Newsletter #117
Quite a lot in this issue including three ‘live’ match reports, a book review, a Why Blue and a single opinion! On the Internet Football Competition front, Mark Varley has kindly volunteered to do the organising and there’s an article from him in this issue; please get in touch if you think you can bring a trophy to the club, well MCIVTA anyway!
Wednesday’s defeat was a little disheartening but it will naturally take time to get this team back on its feet and playing confidently. There does seem to be a need for a committed midfielder though, especially as Lomas has yet to regain last season’s form and can we really expect to have three midfielders whose oldest member is the geriatric Flipper, weighing in at 23 years of age? I would like to see a more experienced player in there to win balls and bring the others on. The potential is certainly there but I do feel that we need somone to fight and guide the others.
Lastly, ‘things they are a changin” at MCIVTA so please note what’s going on and help out if you can!
Next game: Queens Park Rangers away, Saturday August 26th 1995
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MCIVTA – UPHEAVALS Firstly, the good news is that MCIVTA now has a Subscriptions Officer, or should I say someone who’s kindly agreed to help out by dealing with this side of the newsletter. Thanks to those people that mailed me, either offering help or apologising for being unable to offer it! Particular thanks go of course to the winner (er, loser maybe!), Adam. I’ve already mailed the appropriate administrators of various WWW football pages and Paul & Svenn have updated our own home page so the change is to take effect immediately. Any new subscriptions should be sent to: Adam Houghton (Adam.Houghton@sheffield.ac.uk) The address for submissions to MCIVTA remains the same, for the moment! Secondly, as you all know by now, I’m returning to Derbyshire in 3 weeks time… permanently! This move has precipitated a rethink concerning the way MCIVTA is run and where it goes in the future. So far, MCIVTA has been run in my lunchtime and at odd moments in the day when I can spare time. This way of running a mailing list is fine if you have 100 subscribers but sooner or later a threshold point is reached above which it is impossible to process all the incoming letters and put MCIVTA together in the time available. If I’m entirely honest, this threshold was probably exceeded some time ago and the only reason that I’ve kept going has been because I knew things would change radically anyway with the impending change of job. So, with MCIVTA at 370 subscribers and a conservative estimate looking at 600 by the end of the 95/96 season, the present operation becomes untenable. What options are available then? The simplest option is to turn the whole operation over to automailing whereby all incoming articles are sent out to all subscribers automatically. This means abandoning the ‘friendly newsletter’ concept completely; people merely find themselves bombarded by articles and opinions daily. Without a real conscious effort, MCIVTA has developed into something we are loathe to give up so this option would only be used in desperation. A second option would be to hand MCIVTA over to someone prepared to carry on as now. The serious flaw here is that MCIVTA’s growth means that doing it at work has become impossible. Also, I’ve watched MCIVTA grow, enjoy doing it and don’t really want to give it up unless I can see no alternative. The third and most logical option is to switch MCIVTA to an evening/hobby operation with the newsletter being collated at home. This is what we intend to do, but a fairly serious stumbling block is that to do so, I need to have a modem, a personal email account and pay for the telephone calls. I estimate that this little lot will set me back about £500.00 for the first year and that’s not taking into consideration the fact that my Mac SE is a little too elderly to cope for long! I feel it’s essential that MCIVTA remains free but on the other hand, I cannot meet all the costs myself. The obvious solution would be to find some sponsorship. MCIVTA reaches 370 people around the world (120 times a year) and this will rise inexcorably over the next three years. So, for a modest outlay of £500.00 (new Mac as well wouldn’t go amiss) and maybe £300.00 yearly after that, a potential sponsor would be getting a good deal, IMHO! So an appeal….! Is anyone out there prepared to sponsor MCIVTA? Would any of the companies that you work for sponsor MCIVTA or a modem or computer or email account? Please think hard about this one as the sums involved aren’t huge and the future really hangs in the balance. Fingers crossed… Ashley Newsletter #117
1995/08/25
Editor:
Newsletter #117
1995/08/25
Editor: |