A PROFESSIONAL football club is very much a part of the community and for many people it is the focal point of their lives. Arrangements for holidays, weddings and other events are organised around the football season, we have more than our fair share of such dedicated followers.

For every supporter who regularly watches us there are many others who take an interest in results and occasionally turn up at Edgar Street for the bigger matches.

Although Saturday's match attracted a reasonable gate of over 2,000 to Edgar Street, we are now without a home game for three weeks, so we have to find the players' wages and pay other bills from those net receipts of around £8,000.

The biggest difference, financially, between being in the Conference and the Football League is that sponsorship in the Football League amounts to £260,000 a year, whereas it is £15,000 in the Conference.

We, therefore, need to work hard on activities off the field by organising dinners and auctions, for instance, and we have striven hard to further enhance the reputation of the club with our involvement in the community, something that is not always appreciated. We have a Football in the Community officer who is involved in no fewer than 30 schools in the county with an after-school club for youngsters who enjoy the coaching of a team of enthusiastic and talented coaches. We have fortnightly sessions with Sun Valley Strikers where the players coach children whose parents work at Sun Valley.

We are involved with Hereford United Disabled team, people who have physical and sensory disabilities, they have actually been invited to participate in a European Tournament.

Girls Football is the latest activity for us to be involved in, we have been impressed with the enthusiasm of the fairer sex to get involved in the game.

We run our own Junior Bulls, a club for our younger supporters.

The latest is an Out of hours Childcare scheme which is being run at Edgar Street for two weeks at Easter and for four weeks in the summer in conjunction with our Football in the Community Scheme.

We have secured funding from the New Opportunities Fund towards running the scheme for three years. Basically, it's a football-orientated holiday club during the day for up to 40 children aged between eight and 16-years-old and the funds available to us are the rental of the premises.