Be Our Guest

Regular readers of this website, especially those with decent memories, will know that in the middle of lockdown (I don’t want to call it Lockdown 1.0, but…), SLiBaW decided to make a small book out of some of its previous content. We selected some of our favourite pieces of the abortive season, compiled them, laid them out with some wonderful accompanying photographs and made them available to purchase for the bargain price of £5.

We paid the costs of the printing ourselves, meaning any money raised from the sales could go directly to whatever cause we felt most appropriate. The cause most appropriate, of course, was found to be Tooting and Mitcham United Football Club. We discussed putting anything raised into the crowdfunder the club had set up at the beginning of lockdown, but that didn’t necessarily feel like the optimal use of the funds. We hoped to raise somewhere in the region of £250, a decent haul- maybe the equivalent of an extra bum on a seat at every home game in the forthcoming season. Then, following an intervention of sorts from Mr TMUFC Phil Nightingale, we thought of something better.

Phil, displaying his usual generosity of spirit, had previously offered to donate some money to the club through SLiBaW, so that we might perhaps get a banner on the pitch and an ad in the programme to promote the website. We figured that with his kind donation, and our sales, we might pool resources and purchase a sponsorship package. The package we selected came with a few perks- access to the board room for a specified game in the season, a pitchside banner, a weekly slot in the programme and- best of all- two season tickets.

Now, each member of the SLiBaW team has a season ticket (or will have when I get paid). So we don’t have use, necessarily, for a couple of freebies.

And so Be Our Guest was born.

B e

O ur

G uest

The idea is that for every home league game this season, SLiBaW have two tickets to be used by whoever wants them. Two tickets to see a Tooting and Mitcham United game at no cost to the recipient. The world is mad at the moment and money is tight and getting tighter and people mightn’t have ten quid to see a match. Or they might have ten quid, but not twenty to bring their kid, or their sister. Maybe they’ve lost their job in all this. Maybe they’ve wanted to come, but didn’t want to come alone. Maybe they’re a groundhopper. Maybe by being encouraged to come along to Tooting for a game on us, they might want to come back and buy a ticket next time. Maybe they’ll go on their facebook and twitter and tell their followers that Tooting and Mitcham Utd have a brilliant ground, that it’s covid safe, that we play brilliant football. So maybe more people will come.

South London is Black and White was launched as a site by supporters, for supporters, with a side hustle of trying to engage more people from outside of our happy football bubble. To get more people through the turnstiles, if we possibly could. We’ve started by writing pieces, and getting our fellow supporters to write pieces and, crudely, by hashtagging every tenuously relevant social account possible. We’re really proud of what we’ve done and are frequently overwhelmed by the buy-in we’ve had from fellow supporters. We’re now really keen to push outwards and share this great, community-spirited football club with more of its potential followers.

So if you, or anyone you know, wants to come to Tooting and Mitcham United as our guest, please get in touch. There really are no criteria, as such. If you get in touch and say “you know, I could really use a free ticket to see some great football”, we’ll probably find a way to make that work. We just want you to come along.

Contact southlondonisblackandwhite@gmail.com, DM us on twitter @TaM_BaW or on insta southlondonisblackandwhite.

We’d love to see you.

Up the Stripes.