Thank you: A message from Matt and Luke

As the season has now drawn to an end we wanted to extend our thanks to our supporters/owners.

We took the role of Chair and Vice Chair on 11 months ago, at that point we were hoping the men’s first team would be challenging for promotion. Let’s reflect on the last 11 months!

Merger

During the first few months we started to review all areas of the club and it was evidently clear we needed to review our structure and governance at the director level. This started some initial work, which has ultimately led to us working with AFC Dunstable to merge the clubs. This was done to protect both clubs and ensure we can continue to provide football for all for our town.

The merger will see us having a men’s first team, development side, U18 floodlit, EJA, JPL and youth sides across all grass roots league. Likewise, it’ll allow us to mirror that structure on the ladies side of the club.

We expect to have 100 plus teams across the club for the 2026/2027. The club will have the identity of both clubs, this isn’t the end, this is a continuation of the clubs. Our history is very much the clubs history.

We will continue with our fan owned model, our community benefit, walking football, dementia football, community groups and be proud to be the club that does so much for mental health.

This model will allow us to have a strong and real voice in Bedfordshire and across the country as our club will be one of the biggest.

We’re committed to ensuring both ladies and men’s first team play at the highest level of non league football.

Ladies football

A short while after starting our roles, we were approached by the AFC Dunstable Ladies first team to see if we could take them on. The directors, in particular Correy Voo worked tireless to get this over the line and secure a women’s first team in Dunstable.

The team have had much success this season, the work done by Luke, Michael, Neil, Amy and Wayne both on and off the pitch has been amazing, not only have they built a wonderful team, they have ensured they are self sustainable and viable. We want to grow the girls teams within the new club and there is lots of work to do in this area.

We’d also like to pass our thanks to Correy Voo and Arran Lamont our club secretary for supporting the team and embedding them into the DTFC structure.

Men’s first team

This has been a really difficult season, the directors worked hard to ensure we had a very good playing budget, we had challenges in pre-season and despite a reasonable start Steve O'Reilly decided to stand down.

The new managers I’m afraid couldn’t change the tide, which ultimately lead to us speaking with Micky and Steve to come in and save us from relegation.

Supporters won’t know this but Micky and Steve were given a list of around forty players that we couldn’t approach again due to league rules, so they very much had an uphill challenge.

They worked through Christmas and New Year to get players in and get them fit.

We appreciate all of what Micky and Steve have done, keeping us up was the target and they did that with a game to spare. It was vital the club retained step 5 football, especially with the merger, neither AFC or Town wanted to start at step 6, this was unthinkable and added a lot of pressure.

Youth Section

We made some brave decisions around our floodlit side just before the season started, because of this we have seen around 15 boys from the youth section playing for this side and the team is now having 60% of the players playing from the youth section, this will increase next season.

The EJA elite side of the club has also been a success with our U13 winning their league and the U14’s being in the League and County Cup Finals, they are also in contention for the league title.

The U13's lost their League Cup Final in the last few minutes.

The U16 Chiltern side won the league and league cup, this Sunday they’re in the county cup final.

The U18 boys are in the County Cup Final next Wednesday (29th April), having won it at U16 last season.

The ladies U18 are in the League Cup Final this Saturday (25th April), the U13 girls won their league as well.

Our development centre under Corin Nagle has been producing lots of teams for us, through the season they have won countless tournaments and events that have been put on for them. The future is looking very bright under this development centre.

ALL our youth sides have been amazing this season and both of us have seen most of the teams play, we couldn’t be prouder seeing them wearing our badge. Keep on keeping on.

A special mention to the coaches this season because of the vast amounts of work we have been doing around the merger has meant we haven’t connected in as much as we’d have

liked. Coaching football teams requires a lot of hard work, parents and players, please ensure you say thank you to your coaches, it’s a challenging and thankless task at times, a little thank you goes a long way.

Community Groups

Again, between us we have been to most of the community groups, walking football, dementia football, recreational football, MEN United, Chums and Crumbs, Pete’s Breakfast Clubs at the Fly by Café and the Soul & Sphere groups. The outreach and community work Andrew, Pete, Lee Nutley, Molly, Angel, Roberto, Bob, Harrison, Ian and others do is simply amazing and has an impact on so many people that live in our community.

Thank you.

Volunteers

Again, to all our match day volunteers and volunteers across the club, a huge thank you.

We’d like to thank Neil Barker one of our Directors who has again been at our homes games getting your 50/50 money out of you, we can’t underestimate the value of his work and the impact it has on us as a club.

A special mention to George Lewington who was the Directors 'Volunteer of the Season'.

George has been around the club for a number of years, over the last couple of seasons he has started to do photography across the women's, men's, U18 and youth teams, he has also done all our graphics for social media. We can’t describe how many hours he puts in each week for this football club, he has continued to go above and beyond for our club, not bad for a 15 year old! Thank you George.

Finally, we’d like to thank our club & match day sponsors, all our supporters for sticking by us this season, it’s been hard, very hard at times, but having you support us and the players has kept us going through the season.

We really hope that next season will bring about a lot of success for our men’s first team and continued success across all other parts of the club.

We will endeavour to keep owners and supporters update as we progress across the summer with the merger, as always, ANY questions please do reach out.

Matt and Luke