the cttee hope you had a fantastic Xmas and are looking forward to the new year. Despite the challenges of 2020 we're grateful that we at least got to play some hockey and look forward to when we can play again.

Some updates from the cttee;
entering the year as Covid had prevented our summer fundraising activities (academy days and end of season) we started the year with real financial concerns. Not withstanding that we decided that it would not be the right time to increase fees and with a number of fundraising applications submitted hoped that we would nonetheless be able to balance the books.

I'm delighted to say that Mark Cook-Abbott and Heidi Cook-Abbott made some donations/sponsored the club sufficiently for us to be able to secure match funding to purchase a long desired ball machine for the club.

Additionally a small grant from Sandy Charities had been gratefully received and we have an outstanding application for funding from the National Lottery Community Fund. However we still are facing a potential funding gap.

Essentially there are two elements to funding the club; the ongoing costs of affiliations and insurance (that means we can play competitively and safely) and the costs of training/coaching, pitch hire and teas.

The training, coaching and the core costs should be covered by your membership fees. The weekly costs for pitch hire and teas are contributed to by your weekly match fees.

We have been unable to provide teas for every match and it's probable that when we can return to play there will be further restrictions on providing teas. we have been the only club (I believe) to continue to offer teas when we can in a Covid safe way. However we have not taken the decision to reduce the match fee (when teas are not available) because we hope any surplus generated will close the gap and mean we can continue to keep the overall membership fee frozen to 2019/20 levels (particularly in the absence of the ability to hold fundraising events).

We hope that you are happy with our decisions thus far and we will be able to navigate this really tough year financially. But we will keep you posted.

The most important thing for the cttee is to ensure that we maintain a happy healthy playing environment. If Covid is causing you financial problems please do not hesitate to get in contact with the cttee via Alex Richards.

On the question of playing our current intelligence is that we're unlikely to return to playing until mid Feb.

We'll keep you posted on both issues!

In the meantime - thank you for your continued support and for making SSHC the happy, family club it has been during 2020.