August 2021 update
Monthly Branch Meeting – held at the Londesborough Club, face to face – hurrah!
Our first branch meeting of the 2021/22 season started with us raising a glass to Top Cat Cooper who sadly has passed away this weekend. He was a fine player, integral to the Revie side. RIP.
Minutes from the last monthly branch meeting in December 2020 were reviewed and passed accordingly. Minutes from the LUSC exec meetings were read out (one zoom meeting and one normal meeting – hurrah!). As the zoom meeting minutes were a little out of date regarding the information re the new Leeds United Away Ticket Policy, there was little discussion. The new policy, in summary, is better than the one that was originally put forward in the SAB meeting, but not really good enough. It was acknowledge that wherever Leeds drew the cut off line, it was bound to piss off somebody. If they left it was it has been for the last few seasons, the newbies would just be whingeing more and more. Many people in the branch were up to 99 /98 matches, so just missed out unfortunately. Some people didn’t think that the 2015/16 went go back far enough and that loyalty should be based on how long you have been following the Club. The fact that the free for all sales in the last two seasons for the larger allocations had also meant that people had failed to get a ticket was also a factor. There was surprise that the PL max allocation was 3,000. The Secretary pointed out that no home club wants to be outsung by Leeds United away fans, so why would they want to let in more Leeds fans than necessary. It was pointed out that it was different in the Cup games, as these were bound by FA rules re allocation, NOT the PL. Therefore more chance to get a Cup away ticket, should Leeds be bothered to enter a proper competitive side and not pretend and go through the motions like the last few seasons. John Mann was welcomed by Chrissie as the new Chairman of the LUSC. We will endeavour to send out the LUSC exec minutes to all branch members in the email mailout this season. We will have a purge of the email list, so if you haven’t given us your new email address or renewed, you will be deleted from it. In other LUSC news, the Club have said that the LUSC will be able to sponsor Kalvin Phillips again this season, and the fixture lists will proudly be announcing that again. The LUSC have been sponsoring Kalvin since 2015 and hope to continue to do that. There are no details yet whether there will be bat flu restrictions at games. Freedom Day has been and gone. Hopefully, seeing as the matches are outside in the open air and at least 10,000 fans got into Wembley by storming the gates and didn’t have to show any negative results or QR codes to get in, then we won’t have to. The posh people at Wimbledon were sat closer together than we are at ER and for longer (if they watched the men’s final – not in the ladies as that was over before we knew it – only joking it was an hour and a half this year), and as far as we know, all those “pilot test events” did not result in a massive increase in cases, hospitalisations or deaths. Whatever you think about the bat flu – I do not want a “Papers Please” society which basically deprives us of our freedom and liberties. This is not a George Orwell novel, nor is it 1940s post war Berlin.
Memberships
Thanks to those who have already filled in their renewal forms. You MUST fill in a form every year, I’m afraid, even if you don’t have to pay for anything. We are still waiting for fixture lists (which will be out of date as always as SkyTVisf**kings**t will muck up the fixtures every 6 weeks), so when we get those, we will send one out with your membership card in the post for all those who enclosed a stamped addressed envelope. For those that didn’t, should we be in a position to run a bus, you will get yours on the bus, or at a monthly branch meeting.
Away Travel
Until we know how many tickets we are going to get, we will not know if we can run a bus. Which relies on Leeds United actually putting the away tickets up for sale, the Leeds United ticketing website NOT imploding and the branch actually being able to order tickets. Everything will have to be done at the last minute. If we have to share a coach we will, but if we don’t get enough tickets, we won’t be running a bus unfortunately. We cannot afford to run half empty buses. If we do run a bus and you book a place, if you do not turn up, we will charge you for your place and if you are unreliable again, we won’t bother booking you on.
Ryan Edmondson Sponsorship
We are still waiting for the Club to come back to us re sponsoring Ryan, even though he is out on loan at Fleetwood now. They are aware we want to renew it. The MPO will email the Club again this week.
Fundraising
Thanks to everyone who participates in the (fixed) football card. Please continue if at all possible. We will look to arranging another raffle once we get enough stuff to raffle off.
Stan Bowles Calendar in Aid of Alzheimers Research.
Plans are now afoot for the weekend of the Everton game. Manhattans on Friday night, for the Centenary Whites do, Stan Bowles Calendar Stand outside The Peacock on match day, and then Sunday is the Bowls event at the Black Swan. See link below. It’s all in a good cause, Alzheimers is a terrible disease, please contribute. And I know it’s nothing to do with Leeds United but QPR are STILL not decided about naming a stand (they’ve got 4 of them!) after their greatest player. Bit shit really, seeing as he is their most famous player – but what can you do? They should really try do it before he dies as well. We will keep trying to gently encourage them our end.
These are the links below for the Manhattans event and the justgiving page if you can’t attend
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/hgtelusc-stanbowlesalzheimersresearch
