A new walking football dawn is approaching. Slow but steady progress is now being made to start up some form of walking football training for Club members. In the first instance the numbers will be small and will not be at our usual venues. Several training facilities have been discussed and the coaches and first aiders are going to have a Zoom meeting later today to decide the how, where, when and what restrictions so that the Club can put on safe training sessions that comply with the FA Guidance and Government rules at this time. A full description of what is decided, how to take part and what will be expected of all those participating, will be posted as a News item here in the App/website as soon as possible.

You may recall that back on 13th May, at the height of the lockdown, the Club published ‘The Early Years – An Oral History’. Well it has now been accepted into the National Football Museum with their Collections Manager enthusing: ‘We would be delighted to add this to our collection as we indeed don’t have lots of reference material on walking football, so this donation will go towards filling that gap’. www.nationalfootballmuseum.com

It is now a year since the untimely passing of Justin Edinburgh and the following two links celebrate and commemorate the hugely positive effect he had on Leyton Orient. He is sadly missed.
https://twitter.com/leytonorientfc/status/1269878151561334784
https://www.leytonorient.com/2020/06/08/justin-edinburgh-leyton-orient-legend/

This weeks birthday celebrants are Mary McPartland, Alan Taylor and the perennially young, Stevie Dunn. Wishing you all a Very Happy Birthday and hopefully we will see you soon at training.

Now if you enjoy a bit of quizzing why not sign up to Graham Manicom’s Lockdown Zoom Quiz which he is running tomorrow, Wednesday 10th June at 4pm. All the details are in the Events area of the App/website.

It is only right that as we prepare to get back into walking football albeit only training, we remind ourselves of this years Club statistics prior to lockdown. They are:

Played 49, W 14 D 18 L 17.
Leading Appearances: Tony Wahlhaus 29, Dave Norris 25, John Bancroft 20, Tony Brooks 19, Keith Everett 18.
Leading Goal Scorers: Trevor Ridley 12, Steve Eades 9, Tony Wahlhaus 8
Leading Clean sheets: Tony Sullivan 8.
For the women including 2019 matches: Tora Gregory-Sayce, Vanessa Jones, Sally Jones and Andree Selner have a 100% record featuring in every competitive game played so far.
Leading Goal Scorers: Andree Selner 3, Frances Handley 2.

Essex Walking Football League have moved their website to this new site: http://essexwalkingfootballleague.org/

Remember that Zoom meet-ups are every Friday between 11am and 12 noon. To sign up just pop over to the Zoom Meet-Up Event in the App and RSVP.

We are also continuing to run Ruth Tongue’s Pilates sessions on a Thursday morning (11 to 12) . Again pop over to the Events section for all the details.

With the re-start of training approaching the following sprang to mind:

“Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go. They merely determine where you start.” — Nido Qubein

“No matter how hard the past is, you can always begin again.” – Buddha

Take care, be safe and hopefully see you soon.
Trevor Ridley
PS If you have any news you want to share then please email me at leytonorientwalkingfc@gmail.com

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