Work Behind the Scenes at The Chats

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Now the season is ended I thought I would give people an insight to the work I do at Chatham Town.

WEBMISTRESS TO PHOTOGRAPHER!! My work at the club is completely voluntary and at times can take up large amounts of time. My involvement with the club is to run the website and take photographs. I have been doing this job, I think four seasons now, could even be five. I set up the existing website as it is more workable and started the first ever Chats Forum. There are many types of website out there and Chatham Town is a CMS which means you can edit, publish from anywhere. There have been times when I have been away from home and I can still edit and publish from a location, as long as I have the internet and a workstation. That’s dedication!!

WHO PICKS UP THE EMAILS? Another job is logging into the email regularly for the club. Updates for the website are submitted to me this way. The club receive many emails from all over the world. This can be requests for team sheets, programmes to wanting to purchase Chatham Town merchandise. As well as this, many emails requesting trials, this can be for the Youth side, Reserves or First team. All these emails are then forwarded to the correct member of the Club. Some of the enquiries are amazing which we receive via email. Over the years we have had enquiries regarding trials for the First team from as far as Brazil, France and Nigeria. I think probably countries abroad think that all English football teams have large budgets!!!

STRIKE A POSE!! Photography – well I do my best with the equipment that I have. At the home games you will see me sat around the stadium viewing the match from my camera. Football photography isn’t easy. Good and bad days. With photography you need to be sat in the right place and know where you think the ball is going to land and catch the players with faces forward. Remember you are viewing the match with one eye and a smaller area and of course the match is fast. As well as the match photos, I do take pictures of any presentations during the day ranging from presenting cheques, guests at the match to man of the match. Once I get home from the match it’s editing the photos and picking the best shots. These are then put on the website and forwarded for the match day programme. I am proud to say that at the beginning of the season I took it on myself to get some shots of the new Chatham Town football shirt and create a poster using my son and his friend as models. Which I feel made a lot more sales than previous years for the club. Thanks Rob Denness and Dan Ford.

FOLLOW US!! @chathamfc The new thing for the club is twitter which Mike Green set up. This is an excellent idea. As Mike normally is a very busy man at the matches, I have access to the account and during the match I update the score half time and full time on my mobile. Twitter has been linked to the official website and enables supporters to view the score live and I post feeds from other reports that I have read on twitter regarding Chatham Town Football Club.

GET VOTING!! I do hope some of the fans enjoyed the Poll which I thought I would put on in these past few weeks. It’s nice to get a response about how football supporters feel about Chatham Town being in the North division. I certain do miss not being in the South and meeting with our neighbours Sittingbourne and Faversham.

CHATHAM TOWN FC is part of my life as well as working for Tommy James Ltd (Building Contractors), volunteer work for Medway Cyrenians (homeless charity) running their website and picking up the pieces at home looking after four males.

Since running the website I have never minded criticism or new ideas. All I can say is that I can only report news on which I receive. I believe the club website isn’t used to its full potential, as it has the biggest reading audience than any other media it puts out. Just a quick “Hi” to our supporters in Australia. So yes, at times it can be very frustrating.

FINALLY!! Well I hope this gave an insight into the work I do at the Chats voluntary and hope the supporters remember the other people involved in the club who make Chatham Town what it is that includes all the Youth team Committee, Youth Managers and Assistants to the parents who help. The committee of Chatham Town each year recognise the efforts of individuals who do a lot for the club with Club Person of the Year. I won this award last year so it’s a great honour when you receive it.

REMEMBER Chatham Town are after volunteers whatever you feel you could help with. If you are interested just email the club and we can see what areas you could help us with.

Clare Denness