Junior subs and match fee increase

You may have noticed that there has been an increase in junior subs (excl. the under 8 age group) and also in match fees for juniors playing in senior games.  Any such changes in membership are agreed with both the club’s overall management committee and at the junior section committee.  The committees discuss and debate to ensure the fees achieve a balance between the junior and senior sections, and reflect the clubs’ strong desire to keep hockey financially accessible for juniors to encourage participation and invest in the future of the club.

There are several reasons for the increase:

• The costs of the Club are increasing because the Council, from whom we hire the second pitch, has changed its policy and ended the favourable deal we had benefitted from for a long while. This means we will be paying over £10k additional costs each year for our bookings of the council pitch.
• We have increased senior subs and match fees significantly in previous years to the extent we feel an increase in junior fees is appropriate to restore the balance.
• We believe that the Club should invest in junior hockey to encourage youngsters to take up the game and we will continue to do that by partly subsidising this section of the club. However we feel there is room to increase the financial contribution to the Club from the junior section whilst still providing good value.

We feel the new fee levels keep hockey at an accessible level and compare favourably to other activities:

• The subs for juniors in years 4 to 8 equate to about £3.45 a week (based on 26 weeks of hockey)
• The subs for juniors in years 9 to 13 equate to £3.85 a week.
• The match fees for those playing in senior games have increased from £6 to £8 which includes teas. These are still discounted against senior match fees (£12) for seniors playing the same matches.

Importantly, please note there are no additional match fees for junior games – these are covered by subs.

Other points to note are that:

• The club is not run for profit, just to cover running costs and the cost of replacing the pitch every 10-15 years
• All the people running the club and everyone involved in the junior sections are unpaid and volunteer their time and effort.
• We very much rely on volunteers kindly giving up their time to run our club and want to continue to encourage as many people as possible to keep costs down for everyone.

If you have any other questions please don’t hesitate to contact one of the committee.