Chairman Colin Jackson gave his thoughts on his recent award as "Volunteer Of The Year Award"
"I would like to apologise for the time it’s taken to get around to posting something from myself after being announced as the National winner of the Volunteer Of The Year at the FAW grassroots football awards at Cardiff on Friday. As you can appreciate it had been a couple of hectic days and then Sunday it was back to reality as we had a busy day down at the ground staging a home fixture for Wrexham AFC ladies.
Firstly I would like to thank everyone who kindly took the time out to vote on my behalf when I was originally nominated for the award some months back. Secondly a huge thanks to everyone who has posted some lovely comments on our official Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as all the texts and private telephone calls I have received congratulating me on my award.
For anyone who knows me well enough I don’t really do any of this for personal recognition for me it has and always must be about the club. So while I am very grateful for the award what’s more pleasing is that nomination has not only helped raise the profile of the club but more importantly given it the opportunity to showcase all the wonderful work that goes on by so many people at our club.
What the last few days has also made me to do is reflect on my time at the club and looking back it’s hard to believe it was all of 36 years ago when I pulled on a shirt for the first time as a 20 year old to play for Penycae. What followed was an amazing time playing with and against some of the best players in the area when thankfully money was not the motivation for playing but one of the greatest things to come out of that time was some lifelong friendships. My first taste of the committee side of things came after I joined it as a player’s rep before eventually working my way up to joint Chairman with Stuart Griffiths which I have held for nearly 18 years now.
Then in November 2005 I was part of a very small committee which made that brave and bold decision to take on the lease of the ground. Hindsight is a wonderful thing as they say and looking at it now it was the right call but at the time none of us knew really what we were taking on. So to see the club which in 1982 had just one team and facilities which were ridiculed for many years to where it is today, two senior teams, seven youth teams, one girls team and facilities that are now used as a benchmark to encourage other clubs to do the same does fill me with a lot of pride and satisfaction.
I would like to personally pay special thanks to Stuart Griffiths, Stephen Griffiths, David Lovell, Andrew “Budgie” Griffiths and Chris “Quack” Price who were part of that small committee for all their hard work, support but more importantly their friendship on what was a very difficult but very rewarding time for the club.
Whilst in Cardiff it was great to hear all the complimentary comments about the club from various people in different aspects of Welsh football as well as seeing the video of our ground being played on the various video screens during the presentation and then at half time out on the pitch. What we must never forget there have been hundreds of people who have contributed to the success of the Club both on and off the pitch and as a club we will always remain extremely grateful. Sadly there are some of them fantastic people who are no longer with us today but I am sure they would be extremely proud of everything that the Club has achieved and where it is today. I would finally like to finish by once again thanking everybody for their support and dedicate my award to everybody who has been a part of the incredible Journey of Penycae Football Club."