This weekend saw the first outing for the ladies under the new sponsorship deal with Clark Thomson. Gee'd up with the newly printed strips, the L2s delivered a seven-one victory over Dundee Uni 4s.
We must get new strip sponsors more often!
Kinrossshire Round Table have totted up the takings from the Santa's Sleigh Ride round Kinross and Milnathort before Christmas and have just handed over a very healthy contribution to the Pitch Fund.
Men's club captain Gurdi Duhre was there today to pick up a cheque for £1200 from Round Table chairman Paul Murray. Thanks are due to Paul for letting us take part, and also to all the club members who trogged round town knocking on doors and ringing on bells. This was a long hard slog, and it was a fantastic effort by everyone.
That takes the fund over £10,000.
The Ladies section is pleased to announce a new sponsorship deal with insurance broker Clark Thomson. The deal is for three years, starting immediately, and we hope to get the CT logo printed on the strips in time for the first post-Christmas games.
![ClarkThomson-Logo_horizontal[1].jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5538c714e4b045c237954643/1452775701640-FWZVWK68MUEYSI1WEYCT/ClarkThomson-Logo_horizontal%5B1%5D.jpg){kind=logo}
Clark Thomson is Scotland's largest independent insurance broker, offering both commercial and private client services, and with offices all over Scotland, including a very handy one in Perth. It has also won awards for its service quality. Do give them your support if you can.
So many thanks to everyone at Clark Thomson from everyone at Kinross Hockey Club.
We have just heard from the Scottish Charities Regulator that our application to set up a SCIO - a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation - has been successful.
Kinross Astro SCIO, as it will be known, will lease the land under the pitch from the KGV, it will own the pitch itself, and will be responsible for maintaining it and marketing it to users across the community, including the various sections of Kinross Hockey Club. In other words it will be completely separate from the hockey club itself, which will continue to be an unincorporated association.
More importantly, the new charity should find it easier to raise funds than the hockey club, so a number of approaches to major donors should happen in the coming weeks.
The Pitch In campaign has just passed the £9000 mark, meaning that we are 25% of the way towards the £36,000 we set ourselves as our contribution to the total.
The £9000 figure excludes the money we raised on the Santa's Sleigh Ride the other day, and there are other sums that should be with us soon.
Meanwhile, our application to set up a charity to own and manage the new pitch has been filed, applications to major grant awarding bodies are starting to be submitted, and local councillors have a put in a bid to PKC for the major chunk of the funding. Unfortunately, a decision from the council is likely to be delayed for some months because of issues at Holyrood.
Keep up the good work, and if anyone has good ideas for raising more money, let us know.
A brilliant effort by everyone who helped out with the Santa's sleigh collection for the Round Table. A team representing all of the sections of the club hard a long hard shift knocking on doors, but by all accounts a good time was had by all.
The club should benefit to the tune of a large donation from the Round Table, but we don't know the figure yet. We'll keep you posted.
The Kinross Community Newsletter runs a fund for distributing its profits to good causes in the local community and at today's Kinross CC meeting, councillors agreed that £2000 of this would be made available to the Kinross Hockey Club pitch fund.
Huge thanks to everyone involved from everyone here at the hockey club.
This takes the pitch fund to £8500, 20% of the way to our £40,000 target. Keep up the effort everyone!
This weekend saw Amy Salmon make her debut for the Ladies' 2nds, the latest in the wave of girls making the transition into adult hockey this season. Suffice it to say that Amy's was a very fine performance indeed.
With the weather mild and wet, conditions for algae to flourish in the astroturf at the KGV were perfect and yesterday the pitch flooded once again. This was the scene at 2pm this afternoon.
The only slight silver lining is that the level of sludge on the pitch seems relatively light at the moment, which may ease the process of bringing it back into use. In the meantime we have asked to have the pitch treated for algal infestation as soon as possible, so we are hoping that we will not lose the pitch for weeks on end as we did last season.
Kobras tonight is likely to be off, but we'll inspect at 4pm just in case it has drained sufficiently. We'll notify everyone shortly afterwards.
Some great news on the pitch fund front. Our efforts over the summer to get people to vote for us on the Mars Milk Play Fund has paid off. Although we didn't manage to get first prize, we have recently been informed that we are the lucky winners of a £300 runners up award.
So huge thanks from the committee to the Mars Milk Play Fund, to everyone who voted for us and pestered their friends into voting for us, and to all those in the world hockey community and beyond who put a shout out on our behalf: Grove Menzieshill, Ross Bone, Vicki Bunce, Eilidh Child, Scottish Hockey, Bahrain Hockey, Jamie Dwyer, Mercian Hockey and lots of others too.
Congratulations to Lucy Smith (update: and Daisy Foniciello too!), who won gold in the Girls U16 with the Midlands team at the interdistricts, in a team featuring - by my reckoning - no fewer than four ex-Kobras too!
Update: There are some official pictures:
Well done David and Cameron, part of the Midland U18 team which won the Inter-district Tournament in Glasgow today beating East 1-0 in the final!