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.