CHAIRMAN’S PROGRAMME NOTES – SEPTEMBER & OCTOBER 2025
Whilst I would encourage everyone to continue to buy our fantastic matchday programme (thanks to Mick and Peter alongside all the contributors for the countless hours of work that goes into it), I will also now provide a copy of my programme notes at the end of each month so they are available to a wider audience here on our website. So to kick things off here we have the notes from both September’s and October’s programmes:
St Albans – 13th September 2025
We are now 5 weeks into the season and it’s been a good August for Hitchin Town FC on the pitch. At the time of writing we have played 10 competitive fixtures and only lost one of these. We have a 7 game unbeaten run and have achieved 4 clean sheets. This gives us a reasonable start in the league and means we remain in both the FA Cup and FA trophy at present. This definitely puts us on the right track for achieving our objectives. The really hard work Michael and his team put in during the “break” to recruit the right players who wanted to play for Hitchin Town certainly seems to have added the required quality to our squad and we look forward to seeing how this progresses over the coming months.
It’s great to welcome St Albans City FC to Top Field today and to be in the Second Qualifying Round of the FA Cup. It’s already been an exciting journey to get here with two injury time equalisers (one against Grays Athletic and one against Potters Bar Town) leading to replays. Meaning we have already played four FA Cup games in the last month!
The club and the players recognise how special the FA Cup is as a competition, and it was absolutely fantastic to see an attendance of 635 for our Potters Bar Town replay on a Tuesday night with just three days notice. I am sure today’s attendance will also be impressive with a good number of travelling fans from St Albans who I hope will all enjoy the matchday experience at Top Field. Thanks to all of our staff and volunteers who do so much every week to ensure we offer the best possible service. Up to 40 volunteers and staff are typically involved with delivering a matchday at Top Field on the day itself, this includes – grounds staff, bar and catering staff, marshals and security, car parking marshals, turnstiles and ticketing, media, 50/50 sellers and first aid as well as many more. We can never say thank you enough for all of their support in enabling us to do everything we do at Hitchin Town FC and enable us to deliver such a high quality matchday. From me on behalf of the management committee thanks for all of the hours they have already put into our matches so far this season and we look forward to continuing to reward that effort with the standards on the pitch and the results that everyone deserves.
AFC Dunstable – 27th September 2025
When it comes to praising the fantastic support shown to this club by our supporters I really don’t mind sound liking a broken record. The support you all continue to show really is incredible and it manifests itself in all sorts of ways. The most obvious being the fantastic attendances both at Top Field and when we travel away from home as well as the noise as you get behind cheering on the team – this really does mean so much to them and pushes them on to give those extra few percent that are needed.
However, I also recognise the discretionary financial contributions you all make to the club in any way you can, whether its buying food and drink at a game, purchasing your 50/50 tickets as you come through the turnstiles or purchasing merchandise from the club shop.
When we reintroduced the club shop in 2021 we couldn’t ever have imagined the level of success it has now achieved. It’s great to see lots of HTFC merchandise when you walk around the town centre and of course filling the terraces at Top Field. Our merchandise provides a welcome additional income stream for the club as well as driving improved brand awareness out in the community. We work hard to provide a good quality wide range of products – but please let us know if you have any suggestions of what you would like to see us adding to the range in the future. Below are just some of the headlines to show how successful the club shop and our online store have been so far since re-launching in 2021:
- Replica Shirts sold – 1019
- Hitchin Town Scarves sold – 717
- Hitchin Town Bobble Hats sold – 598
- Historic programmes sold (10p each) – 7508
- Pick and Mix sweet cups sold– 983
So thank you for supporting the club in this way, please continue to buy your merchandise and proudly show the community your support for Hitchin Town FC!
Welwyn Garden City – 11th October 2025
Many of you will be aware of the reports of crowd related incidents at our recent home game against AFC Dunstable. Following this match the club moved quickly to complete a full investigation and gathered a large number of witness statements from supporters, volunteers, staff and players. This report has been passed on to the FA to assist them with their investigation. Obviously at this stage, with that investigation ongoing, I am not able to comment any further on the allegations made relating to that specific match.
However, I did feel it is important to reflect on the fantastic environment we have created at Top Field. Everyone involved in the club is extremely proud of the safe and welcoming environment. The hard work of all the volunteer team over a number of years has helped to attract a much more diverse supporter group through the turnstiles and we are particularly pleased with how many large family groups we see at games on a Saturday afternoon. It is critical that we all work together to maintain that environment and ensure everyone continues to feel safe and welcome when the visit Hitchin Town FC.
Your vocal support this season in particular does make a real difference to the team and they are all very grateful for how you all get behind them on a matchday. Please ensure that support remains positive. Foul and abusive language will not be tolerated at Top Field or from our fans when we are visiting away clubs. We must all keep our zero tolerance approach to this. If you witness behaviours that are not in keeping with this then please report this as soon as possible to a steward so that action can be taken immediately. If we don’t work together to maintain the standards that we all expect then any incidents can not only cause harm to the individuals involved but also have a big impact on the club – damaging our reputation in the community and resulting in sanctions from the FA.
Also please be reminded that you can contact safeguarding@hitchintownwomenfc.co.uk should you wish to raise any issues following any matches.
Our Code of Conduct is displayed around the ground, on our website and in this programme.
Thanks for your continued support.
Northwood – 25th October 2025
It is important to reflect on the huge amount of effort our team of volunteers put in to run Hitchin Town FC. It is absolutely true that without our volunteers there would not be a Hitchin Town FC for us all to enjoy. We are very fortunate to have developed a large team of volunteers at the club, some performing some very visible roles on matchdays, others performing equally critical roles but behind the scenes. Over the past 5 years in particular we have focussed on improving the quality of everything we do as a club and ensuring we can deliver as professional an experience as possible to supporters, players, visiting officials, our sponsors and everyone who interacts with the club. This has clearly paid off and we can see how this has been well received by the community, not least through our growth in attendances. The standards we set ourselves do however mean that we need more and more volunteers all the time to deliver what we aspire to achieve.
Every single week nearly 40 people volunteer time to make this club great. I won’t capture everyone’s role here, but this can include; our fantastic grounds staff team keeping the pitch pristine, the team administering everything in the background and also keeping all of the finances on track, the volunteers who produce and publish all of our media content, a team managing our relationships with sponsors, as well of course, everyone making the matchday experience run so smoothly week in week out. It is a huge undertaking to keep everything on track, and I am so proud of the effort each and every individual puts in to consistently deliver.
Whilst we do have a great number of volunteers we can always do with extra pairs of hands. If you feel you would like to get involved in any way and can dedicate even a small amount of time to supporting the club then please get in touch by emailing Kate Deller at volunteer@hitchintownfc.club
By Paul Sprague