Week notes | November 28 2020
The week that went from 0 to 100, from lockdown to hundreds of fans being allowed back in.
This weekend — international break — I was meant to be hanging our with friends in Margate. Instead…
Drumroll — I spent a lot of time working with Directors and colleagues on plans to have fans back in next week! Certainly wasn’t expecting this to happen so quickly but we’re in a really good place having done 1.5 pilots already (one full pilot, and all the lead up for a second before fans were banned from elite sport events, three days in advance of the game). There are 7 documents/pieces of information required by the FA for sign-off before we can move forward so this amending/updating our matchday protocols, our risk assessment, developing a comms plan and a ticketing strategy for the gameplus developing a target capacity. I mean, this week was meant to be quiet, with the international break, but has been turned on its head and it’s another weekend of work to get ready.
This has led to a number of questions around how to keep fans as safe as possible. How do you encourage fans to sing/shout less, but still involved in the game? How do you create “as normal” an experience as possible when nothing is normal right now? We’re hoping it will be a Dripping Pantastic experience (hint hint).
What else?
- Drafted a tender for somebody to come and redesign/rebuild our website. If you think you know exactly what to do with it, please apply!
- Tried three times to connect with a friend currently running women’s football in Morocco. Kelly — can we try again please?!
- Calls with people involved with Sussex Uni and Brighton Uni, and secondary school about plans for a dual career footballing pathway. Also will be looking for experts to help shape this so keep an eye open if you know of somebody with top experience in developing football pathways and dual career programmes.
- Ran through the health check on our performance and support systems with the FA. Plenty to work on but useful info to have to help prioritise.
- COVID COVID COVID… advising players, running tests, calling doctors, checking risk assessments, updating protocols.
- Check in with the Sussex FA on the FA’s new women’s football strategy to figure out how we can help hit targets.
- Women’s Sport Collective zoom lunch — meeting other women working in sport to see what lessons we can learn from each other.
- Check in on all things comms related with a couple of volunteers. Proud of how our video content has improved over the last year and really keen to keep building on that.
