Chair's Report 

Welcome to the AGM and thank you for your attendance this evening.  

The main development to report this year has been the new branch website, which hopefully most, if not all of you have already visited. If not, I urge you to have a look. We thank Andy Nichol greatly for the considerable time and effort that he has put in. The website is of course always a work in progress and will continue to develop over the forthcoming year. 

Last autumn we enjoyed a good social evening with Charlie Hurley, and are hopeful that a slightly more relaxed management team might allow us to arrange at least one function with either players or management from the club in the coming season.  

The reports from the individual members of the committee have hopefully covered the main aspects of what has been going on throughout the year; it is really for me simply to thank them all very much for their efforts throughout the year. An awful lot of time and effort is spent by a number of individuals simply to keep the branch functioning, arranging membership, travel, WDS, the website and finances, even before any special events are arranged and I am grateful for their contributions, which makes my life a great deal easier. 

John Howey 

Enrolment Officer’s Report

Our membership continues to hover between 550 and 600, with 566 members in the 2008/09 season.  There is an inevitable churn of people returning to the North-East or arriving into our area or, in some cases, claiming they’ve only just discovered our existence.  Our best recruitment tool continues to be personal recommendation though an increasing inflow originates through the Branch website.  Type “Sunderland Supporters in London” into Google and www.weardownsouth.com is there proudly at the top of the list. 

Those 566 members constituted a mailing list of 347 households to which “Wear Down South” is sent.  Of those, there are currently 282 domestic and 7 overseas members who receive our group email messages, a service we regard as crucial to distribute important information as quickly as possible.  Occasionally, however, we have to send an urgent mailshot (the notice of this AGM being a case in point) to 56 households for whom we have no other means of contact.  As internet usage expands we would expect the former figure to expand and the latter reduce.  But it is remains important that members with email keep their mailboxes free from overflowing and ensure any change in their address is notified to me. 

Once more our accounts show how generous members were with their donations, which again represented about 20% of the total membership proceeds.  We have been able to freeze our fees for a number of years now, despite increases in postage charges, and these additional contributions are an important factor in being able to make Branch involvement as affordable as possible to as many as possible.  We are very grateful for this as we also are for the messages of thanks and support, too many to answer individually, which sustain the efforts of those volunteers on whom the existence and activity of the Branch depends. 

Ian Todd   

Website Report 

The new Branch web site went live in August with thanks to Andy Nichol for finishing the work

started by the much missed Dave Hillam. 

For those of you who haven’t had a look recently, log on to http://www.weardownsouth.com/ and check it out. We would also welcome your suggestions for what else you would like to see

included. 

Up to August, the previous web site saw a continued year on year increase in visits even achieving 537 hits in June and 480 in July – cricket team groupies I guess! 

Most popular: Travel remains the most popular reason for visiting the site – Tracey’s Travels generates more than double the hits of Ian’s second placed Membership section. For the last

quarter, cricket is the third most popular, and it’s pleasing to see a new entry for the Quiz Team

info in at no. 16. 

Sue Hunter 

Branch Football Report 

Due to its length, please follow the link here to read this report. 

Travel Report 

Overall I believe that we had another successful year with travel and ticket arrangements last year. This was helped with the change at the end of the year from National Express to Grand Central. This successful transition was due to lots of negotiations between your committee and their Group Executive and I thank them for their help in negotiating this deal for you. We started off with a price of £36.00 which matched the price that we were paying to National Express but soon had negotiated the price down to £34.00. These talks are still ongoing and during the summer we managed to achieve half price travel for our Senior Citizens as long as they hold a Senior Citizen Railcard. They continue to offer half price travel to members under 16.  

At last year’s AGM it was asked if we could have a different method to paying by cheques and the committee looked into this and decided that payment by BACS was a method that we could try. Towards the end of last season we asked a few of our regular travellers to try this system out to see if it could work and if there were  any pit holes in the system. We were very pleased with the way that it went and are happy for the system to go live this season.

The new idea of the ‘Match day Mobile’ has come in handy but I think that we need to launch this again, as some members believe that it is for booking onto trips or using it to request match tickets. The concept of the phone was for it to be used just on Match Days if a member was going to miss the trip for one reason or another or if they could not remember the time of the train on the way back from a trip.   

I would like to thank all the committee members for their continuing support over the past year and especially to Ritchie and Ian Todd who have been my deputy travel offers over the year. Obviously with the Branch now using Grand Central I now have to do the whole job as travel Officer myself!!  

I would also like to thank all our members who travel with us over the year, some who travel regularly and those who only travel once or twice a year it is always a pleasure to have your company and I thank you for your good behaviour and making my job as fun as it always is.  

Tracey Hawkins