February Update

Monthly Branch Meeting

The meeting was held in the Londesborough Club at 8pm on Sunday 5th February. Thanks to all who turned out (in a fashion). Special thanks to Dave Rowson who made sure The Chairman duly arrived in the “ruined” state as requested by The Secretary. A bumper crowd turned out, including Makaela Rolph (taxi driver) but sadly Deputy Andy Yates was a no show ( part-timer). This was a “lively” meeting with The Chairman in a much more vocal mood than he is normally. The meeting was slightly held up as The Chairman decided we couldn’t start until Mally Appleyard turned up, as apparently Mally has never missed a meeting. Mally duly got his round of applause when he arrived eventually 10 mins late.

As part of the LUSC Sponsored player package the LUSC gets tickets to a training day at Thorp Arch, a lunch with the sponsored player and two pairs of tickets in hospitality in the Magnificent New East Stand at the end of the season. These tickets are raffled by the LUSC. The Thorp Arch tickets were available at this meeting, if anyone wants any more they are now on sale at £1 per ticket, please contact The Secretary before the next LUSC exec meeting, which is 16th February. There wasn’t a date set by Leeds United for this Thorp Arch event, so you need to be able to get the day off at short notice I am afraid, but according to Eric Ware and Makaela Rolph, who won it 2015, and 2016 respectively, it was a good day out and the players were happy for photos to be taken etc. As soon as the other events are organised, the branch will let you know.

Away Games

We will be ordering the gold members tickets for Ipswich on Weds 8th February, or at least trying to. Once tickets have been secured, we will let everyone who has managed to get a ticket know and then communicate the departure times and details in the usual fashion. Fingers crossed please! We are currently taking bookings for Birmingham on Friday 3rd March, we will be running a bus to this fixture. Deputy Andy Yates will be running a minibus to Fulham, we are happy to order branch members tickets for this fixture but please get in contact directly with Mr Yates. We will be running a bus to Reading, tickets permitting, but no plans at present to run a bus to Brentford.

Memberships

Membership Secretary as usual MIA. The Chairman has decided that memberships will close in April, as in they will close at midnight on April 1st. And no, this is not a joke! The website is generating more new members. The MPO would like to reiterate that admin on the closed group Harrogate Whites Supporters Club page do not add new members to this group until we get their £7 membership fees. There will be a cull next season.

Website

After the MPO went off on one and wrote that blog piece there was a massive spike of about 2500 views to the website. Paul Yates has requested that more of the website links are shared on our normal facebook page, to increase publicity. Any comments on this are welcome. If anyone is reading this via the facebook link that I have shared this on, then please feel free to comment. We will also consider putting a sponsor page on the website for branch members to advertise, again, only if there is enough interest.

Quiz

The Annual LUSC quiz will be held on Thursday 23rd Feb in The Eddie Gray Suite in the magnificent New East Stand. 7.30 bar  to start promptly at 8pm. Teams of four and the branch will pay the entry fee. This is open to all LUSC members and there is a pie and peas supper included. Questions will be provided by Andrew Dalton (“Stats” as I was informed by Dave Rowson on Sunday). Several rounds of questions including Leeds United, general sport, general knowledge, general football etc. The branch has won the quiz a long time ago, sadly in the last few years we have managed one trophy for joint runner up in 2009. This was a magnificent effort by The Secretary and The MPO who were flying high at the end of round 7 in first place, but failed miserably to answer any of the Leeds United questions in round 8. It was a little disappointing but demonstrates clearly how much The Chairman was missed… Our last trophy below:

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