho Ho Merry Christmas! And, no, it’s not too early as The Chairman has already started to put his Christmas songs on facebook. So there!

Monthly Branch Meeting

Many thanks for all who attended the meeting yesterday at The Londesborough Club. The meeting was started with a minutes silence in memory of our dear friend Des Yates, who left us to join his dad, Paul Madeley, Billy and Don up there.

The Secretary thanked everyone who had put their names down for draw to present Saiz with his LUSC Player of The Season trophy at the QPR game this Saturday. Unfortunately none of the branch members were lucky enough and Phil Barrett from Scarborough LUSC won it and has volunteered the presentation be given to a member of Devon LUSC.

Memberships

The Membership Secretary has been observed skulking around various drinking emporiums in Harrogate by Dave Rowson. The Secretary and The MPO have tentative arrangements to meet him for a spot of tea on Tuesday to ensure that membership paperwork is handed over in a timely fashion. Anyone who has not received their membership cards etc. please get in contact if you do not receive them before Christmas.

Away games

The coach for Bolton is full and there is a wait list for travel. Because of the calamity that is Leeds United ticketing website on free for all day, despite the large (4k+) allocation, we only managed to order a limited amount of tickets. We had originally thought we would be able to take two buses, but given we scarcely got enough for one bus, we are now only taking the 53 seater. Bookings are currently being taken for Villa and Forest. As soon as the ticketing details have been announced, we will let everyone know. Same applies for the up coming FA Cup 3rd round. Seeing as Leeds United have chosen to enter a team, let’s hope they are actually intending on taking part. Participating slightly more than they did in the League Cup. I would like to take this opportunity to say that anyone who is already saying that the League is more important than the FA Cup will obviously NOT want to go to West Ham away or any other glamour side should this be the result of the draw.

A.O.B

The Secretary and The MPO will be at Des’s service on Thursday 6th December. 11.40 at Stonefall and then on to Nineteen Nineteen Venue at Harrogate Town. I am sure that anyone who knew Des through his love of Leeds United, branch members old and new, will be most welcome to give him a good send off.

The MPO won £200 in 250 draw.

The FREE prize draw winners are as below:

431 – Smuff – Leeds United Kappa Snood

422 – Steve Smith – Leeds United boxed pen

433 – Chris Smith – Leeds United key ring (sorry no Strongbow)

494 – Paul Yates –  Leeds United shirt (Andy’s Christmas present sorted then!!)

427 – The Secretary – Leeds United Chocolate Easter Egg (still in date by 3 months) and mug

428 – Dave Poole – Leeds United Snood (No 24)

429 – Dave Rowson – (No lucky number 58 but 29 x 2 is technically 58) Leeds United shirt (Jamie’s Christmas present sorted)

420 – Makaela Rolph – Leeds United training top (hopefully will fit Eva eventually)

421 – Jack Pedel – Leeds United training top

432 – Fozzie – nice boxed Leeds United 1992 Champions Pen

424 – Geoff Howarth – Leeds United Leather Key Ring

435 – Wilko – Leeds United badge key ring

434 – Jakey Wilko Jnr – Leeds United training top

Thank you for everyone who took part

It was voted unanimously that at the next branch meeting in the New Year that everyone who turns up will get a free drink on the branch to cheer in the New Year.

 

 

 

On 17th November 2018 we lost our dear friend Des Yates.

His funeral will be on Thursday 6th December at 11.40am at Stonefall and his wake will be at the 1919 venue at Harrogate Town.

Des has been a Leeds United fan for all his life. He followed us home and away, whenever he could, wherever he could for 55 years. Many of the older branch members will remember him from the days of travelling with Pynes and Murgatroyds, and then with Wrays of Harrogate once the branch was formed in 1982.

As many people have already said, Des never had a bad word to say about anyone, apart from the referee and linesmen! He was Leeds United through and through and always got behind the team, whoever the manager, chairman or players were. As long as they played for Leeds, they got his support.

I remember when they were raising money for Don Revie’s statue and Des and Nicky came along to an event at The Old Peacock with Allan Clarke and a few of the other old League Championship players. Allan Clarke came round to some of the tables and shook Des’s hand. Des was absolutely made up that Allan Clarke had asked to shake his hand. He got a couple of autographs etc. and one of them signed his 1972 replica shirt but just the fact that that Allan had shook his hand was enough for him that night. That’s how much Leeds United mattered to Des.

Most of us will remember Des getting straight off the bus at the pub stop and lighting up the roll up that he had been meticulously rolling on the bus. That’s called getting your priorities sorted! After that, quick one in the pub before a walk to the nearest bookies to put on a couple of quid on a horse or two, and then back to the pub. He loved football and the social side of football, having a drink in the pub and catching up with everyone. In the old days before social media, that’s what we did, talked to each other about the game the week before and what were thinking the game would be like that day. Des knew his stuff and was a constant source of Leeds United stories. Then of course, he was last on the bus, getting the last ciggie in before the trip back home.

