Welcome to Felixstowe & Walton United Football Club
Welcome to the Seasider’s official website, 2016 was the dawn of a new era for the club with an ever growing youth section combined with the building of a new clubhouse, all with one thought in mind, To take the club and all its teams, both senior and junior, to a better place on the football map!
Hopefully 2017 will see us consolidate our place and go from strength to strength.
Join us on the Journey, there’s room for everyone!
Race Night Update- All Races and Horses have now been sponsored. We are now inviting people to become a Trainer for each horse for £2 each and if your horse wins its race the trainer will win £8 prize money. Contact Chris Daynes or Julie Beecroft to take part.
An Inside View of The Fireworks Spectacular
Chris Daynes Story from November 2015 to November 2016
THIS IS A MUST READ
There’s a point every year when I join the band of helpers in front of the clubhouse and watch the culmination of our efforts lighting up the night sky. I usually get quite emotional at that point, a mixture of relief, exhaustion and pride in looking across to the thousands of people filling the spectator areas and saying “we did this!”.
People forget, or don’t realise, that this event is organised by a dedicated team of volunteers with no outside assistance or funding.
There was a moment on Sunday evening where we all turned to each other and said "how the hell is this the 9th year!" It seems like five minutes between each display.
My daughter Jess went to school on Monday and her friend Freddie told her that her Dad was amazing, Freddie described me as the one with the grey hair and microphone! I had dark brown hair 9 years ago before the first event, that’s what the stress has done to me! After all, every year we risk the finances of the football club we love and serve to spend many thousands of pounds of its money putting on the firework display, hoping and praying that everything comes together and we first of all don’t lose money, but hopefully we make lots of money to fund the footballing side of the club. I’m proud to say over the 9 years we have raised £50,000 for the club as well as many thousands for local good causes too.
Looking back to our first event in 2008, the committee took some convincing when I went to them and said i’d taken my Grandson Jacob to the fireworks in Ipswich and found it an uncomfortable experience, very dark, packed in like sardines desperately trying not to lose hold of his hand, having to park miles away. But the reason it was so busy was because people love fireworks and will pay to see them! Felixstowe hadn’t had a public display of its own for years, we had a perfect site and location, what if we could put on a family orientated event and fill the void Felixstowe was missing? So, meetings were held, a firework display company booked, several thousands of pounds paid out with no way of knowing if 100 or 1000 would show up! To our amazement and relief 2,500 came to that first display and we’ve never looked back, culminating in a record 4,000 attendance on Sunday.
I cringe when I look back at the event in 2008! We had no experience and its scary to think that we had no additional lighting, no council permission, no risk assessments…… even the public address system was a man with a small portable speaker standing at the front of the clubhouse!. What would have happened if something went badly wrong? (shudders). Now of course its a finely tuned and expertly organised event, not due to any outside assistance, but due to our own knowledge and experience each year looking at what works and what doesn’t work and tweaking things here and there to continually improve the whole event. We still get issues of course, thats to be expected from an event of this size but, touch wood, we’ve never had any major problems.
One thing that has changed over the years is the amount of paperwork, licences and permissions, risk assessments, added insurances that have to be completed and approved before work actually starts on the main event organisation. I start work on all these every May/June, hoping to tie it all up by August ready to start the monumental task of organising tickets, posters, sponsors, first aid, caterers, stall holders and fairgrounds, publicity and promotion, entertainment, ticket outlets, online sales, social media and a 101 other things that go into putting the event on and making sure it runs smoothly. The logistics of actually selling 2,700 advance tickets is quite a feat in itself!. This in addition to doing all our day-to-day tasks to keep the club running, and this year especially project managing the new build. No wonder Freddie says I’ve gone grey!
A week before every display I start checking the weather forecasts. We have had more than our fair share of bad weather on our firework day, we’ve even had the fire brigade out in previous years pumping rainwater from the site, and last year the pea-souper fog that never lifted all day gave us our lowest crowd for 4 years (2,577). A dry, clear, crisp day can make the difference between breaking even and making a lot of money. As the week went on the forecast for Sunday got worse, predicting strong winds and heavy showers. But unbelievably we managed to escape the worst and crowds came flocking in. The rain started a few minutes after the display and within an hour the grass was swamp-like and the car park resembled a lake. How lucky were we?! If it had started an hour earlier we would have been stuffed!
Another factor each year is the increased publicity and promotion we are receiving. Its partly because of the higher profile of the football club at the moment, and to word of mouth from successful firework events in previous years, but this year we appear to finally have arrived. For some reason, over the years we’ve struggled to convince the 'powers that be’ that we have a event for the whole town that is worth them promoting. It should be up there with the carnival, christmas light switch on, road races and Art on the Prom, but it never has been in there eyes until now. Without the football club, Felixstowe wouldn’t have a public display. Banner-gate helped our cause as well. The publicity and public support generated when it was revealed that Suffolk County Council had cut down our main source of advertising -the event banners around the town- was a huge boost. All publicity is good publicity and all that! However, its still puzzling that we can visit 150 shops in the town and only a handful will display a poster for us….. although every shop seems to be plastered with posters when a circus or funfair comes to town! A strange one that is.
Being heavily involved in the club as I am, I’ve always been aware of the incredible band of volunteers behind the scenes but i’m still always taken aback on firework day when they all turn up, giving up their entire Sunday to all go into overdrive and turn the site from a playing field into a event arena in a few hours ready for the gates to open to the public. After 9 years, everyone knows what they are doing now and its humbling to witness them all working so hard before, during and afterwards, As soon the display finishes the team sweep across the site, clearing, dismantling, cleaning and packing away, everyone beaming from another huge success. Although I always get lots of pats on the back, I’m just a small cog in the large wheel that puts this on every year, without everyone pulling together as they do, we simply would not have an event like this.
Every year I joke that i’m retiring from being the main organiser. Every year nobody believes me! There’s challenges ahead for next year including a different site layout due to the new building, but theres also exciting new possibilities. Much improved spectator facilities including more toilets, facilities for the disabled, baby changing areas and improved power sources. The public now see this as a major event and we’ve been overwhelmed by the response to the actual firework display. Its up to us to not only maintain that level, but build on it in our 10th year. To do that, we could do with more people joining the dedicated firework committee. Many hands make light work, so if you think you could offer some assistance, not just on the day itself, but in the preparation then please do come forward. You can then sit back and watch the 20 minute display with pride in the knowledge that "we did this!”.
Before I go and start the task of clearing firework debris off the main pitch (see? it never stops!), I want to thank every helper, sponsor, ticket seller and attendee. You all played your part in our most successful event yet, thank you.
Chris
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