THE VICS COLUMN - commercially speaking, with Paul Bazley

THE club has made some great strides off the field.

Since the fans became proud custodians of the Vics two years ago, we felt that it was important to help show our support to the newly founded Offside Trust and all the amazing work they do in safeguarding children in sport, and supporting the survivors of child sexual abuse.

A co-founder of the Trust is former Vics legend Steve Walters, so as a club with a large junior section this organisation is very close to our hearts and many of our committee members and supporters are former children’s coaches or currently still coaching our junior teams.

This is something we are incredibly proud to raise money for, and awareness of. Steve was so touched by our support, he has joined the committee as club ambassador,

Sponsorship has gone even better than we could ever have envisaged.

We spoke to companies firstly hopeful of securing a local home shirt sponsor for last season’s 35th FA Trophy victory anniversary.

We managed this with Cheshire company Hunters Gin, and with such a prestigious company showing faith in us as a club this has enabled many other companies to follow their lead.

The response that we get is incredible when we meet people and they see what we’re about and what we’re trying to achieve as a club. We can’t thank all of them enough as there are too many to mention individually.

We are just fans of this club and all doing what we can to help sustain a stable future for the Trickies.

As the commercial side has grown, we’ve gained support through other fans who have wanted to help the amazing volunteers we already had.

I couldn’t have achieved any of the commercial success without the incredible help of good friend Graham Egerton and between us we’ve kept all of last season’s previous sponsors, which include Gordon Brown Builders, Whitlow Engineering, S&I Hodgkin to name a few.

We have also brought in sponsors for programme adverts, advertising boards for our successful ground share with Witton Albion, sponsors for the Vics tv channel NVTV and the return of the club mascot ( Tricky the Cat ) where we ran a competition for a prize draw which was won by local business Vinnie’s Cakes.

Aligned to all of this was the launch of our 145th anniversary away kit, a deal we have with Buccaneer Sports - another local company based in the Old Fire Station, a stone’s throw away from our spiritual home, The Drill Field.

The kit has been a huge hit with fans old and new.

We decided as a committee that given the success of supporting and promoting The Offside Trust, we wanted to help support a local children’s charity and the one we’re proud to partner is the incredibly vital Tiny Steps - an organisation that also boasts lifelong Trickies on their committee and we are proudly displaying their logo on our away shirt that is primarily sponsored by another big Northwich company, Anderton Concrete.

We have many plans in place to further help fund and promote our grand old team, including a sportspersons’ dinner with ex-Manchester United and Everton legend and former Trickie, Norman Whiteside, on October 24.

We’re all incredibly proud to help run the club we all love and if you’d like to help in anyway and join the journey, contact Paul on 07595 329863 or Graham on 07845 180927.