The Bugle | Autumn 2026
Welcome to Issue 2 of The Bugle. As outlined in Issue 1, the Bugle is a quarterly newsletter written on behalf of the Club's Board of Directors to update supporters on what's happening 'behind the scenes' at West.
This issue is written by West Directors Ollie Sargent and Todd Ashton.
Stadium Developments
We announced our Brookburn Road development plans earlier this summer. We've since held consultation sessions with both supporters and local residents which were very productive, and we'll soon be submitting our planning applications for all phases of the work.
There are some additional surveys we need to complete before those applications can be submitted, but about 80% of them have now been done. The most recent of these was the acoustics/noise survey which was carried out during the recent win over Tividale. The running cost of these surveys and any associated consultancy fees is now at just over £20,000 plus VAT. We're sharing this figure to continue transparency about the club's spending, but also to help demonstrate the scale of the costs we've been required to incur before any building work has even begun.
In terms of immediate improvements to the ground, supporters who have attended our home matches will see that we have new gates installed at our main entrance, meaning that there are now four queues available rather than two. The cost of this, plus the new tarmacked walkway into the ground, came to approximately £6,000 plus VAT.
We have also completed some renovations to the home dressing room over the summer. This involved repainting the walls and ceiling and installing new showers. The cost of this was £2,500 plus VAT.
The next significant step in the stadium development plans is submitting the planning application, which we aim to do in October. We will provide a separate update regarding that when the time comes.
We're very grateful for all the feedback that we have received as part of the consultation sessions. One particular email that stood out was from Gray Ellwood, a long-serving club volunteer. Gray has a licence with the British Trust for Ornithology, which means that he can independently monitor birdlife. Gray has kindly offered to do this for West and has agreed to provide an annual report on the birdlife at Brookburn Road. Gray will also work with us to put up nest boxes around the ground and advise us on the use of swift bricks ahead of the clubhouse extension works. Suggestions like these have been fantastic to receive, and if supporters have any ideas of their own about things that could be incorporated into the ground development plans, we would love to hear them. Please email ollie@wdcfc.co.uk to do so.
One of the aims of our ground development plans is to make Brookburn Road a more accessible venue for all West fans. In the meantime, we have recently written and published a detailed Accessibility Guide, which is now attached to the updated Matchday page on our website.
We will keep this guide updated as and when we make developments to the ground.
Email Subscriptions
Over the summer we set up an email service for supporters to receive updates on everything that's going on at West, as an alternative to social media.
If you haven't signed up already, we recommend doing so to ensure that you're kept in the loop of everything that's going on - whether that's match previews for all our Men's and Women's first team matches and other newsworthy items and announcements.
Policy Updates
Several new club policies have been introduced recently and are available to read on the West website.
One particular policy that we'd like to draw attention to is our Equal Opportunities & Protection Against Harassment policy. The purpose of the policy is to emphasise that discrimination will not be tolerated at West and to set out our commitment to ensuring that those who represent our club share our values. We want to note our thanks to the Union 1908 Working Group, who provided some very helpful feedback on this policy, and we hope to continue working productively with this group on other projects in the future.
We have also added a number of necessary safeguarding policies, and some of our Directors have undertaken specific training in this area. Additional safeguarding information and reporting documents are also displayed in the clubhouse. For any more information about safeguarding, our Club Welfare Officer can be reached at kevhill@wdcfc.co.uk.
Community Events
We were very proud to run a collection earlier this month for the Chorlton & Didsbury foodbank, and would like to once again thank all supporters, players and staff who contributed to our efforts. We delivered these donations to the foodbank in the week following the match, and they were taken aback by the scale of what we were dropping off.
We had a similarly successful campaign to support Chorlton Pride, where LGBTQ+ themed stickers were sold to help financially support Chorlton Pride's future events. There are some sticker packs remaining, which can be bought from the merch shed at future home games and the proceeds of these stickers will still go to Chorlton Pride.
In addition to this, we have also been pleased to support fundraising initiatives for Manchester Football Therapy and Chorlton Sings, who are fundraising during Baby Loss Awareness Week for Manchester NHS Foundation Trust.
It's important to us that West continue to play an active role in our local community, and we have plans to do more of these events throughout the season. We invite any West fans to get in touch if there is a particular initiative that they think that West can support.
Parking
As well as supporting our wider community, we also want to ensure that we are good neighbours to those who live next to our stadium.
Our immediate neighbours have been very supportive of our ground development plans, and we are meeting with the Chorltonville Neighbourhood Committee later in the month. We are very keen to build better relationships with this group, and we want to thank West fans for following the guidance on our Matchday page by not parking anywhere on the Chorltonville Estate when coming to our matches.
Coach Travel
We've received a few queries about coach travel for away matches, so we'd like to take the opportunity to clarify our plans for the remainder of the 2026/27 season.
We'll be funding coach travel for our First Team players and staff for the league trips to AFC Wolverhampton City, Dudley Town, Romulus, Sporting Khalsa, Sutton United and Tividale, having already done so to Darlaston Town, the FA Cup tie at Garforth Town and this weekend's trip to Lye Town.
