Happy New Year to you all. My apologies that I have not updated you for a while now, but I assure you it is only because of how busy we have been.

I have now been in post for almost 12 months and during that time we have changed certain things in which we believe are for the better.

The reputation in local schools of the community football was not great, and that was our initial objective to change. We changed that over a period of time and we now have schools calling us and asking us to go into their schools. We then needed to attract the children to the Shay for the holiday courses; we have had almost 550 different children attend the courses. We have had a total of 3184 attendees to the courses!!!!!! Quite an achievement.

We then started some after school clubs at the Shay; these are proving to be just as successful.

I think it is fair to say, that the first 12 months of this scheme have far exceeded anyone's expectations and that does not mean that we will now stand still and just plod on, we need to keep improving and keep aiming high.

This coming year I have set myself and my team some targets, initially it is paramount that we get these children down on match days, and for those of you that look at some of the photographs that we have, it is amazing that hardly any of the children have Halifax Town shirts on. I want our photos to show the children in Town shirts!!!!!!

We ran a course in the New Year for three days and we had 120 children attend, the weather was really cold but they all enjoyed it. Also they met the full squad and got autographs on some team posters that I have.

So all in all, it's been a good year and hopefully this year will be even better, so speak soon and all the best to you all,

Cheers

Lee Ashforth