Dean joins the Committee

Last Thursday evening, the April meeting of the CCFPA committee took place in Lady Gs at the Ricoh Arena’s G-Casino and we had a very good turnout including President Kirk Stephens, Chairman Jim Brown, Vice Chair Billy Bell and committee members Dave Bennett, Dietmar Bruck, Bob Eales, Sandra Garlick, Frank Pritchard and Mike Young. We were also very pleased to welcome new committee member Dean Nelson to his first meeting.

Dean, (who also works in the same company as Dietmar) has been a long standing Associate member of the Association and has helped out as a volunteer at a substantial number of our events in the last few years. He is particularly well known for his expertise in putting together audio-visual material to support the likes of Legends Days and other reunions. He is keen to increase the number of Sky Blue fan based film evenings showing video highlights of games featuring Sky Blue stars of the past around the community that he has been promoting already.  Dean reminded us that the first match he attended was in August 1968 (aged 8) and CCFC lost at home to West Ham 2-1 with a goal scored by the late Gerry Baker. From that early start his enthusiasm for all things Sky Blue led him to put together numerous scrapbooks (at the last count it was 28) continuing well into the 1980’s. Since then he has moved onto collecting film archives of matches from the 1920s to current times (which now reached around 700 match highlights). From 1968-2001 has has also collected the matchday programmes of the Club.

Dean Nelson

He has a well established presence on the web where fans can see clips of many of the best bits of CCFC’s past action on his site on YouTube  https://www.youtube.com/user/covonthebox.  All in all, Dean’s enthusiasm, technical expertise and visual collection of the club’s visual heritage over last 5 decades will prove a great asset to the Association. Welcome!

Amongst the items considered by the committee was a review of the CCFPA Q&A held at member Lloyd McGrath‘s Social Club recently, arrangements for today’s Association ‘Away Day’ at the Sky Blues’ important game at Peterborough United and preparations for a number of Charity games in prospect involving our Former Player members. Also considered was how best to celebrate this year’s 50th anniversary of the 1963/4 Sky Blue squad’s Division Three Championship achievement as well as plans for the next CCFPA newsletter to be published at season’s end. We also made further consideration as to the mounting of our major annual reunion Legends Day 2014 given the Club’s current exile in Northampton and heard that there was already considerable interest in our Annual Golf Day on June 5th.

Our next committee meeting is set for Thursday 8th May 2014 at the same venue and time.