We all have our own memories of Des, most if not all will be fond thoughts. Our condolences go to Nicky Horsman, who he called his soul mate, Paul and Andy and the rest of the Yates family.

 

 

 

Apologies for lack of monthly updates, The Chairman Charley slot is taking up far too much time but worth it, I think. Monthly update from the branch meeting held on Sunday 11th November as follows:

Monthly Branch Meeting

Thanks to everyone who showed up yesterday. Minutes from the meetings will be emailed out to the email list. Points arising are mainly regarding the Centenary plans, which will be dealt with in the A.O.B section below. The Player Of The Season prize will be presented pitchside at the QPR game on Saturday 8th December to Saiz. Any branch member who wishes to be put in the ballot to be the one who presents it to him needs to let us know by Weds 21st November. Thanks to Dave Rowson and Makaela Rolph for already asking to represent the branch in this venture. It was pointed out that had Kalvin Phillips been the winner of the trophy, that we excluded Andy Yates from entering it, just in case Kalvin starts to worry. The lucky dip from the Leeds United bag was won by Andy Yates (no surprise there) who selected one of the body fit shirts as his prize. It was agreed that the rest of the Leeds United stuff in the bag would be distributed out Tombola style at the pre Christmas monthly branch meeting. All branch members will be entered into the free draw, provided they get in contact with us to confirm before Friday 30th November (via email/messenger/text) or turn up at the meeting. As each winning ticket is drawn, the winner will have an opportunity to select their prize. If your ticket gets drawn but you are not at the meeting, it will be up to you to arrange to pick up your prize at another convenient time. The Chairman will select your prize for you if you are not available, I suggest being nice to The Chairman in this eventuality.

Memberships

Membership requests are still coming in. The Membership Secretary was seen by Mally at some point this last week and apparently he was also observed allegedly enjoying himself in a bar in Benidorm, according to Dave Rowson. (If you believe that, you’ll believe anything). Any  sightings of the Membership Secretary are welcome. We are hoping to have a teatime meeting with him soon at the curry house with any luck to give him another stack of forms.

Can I take this opportunity to remind folk that you can request to join the closed group of Harrogate & District on facebook, but if you haven’t filled a form in, you don’t stick a chance.

Away Games

It has been a bit busy lately, especially with the run of the two coach games due to the free for all ticket sales at Blackburn and Wigan. Thank you for all your patience. It is not easy sorting out two coaches. Luckily enough when we get to the Premiership the away allocations are so small that this won’t be an issue. We are currently taking bookings for T’Blades and provisional ones for Bolton (as we don’t know the allocation as yet). Thanks to stand in drivers Jamie and Mark, as well as the main man Jonathan for their services.

A.O.B

Centenary Plans

Football tournament 11 a side: We are still awaiting confirmation from Dean re the format of the competition, but the branch definitely has enough for a team and reserves should the schedules be a bit challenging. As soon as we hear back from the Club regarding the dates of the games etc. we will start the ball rolling. We still need to know about kit / officials / venues yet, hoping to hear from the SAB meeting group sooner rather than later.

Football penalty shoot out: Again, waiting confirmation, but we are envisaging that it will be a five man penalty shoot out at half time, run throughout the 2019-20 season at ER. We are hoping that it will go to sudden death if there isn’t a winner after 5 shots each (otherwise we could be there for ever). Depending on how many teams enter, it may not be as simple as winner goes through to next round, but we are hoping that it will be just a knockout competition week by week as it is much simpler. If anyone wishes to help organise this etc. please get in touch with the LUSC exec as many hands make light work.

Programme page

Anyone who has any interesting articles for the Leeds United programme page is welcome to send these in.

Christmas cd

As long as the cd player works on the coach, anyone is welcome to bring their own music for the bus (except Kevin bloody Wilson – Dave Poole!). Can I make a personal request for anyone who has a copy of the Wombling Merry Christmas by The Wombles to let me have it so I can add it to the Christmas cd for Villa. The Chairman informed me that the only thing that kept it from getting to Number 1 in the charts was actually some random song called Bohemian Rhapsody (weird name for a song) by some group called Queen. I have looked it up and according to the Official Charts, it was beaten into 5th place in 1974 by in ascending order 4th Barry White – you’re my first, my last, my everything, 3rd The Rubettes – Juke Box Jive, 2nd Bachman Turner Overdrive – you ain’t seen nothing yet and Number 1 pop pickers, Ken Wood’s favourite glam rock band –  Mud – Lonely This Christmas…. by 29th December 1974 it was Number 2 but technically that’s after Christmas.