Here’s the latest from Ottery St Mary Football Club chairman Mikey Ringer.

He writes: As a club we do not have admission charges on our gate. However, what we do have, are a number of Club Charities that we support and so folk attending games are asked to donate what they can afford either on the gate or in the clubhouse.

Over the course of the past season Hospiscare, a charity that is close to the hearts of many people connected to the club, have been one such charity. We also hold a monthly bingo fund raiser for them. Of course, the current Coronavirus pandemic and ‘Lockdown’ has ended this season and so ended our fund raising.

That means the time has come for a counting up of funds accumulated and we raised £737 on the gate and £3,468 on the bingo.

Looking ahead to when can return to a normal life as a football, next season, Hospiscare will continue as the club’s principal charity and we are going to be having the charity on the playing kits of all our teams from youth all the way to the senior teams.

There will also be a change to the ladies’ team and their chosen charity for next season and the Otterettes will now be supporting Little Princess Trust. This is a charity that provides real hair wigs to children suffering from hair loss and the charity also funds vital research into childhood cancers.

I cannot stress the importance of supporting charities in the todays society and it’s something we feel so strongly about within the club.

On another note, and one I find very annoying having to raise ‘again’ and that is that over the course of the past week the club changing rooms were broken into. Thankfully the perpetrators were caught by the police and dealt with by the full force of the law. Look, it’s not rocket science! Individuals breaking into our property are breaking the Covid-19 restrictions and the more folk that do that, the longer we are going to be denied our ‘return to normal life’. We are all missing our football terribly, but all connected with the club realise that we must adhere to what is expected us of us during the Lockdown. The police are now ramping up their patrols of our grounds and are also issuing fines while we, as a club, will certainly peruse folk who trespass. It’s not something we are happy having to do, but we all want to stay safe and healthy and get back playing football. Yes, we are all ‘climbing the walls’ in our respective home – but needs must. Stay safe everyone and let’s hope we are all back together in a football environment before too long!