In addition, should we face away cup draws at similar or greater distances to the clubs listed above, we'll also provide coach travel in those instances.
Having to fund coach travel for so many league games comes at a significant cost to the club, and is an expense that we rarely had to incur whilst playing in the NWCFL Premier Division. We are also conscious that costs will be higher for our travelling supporters this season. The solution we have reached is to offer supporters the opportunity to purchase seats on the players' coach.
This means that supporters have the option to travel to the furthest away games for significantly less than the cost of public transport, whilst also helping contribute towards the costs of the coach. For the avoidance of doubt, all Directors and Committee members pay full price for this travel, which has been charged at a flat rate of £20 for each game so far. We understand that this method of transport isn't for everyone, but we want to ensure that the option is there for supporters who might benefit from it.
Space on these coaches is limited, with priority given to volunteers, then to season ticket holders and members, before then going on general sale.
We can assure supporters that we'll be ready to meet demand for an additional supporters' coach when demand proves to be there. However, the coaches running to Darlaston, Garforth and Lye all reached general sale and did not sell out.
In the event of West receiving an attractive away cup draw - or if we have good reason to believe that a long-distance trip in the league will prove popular enough to justify it - we will certainly look into the possibility of arranging a supporters coach. We have however suffered significant losses when running below-capacity coaches in the past and we're especially cautious to prevent any repeat of this at a time when our outgoings are already so high.
Player Sponsorships
This week we have launched our player sponsorships for the 2026/27 season for our Men's team.
In doing so, we are trialling a process whereby supporters can pay for those sponsorships online rather than through individual enquiries. If this process works effectively, we will roll it out to both senior teams next season.
There are still some of our Women's players/coaches available for sponsorship. For more details, have a look at our Women's sponsorship page.
Cup Draw Updates
The 2nd Qualifying Round of the Women's FA Cup is taking place this Sunday, and we have been drawn at home against fellow NWWRL Premier Division outfit Mancunian Unity.
It's a huge game for our Women's side and we need as much support as possible at Brookburn Road. Please do come along if you are able to.
In the 'League Cup by Macron' (formerly the ADP Cup), West Women are hosting Mossley Hill Athletic on 1st November.
On the Men's side, the early rounds of the Midland Football League Cup, Lancashire Trophy and Frank Hannah Manchester Premier Cup have been drawn.
In the MFL Cup we'll visit Northwich Victoria on Tuesday 27th October, making a quick return following our league meeting on August Bank Holiday Monday.
Due to odd numbers of teams entered in the Lancashire Trophy and Frank Hannah Manchester Premier Cup, we have received a bye in the 1st Round of both competitions.
The FA Vase is also on the horizon - we'll enter at the 2nd Round stage on Saturday 31st October, with the draw to be made soon after the 1st Round has concluded on the weekend of October 10th.
Away Kit
We are excited to launch our new away kit later this month - keep an eye out for further announcements very soon.
There have been some delays in launching this kit, but we have learned lessons from this process and are already making plans for the 2027-29 home shirt.
Internet upgrade
Over the last month or so we have been working to introduce a new wired connection at Brookburn Road, and the cost of this has been approximately £6,500. Our existing WiFi connection has proved vulnerable to high demand and poor weather, and an upgrade will resolve these problems as well as future-proofing our matchday operations.
We had hoped that this connection would be up and running by now, but during installation the provider discovered that a small excavation is required on an area of land outside the club's ownership.
It was disappointing that this wasn't brought to our attention sooner, but we're hopeful the delay will be short.
The internal infrastructure upgrade is itself complete, and we're now simply awaiting connection to the main network.
We're really grateful to our volunteers - especially those on the gate and operating tills around the ground - for their patience and we're sure the new network will improve their experience.
Bonfire Night 2026
We're excited to confirm that the 2026 edition of our annual bonfire and fireworks night will take place on Sunday 8th November.
Tickets will be on sale shortly - keep an eye out for emails and social media updates.
Restructuring as a Charity
We mentioned in the last Bugle edition our plans to restructure our club to have both a charitable arm and a commercial arm. This is still in the pipeline, and we will provide further updates in due course.
Matchday Volunteers
We will finish this article by asking once again for volunteers to assist us with home matches.
We have a very large fanbase for a club at this level (our attendance v Winsford was almost twice the size of anything else in the country at our level or the level above), but we are still desperately short of matchday volunteers. We are extremely grateful for those who do give up their time to help us out on matchday, and the more people that step forward to become part of the team, the less the burden is on those that do.
Even if you just want to volunteer at a game every now and then, we would love to hear from you. There's no obligation or regular commitment required. You can browse the list of specific volunteer roles we're in need of HERE.
There are also plenty of non-matchday roles where we need support, for example in the areas of merchandise management, community engagement, academy administration, fundraising and procurement tasks for ground development. Please get in touch if you can spare any time to support the club with any of this.
Next Issue
As ever, if there are particular issues that you'd like us to cover then do get in touch. Until then, thank you for your continued support both at Brookburn and on the road.
Issue 3 of The Bugle will be published in December 2026.