Around 200 staff volunteered their time to take 3000 donation calls from 7pm to Midnight on Friday March 14th taking around £100K in donations. Throughout the evening there were magicians, tarot readers, tattooists and singers all on hand to ensure all had a fun night. All teams had a sporting theme in this case football; picture shows the staff in Meadowside kit kindly donated for the evening.

Picture shows steering group of BUPA staff responsible for managing a voluntary call centre to take Sports Relief donation calls.

The annual Trafford Sports Awards Evening was held in February to recognise special achievers in sport within the borough of Trafford during 2007. Our Club Chairman, John Burnett, was presented with the "Unsung Hero in Sport Award" beating a host of very strong nominations. This follows on from last year's success when both Dave Stead and the Club itself won awards. John was recognised for his services to grassroots football, which span a continuous period in excess of 30 years. He was one of the founder members of Meds where he has moved from coach to manager to Secretary and currently, Chairman. In addition to this, John has had a long active role within the running of the Timperley & District Junior League where he also holds the position of chairman. His involvement in football does not stop there - he is also a member of the Altrincham & District FA committee and is in charge of the District FA Youth Team. John will now attend the Greater Manchester regional awards ceremony in April and compete with similar winners from the other 9 boroughs.

The picture shows John being presented with his trophy and certificate by Jonny Cowan, a top international table tennis player. The other picture shows John with Sue Richardson and Dave Stead who also attended the evening.

Representatives of the Club, who are members of the Manchester FA Coaches Association, enjoyed an opportunity to meet Sir Trevor Brooking recently at the Manchester FA headquarters in Salford. Sir Trevor is the FA's Director of Football Development. The purpose of his visit was to introduce the new FA Skills Coach Programme to the Coaches Association. The programme is aimed at developing 5-11 year old children and introduces new methods of coaching, some of which were demonstrated on the all weather pitch to a group of volunteer attendees. Sir Trevor believes that this initiative will ultimately provide future England teams with a higher standard of player - with maybe one or two from our own talented youngsters !

The picture below shows Dave Stead, Pierce Moloney, Steve Coy, Andy Stead, Dan Shea and Andy Gater with Sir Trevor at the evening's event.

An American team visited from Irmo Varsity in South Carolina. After a close game the Meds U14 girls won 3-2. The visitors had toured Scotland and were on their way down to London after stopping in Manchester. The whole day went brilliantly with a buffet laid on after the match and Meds presented the opposition with shirts, a signed ball and a pennant. Irmo asked us to visit them in the near future, a promise manager Dave Pollitt is certainly contemplating. Click here for more photos.

This year's (06/07) "Team of the Year" award went to the all-conquering U11s Eagles. In what was a great season for the team they finished as league champions and cup winners. The team almost made it a treble success but was knocked out of the Manchester FA Youth Cup in the semi-finals. All the players received a special individual Team of the Year trophy at the Meds Presentation Evening. The boys continued their success winning the Meadowside Tournament in May and the Plate competitions at other Tournaments in Blackpool. Congratulations to Steve and Pat and all the team.

•  3 Lions FC is an eight to twelve week football coaching course designed by the FA specifically for girls and boys to assist them to move from playing football at school to playing for an affiliated FA Charter Standard Club.
•  It offers young people a quality football experience coached by FA qualified coaches or teachers.
•  It gives players the opportunity to improve and develop their football techniques and skills in a safe and well organized environment.

This year sees the Club celebrate its 30th Anniversary and to mark the special occasion, the Club held a Gala Dinner Dance at Lancashire County Cricket Club at which over 270 people attended. Amongst the attendees were players and managers past and present as well as parents, relatives, friends and sponsors of the Club. The evening was a major success with guest speaker Fred Eyre entertaining everyone with some side-splitting stories of his life in football. It was also a special occasion for 2 particular people. Firstly, John Rushton our Club President who is not known to many because he now lives in Cyprus and has done for some time. John flew over specially to be at the celebrations. We owe a lot to John and his son Kevin (who also attended) because these were the people responsible for setting up this great Club of ours way back in 1977. The Club presented John with a special embroidered Meds polo shirt to take back home with him. Secondly, our chairman, John Burnett who is also a founder member of the Club and has been involved for the full 30 year duration. John was presented with a glass trophy in recognition of his work for the Club.

It was also interesting to see 4 founder members of the very first Meadowside team from 1977. These were Andy Burnett, Kevin Rushton, Paul Eccles and Mike Goring. Mike, of course is well known to current members as he is the manager of one of our U12s teams. Paul is also back involved, helping to coach the U7s kids. We now look forward to what the next 30 years brings - the Premiership perhaps !!

On 21st February 2007, Sue Richardson and Dave Stead attended the Trafford Sports Awards Presentation Evening.
AFC Urmston Meadowside has won the Trafford Sports Award for Club of the Year, Dave Stead has won Trafford Sports Award Volunteer of the Year.
Sue would like to congratulate Dave and also everyone in the club for all your hard work - this is a team effort and it takes all of us to make it work - well done. Sue