The 23rd Annual Presentation Evening was held at Bourne Hall on Wednesday 14th May. Chairman Dave Goldsmith welcomed everyone to the evening.
In his introductory words he mentioned that over the past two years the club had doubled in size, which was great, but it did cause the odd difficulty – the main one being this Presentation Night. As could be seen there were a lot of people in attendance and it was going to take some time to make awards to 16 teams. Dave was concerned that the younger element would become quite fractious and let their attention wander if they had to stay for the whole evening. Equally though, he was anxious that as this was the only time in the year that the club got together as a whole, that everyone should be about, at least for part of the evening.
He went on to say that in an attempt to address this the committee were going to try something different this year. The mini soccer teams were going to be dealt with completely before going on to other awards, i.e. they would have their certificates presented to them, then they would receive their Players Player of the Year awards. Following this, the two Special Awards, usually held at the end of the evening would then be presented. It was felt that these trophies should be awarded with the whole club present.
Once they had been held Dave was going to invite those in the mini sides who wanted to, to leave at this stage. He stressed this would only be an invite and if people wanted to stay on then they would be most welcome. However, those that did stay would be expected to remain seated and not then to leave until the end of the evening.
This was an experiment and the Chairman freely admitted that he was not sure as to whether it would work or not.
The Chairman then mentioned the great work that Gary Ansell was doing with the coaching of the U7’s and below. There are about 20 youngsters training at Gibraltar Rec on Saturday mornings, thus the future of the club looks rosy.
Dave then congratulated the U9B’s and the Sunday Reserves on winning their respective cups and also paid tribute to the U13’s for winning their division. He went to comment that the U14’s and the U17’s had finished runners up in their Premier Divisions, both of them for the second year running. We were also in line for some Sportsmanship Awards, but they had not been announced yet.
The Chairman then introduced the club President, John Fuller who had travelled down especially from Yorkshire to present all the awards. He also introduced the other occupants of the stage, the General Secretary, Carole Goldsmith and the Vice Chairman, Clive Searle who were going to assist to ensure that the right people got the right trophy at the right time.
An outline of the evening events was then given (with a plea that the managers when giving out the Players Player of the Year Awards, did so as quickly as possible and to reduce the number of awards to as few as possible. As it transpired this frequently did not occur and thus the committee will have to see if there is any way of speeding up these awards) and the evening then got properly underway with John making individual presentations of the Merit Certificates to all the members of the 5 mini soccer teams – U8, U9A, U9B, U10A, U10B. These are made to mark the progress the players are making, year by year, as they progress up the football ladder.
Dave and John then took it turns to invite the managers of the mini soccer teams to come up on to the stage and announce their teams Players Player of the Year. However before the U10B presentation the Chairman took time out to congratulate, one of the joint managers Natalie Austen on the birth of her third son just 9 days ago.
The various Players Player’s of the Year were:-
U8 James Skelton
U9A Max Workman
U9B Joshua Coleman
U10A Charlie Wilcox
U10B Mark Thornton.
Dave then asked the Club President, John Fuller to make the presentation of the President’s Plate. After giving the recipient much deserved and fulsome praise for his contributions to the U16 team, the Funday in particular and the club as a whole over the past 7 years, John took a great deal of pleasure in awarding the Plate to Gary Edgar.
The Chairman then came to the award that he considers to be the most prized, the Chris Trout Trophy.
This award is made each year in memory of Chris Trout who died in 1994. Chris, who was manager of the U12 at the time of his death, and also the club’s junior section General Manager, held in high esteem the values of loyalty, commitment, club spirit and enjoyment as being essential for any player playing for AFC Ewell. Thus this annual award is made to the person who during the season most ably demonstrated those attributes.
Dave then took much pleasure in welcoming to the stage, to join Ann, Sarah & Oliver Trout to make the presentation.
This year’s very worthy recipient of the Chris Trout Trophy was the U14 goalkeeper James Roughneen. Before the presentation was made the Chairman highlighted the fact that James would have been Chris’s ideal player, embodying as he did all the standards that Chris himself deemed essential for an AFC Ewell player.
That ended the first part of the evening. The Chairman then invited any mini soccer player to go if they wanted to and the mass exodus that followed indicated that the vast majority of them did. After they had left the Chairman was pleased to see that there was still a very good audience with few empty chairs. However, as the evening went on more sprung up and the Chairman felt the need to interrupt proceedings and remind people, as a matter of courtesy to the recipients of awards, not to leave until the rest of the evening had come to an end. This request was abided by.
The second half began with the presentation of 100 Appearance Awards to the following players:- Riley Roberts, Lenny Young and Andrew Mingard from the U12A’s, Harry Hancock, Fred Smailes and Josh Taylor from the U13’s, Aaron Walker, Gareth Parker and Max Harvey from the U17’s, plus Steve Walker and Nick Gomm from the Seniors.
A 200 Appearance Award was then made to Matt Boothroyde.
There then followed the announcements of the individual team Players Player of the Year Awards for the U11 teams and upwards. As far as the Youth section was concerned, these announcements, together with a suitable run down on the season performance, were given by the various team managers. Whilst the same applied to the senior Sunday Reserve team, the manager of the senior Saturday and Sunday 1st XI sides was not so confident of public speaking and so his comments etc were given by the Chairman. Some of the teams also gave ancillary awards, e.g. Managers Player of the Year.
The Players Player of the Year awards in this section went to the following:-
U11A Parimal Patel
U11B Henrik Weidner
U12A Anthony Aluko
U12B Harri Brown
U13 Alex Walker
U14 Thomas Dunn
U16 Elliott Jennison
U17 Tom Hitch
Senior Sat Steve Walker
Senior Sun 1stXi Joe Kevin
Senior Sun Res Brett Summersby
During the Sunday Senior Reserves presentation, Adam Garrett made a floral presentation to Carole in appreciation of the help she has given the team throughout the season.
A successful evening was concluded with Dave thanking John for journeying from Yorkshire to make the presentations and to Carole and Clive for their invaluable assistance during the evening.
