The Senior Tigers was created by the football club as their Contribution to the ITV Year of Promise. It was launched at the home game with Exeter City on 4th December 1999, when seat tickets were made available to Senior Citizens free of charge.
There was a great response for membership and a volunteer/volunteered committee of 8, consisting of match day workers for the club and long serving pass holders, was brought together. The Committee and the club then made plans to launch the club.
The inaugural meeting took the form of a lunch held on the 3rd February 2000 and hosted by the club. From then onwards the Committee took over and have arranged subsequent meetings.
In March we had the pleasure of listening to John McGovern’s frank views on his football career. April saw a different approach when our PA announcer Martyn Hainstock presented a fun quiz which proved very popular. The final meeting before the summer break had John Davies speaking on his work with the school of excellence and football in the community, proved very enlightening.
Summer over, we restarted in September with a visit from Mike Morris from Radio Humberside who spoke about the stations involvement with local sport. October was very successful with Stadium manager John Cooper and Acting Chief Superintendent Paul Cheeseman of Humberside police giving an insight into match control and I’m sure everyone found the opportunity to visit the control room very interesting. October saw our first outing when we took a party of 48 members to the McAlpine Stadium at Huddersfield to view the facilities. This provided very popular and we hope to arrange a further ground visit during the spring of this year.
Novembers meeting brought ex-player Steve Moran to give an insight into his career. The final meeting of 2000 was a Christmas Lunch when the Committee invited members of the Club as an appreciation of the help given to the Committee in arranging the Senior Tigers events.
Last month saw the visit of cricketer Mark Robinson to round off the first year of Senior Tigers.
The annual membership fee of £5 covers each calendar year from January to December. Anyone who has not yet renewed, please do so today as the membership fee is our main source of income. The monthly raffle has proved popular with many prizes being donated, and the profits have given us the opportunity to sponsor the training of Mark Greaves (£50) and to donate £100 to John Davies Football in the Community and £25 to the Radio Humberside Hospice Appeal.
Alan our treasurer, has produced a balance sheet which will show you all how we have made use of our funds. Alan will be pleased to answer any questions in a moment.
Finally it is the fervent hope that we the Senior Tigers Club will continue to go from strength to strength and we hope members will enjoy the programme of meetings in the months ahead.
I should like to thank the Football club for their assistance in the administration of Senior Tigers and also for the use of these facilities for our meetings. Thanks also to all the committee members for all their work to make the Senior Tigers a success.
