Venue: Dell Cafe, St. Mary’s Stadium, Southampton. 19:30, Monday 10th August.

Various paperwork was handed out. Steve from LJFC U13s picked it all up, signed for it and is now hoping he doesn’t have to come to one of these for a while. Thanks very much Steve. LJFC were represented by not one but two keen attendees, your note-taker being the second. I have the U12 Leopards’ documentation which includes a fixture list, score cards, a handbook, and a separate list of mistakes in the handbook which have not gone unnoticed.

The following, welcoming note was handed out at the beginning together with a long agenda.

“Please note – You are strongly advised to attend meetings or send a representative, as failure to do so will incur a fine. Also …

“Fixture Secretary’s (sic) must be phoned between the hours of 16:30-18:00 Sundays reporting results only. All other enquiries will be dealt with Monday & Tuesday 18:00-21:00. Calls received outside these hours are liable to a fine.

“Regards – Bruce Moffat, Breach of Rules Chairman.”

N.B. that the date of next meeting is 14th September, 2009 at this same venue.

The league secretary’s address was quite good and underlined light-heartedly the serious point that a lot of unpaid work goes in to organising this splendid undertaking.

Please contact your referee before a game and swap contact details. N.B. that many referees are teenagers which means they are prone to flakiness about arrangements and suchlike.

A very dim view will be taken of referees being abused by idiots. There is a marking system via which referees can be given constructive criticism intelligently.

While the potential exclusion of LJFC from the Tyro league was avoided this season it seems we may have to reapply every year for arcane reasons.

All club secretaries – club affiliation numbers must be sent to The League secretary by 15th September. Penalty fines were mentioned in relation to this.

Under 12s secretary, Mr Jim Oates. Document packs should be self explanatory. Jim gave an admirably brief presentation. Thanks Jim!

Time passed …

An appeal was made to support the beleaguered Southampton FC during the forthcoming season.

On Sundays, results must be submitted by 18:00. Some fixtures secretaries will accept results via e-mail. Please check with yours if that more convenient medium is acceptable to them.

Your humble scribe may or may not have left early.

… to the 2008-9 season, and—for all the boys and girls—to primary school. The times, they are a-changin’, as George was always fond of saying to Ringo …

Thanks to all for making today’s final training session and awards ceremony so enjoyable, especially to Bill for the industrial quantities of bacon butties, which were very sustaining, thank you very much. A couple of things …

Some photographs of today’s awards ceremony: click here.

Registration forms for next season if you’ve not yawned your way through them already: click here. Back to some bloke called Jim asap please.

Boring admin. but with the admirable ambition to minimise bureaucracy: if you’ve not done so already, please click here to subscribe to news updates.

An omission from today’s ceremony: thanks, Jim, for your as-ever tremendous commitment—surely that should be “obsession” (Ed.)—and effort over the season – it is much appreciated!

Well done Leopards for an excellent season. Have a splendid summer everyone. Hasta luego …

As many of you will know there was the possibility, for various arcane reasons, that we may have had to look for another league in which to play next season. The good news is that this possibility has not come to pass; the bureaucrats have through a process of indecision delivered the conclusion we’d hoped for – namely that we can play in the same league next season in which we played the last.

If you’d like further background, please click here for the Daily Echo’s coverage.