Raydon’s pre-season plans were thrown into the applecart when Jack Crankleshank quit as manager at the end of last season. During his tenure as manager – which started in November 2006 - Crankleshank only spent 50 minutes in the presence of the Raydon players – and that was when he joined them in the local pub for a couple of pints to celebrate the birth of defender Andy Slipper’s puppies.

“The strain of managing the club was starting to affect my marriage so I had to quit,” said Crankleshank. We spoke to Crankleshank’s “wife” who said, “Oh, how is Jack? I never realised he managed a football team. We split up in 1984 and got divorced a few months later.” She went on to explain that she is now living with a Fondu designer from Iran with whom she has five children.

Crankleshank had controversially enlisted former manager Roland Peters as his right hand man despite him being sacked as manager a few weeks earlier. Peters effectively steered the team to promotion last season and Chairman Lionel Stubbs had no hesitation in appointing Peters as Crankleshank’s replacement, despite the acrimonious nature of his departure as manager.

“I know that Roland and I weren’t dancing from the same hymn book when he left last November,” said Stubbs. “However I’m prepared to put bygones under the bridge and feel that Peters is the man to make this club come up smelling of trumps in the forthcoming season.”

There were no other personnel changes at Clockton Park with the re-recruitment of Peters persuading any potential departees to stay on.

Over the summer work finally began to build Raydon’s brand new club bar. The club received a lottery grant back in 2004 to build the new complex and this was augmented by ludicrously high takings at the old club bar at last seasons’ promotion party. Opposition from local residents had delayed the development and only sinister threats from Roland Peters’ trusty gangster friend from London, ‘Ted The Violent Maniac’ persuaded the residents to back down. Ironically, Ted’s exorbitant fee for making the threats made such a dent into the project budget that the size of the building had to reduced to a level with which the residents would have been happy anyway.

The new bar was opened by a Michael Winner look-alike at the annual Raydon fun day which took place over the summer. The look-alike was so realistic that many people thought it actually was Michael Winner and he was duly subjected to some exceptionally unpleasant verbal abuse as well as mild physical abuse, including three punches, a kick to the shin, a ‘woody’, a ‘blip’ and a ‘nipple cripple.’

The fun day consisted of a whole host of activities. Chairman Lionel Stubbs bravely volunteered to sit in a paddling pool dressed only in a thong whilst fun day-goers paid 50p for the chance to throw a brick at a bucket of Vimto perched on top of a ladder above his head. Only around 20% of those who had a go actually knocked the bucket over Stubbs’ head but 70% of the bricks thrown hit him squarely on the head causing him all manner of bad head pain sensations.

There was also a stall selling homemade breadcrumbs and jars of coloured salt whilst Mansley Kilkorkey organised a mini ‘boggle’ tournament in which participants gained bonus points for finding rude words. Jack Funtingdale won despite finding only one word, namely c***.

Dougie McMannahammond displayed his juggling skills by juggling 100 ping pong balls and a meat cleaver at the same time for well over an hour. He only stopped when he slightly mis-juggled the meat cleaver and it descended into the bonnet of millionaire Chairman Lionel Stubbs’ car. Fortunately, the takings from the event – which totalled around £1500 and had been earmarked to fund a series of community soccer courses for children in third-world war-torn countries - were sufficient to cover the cost of the repairs to the car.

Overall, the event was deemed a great success with everybody we asked saying that they’d had a great time*.

The final phase of the development at the club will be the construction of new changing rooms to replace the red and white striped workman’s tents and rickety balsa wood shack that have been used for the last three and a half years. Work will start on the changing rooms once enough money is raised in takings at the new bar. September 2007 has been pencilled in.

Raydon’s pre season was designed to give the players a very thorough workout. Taking the bull by the china shop, Peters wanted his players back for pre season training as early as possible. He had the squad at Clockton Park at 6am, the day after the massive drunken party that followed their promotion on the last day of the previous season during which the players had played four games back to back.

The rigorous workout lasted 9 hours and was very tough, consisting of a mammoth country run dispersed with shuttle runs, stretching and exercises. Players were only allowed one five-minute break during the whole day and Peters fired a tazer gun at anyone who stopped for a rest at any other time. Peters himself travelled alongside the squad in a golf buggie and only walked 8 paces during the whole 9 hours (to have a wee in a hedge).

Peters has kept up this momentum ever since and the team have played nearly 30 pre season friendlies against seemingly random opposition. For example, they played a girl’s under 15 side in Glasgow, travelled to Italy the next day to play AC Milan reserves reserves reserves B team then flew to Iceland to play a side from the Puffin Conference League.

Peters defended his pre season regime, saying: “Let’s not mince about the bush. My players need to be fit to compete this year or they’ll just get mullered from pillar to post. Some of these games may seem pointless but at least we’re getting games under our sleeves – I want my players to eat, live, sleep, breathe, work and shit football.”

The only break the players got was on the day of the club’s AGM. Whilst the players checked into a local exhaustion clinic the AGM got underway in the lounge of Peters’ house. A summary of the minutes follows:

Those Present: Lionel Stubbs - LS (Chairman, Groundsman, Physio, Secretary, Treasurer), Roland Peters - RP (manager)

Apologies: Everyone else **

LS stated that he had completely forgotten to hold an AGM since 2003 adding that he’d searched his house for the minutes from that meeting but could he find them? Could he f***!

Since no-one else attended, LS voted himself in as Chairman with RP urging him to “***ing get on with it.”

LS briefly touched upon the annual accounts which he had scribbled on the back of a piece of kitchen paper in crayon just before he’d left the house. They are as follows:

Income: £8,446

Expenditure: £17,225

LS said that he appreciates that accounts can appear to be gobbledegook to anyone who isn’t from an accounting background so if anyone needs any additional explanation of the figures they should contact him by text message. RP said he couldn’t give two shakes of a lamb’s twat so they moved on to the next agenda item.

RP and LS completed the meeting at the local pub, the Punnet and Kiosk, where they had a two hour discussion about which beers the new bar should serve and whether guest ales were a good idea. The conclusion was to hold a beer festival in a marquee at Clockton Park featuring the following ales.

Hamster’s Minge Cobblers’ Bonce

Treggler’s Beck Cobblers’ Bonce

St Yarmouth’s Crevice Fingering’s

Old Nobblers Boulangerie Fingering’s

Chris Akabussi’s Golden Droplet Dwithby Sykes

Frisky Yasmin Dunstable’s of Dunstable

Tartan Todger Twinkling’s

Sodomy’s Revenge St Plonkton’s

Twittering Dildo Dame Shaughnessy’s

Slug Bent Bastard’s Goat

Buck Toothed Yonder Underbelly

Can’t Benny Udder Jackson’s

Cannibalistic Fuzz - smooth flow Porcupine of the North

The most popular 10 would feature as guest ales at the new bar. Additional meetings were scheduled at the Punnet and Kiosk to discuss other beverage requirements such as whisky, wine, rum, gin, cider, brandy, and vodka.

Other than the business that LS omitted from his anus in the Punnet and Kiosk toilets after a dodgy pint, there were no other items of business.

* Malcolm Baggio only asked his wife and she only stayed for seven minutes.

** Players due to physical exhaustion, other key personnel due to severe apathy.