EXCLUSIVE: Ian Dawson: "It has been great to be a part of the process"
Sportsdesk • Published 6 Feb 2012 17:01
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"I can remember sitting on the Park End terrace after the final game against Tiverton in January 2011, with my seven month old son Christopher asleep in my arms, and I just cried my eyes out.
There was a very real possibility that we'd just witnessed the last ever match at Stag Meadow, no more senior football in Windsor ever.
I was upset most of all for Christopher, he may grow up never having a true local team to support. Chances are he'd end up following some random Premiership team on television that didn't really mean anything.
At least I'd had 22 emotional years, he hadn't even had a full season.
Windsor & Eton's roller coaster was firmly on the up slope after the 1995/96 season when we won promotion and scored more than 100 goals. But in 2011 we were thrown off in mid-season.
Kevin Stott stepped into the substantial breach as founder director of the new set up and set about creating a football club from scratch, we didn't have so much as a name.
It's been exciting and interesting to have been a part of that process. In particular, with developing the key building blocks of self-sustainability and community.
I think these are core values that maybe the old club lost sight of somewhere along the way. It's been great to be involved with a lot of the start-up activities including organising the name ballot and designing the badge. I'm also heavily involved with the Supporters Club and Scotty the Stag.
One of the things we were keen to do once the new club was formed was to let people know we'd launched and support our community aims.
To that end we took Scotty to a number of fundraising summer fairs in Windsor and got involved with various Thames Hospicecare fund raising projects such as the Midnight Walk and Santa Dash. Looking more to the first team I can think of two standout highlights, getting a crowd of 806 for the Egham Town game on December 27 and the visit of Raynes Park Vale earlier that month.
Kevin deserves a lot of praise for supporting the free entry initiative and his unshakeable belief in just how much of a positive effect it would have. This provides undeniable proof that there is enough interest to justify Windsor FC playing at a much higher level.
The challenge for us now is to tap into that support on a regular basis. If we can do that in tandem with delivering the self sustainability projects the platform is there for Windsor FC to establish itself as a competitive force much further up the non-league pyramid.
My second highlight is the victory over Raynes Park when the score was 9-0 and the linesman disallowed a possible 10th goal. He was met with a hail of good natured boos from the Windsor FC Youth Under 9s who were stood behind him. The linesman later said he was amused at being cast as a pantomime villain. Very entertaining for all present, but also great to see big groups of youngsters coming down and buying into the Windsor experience.
As a negative, I've been disappointed not to see more of the local youngsters getting a chance with the first team. I felt with the new club this would become more of a feature but so far it hasn't really been the case. Hopefully this will improve as the links between the first team and the youth set up become more embedded."
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