Much of the football news over the last couple of weeks has been dominated by the incident involving Fabrice Muamba of Bolton Wanderers. Thankfully, highly qualified medics were on hand to save his life and steer him towards what we all hope will be a full recovery.

Such highly qualified medics are not to hand at the Sunday venues and G-d forbid if a player was unfortunate to have a similar occurrence the outcome may not be so successful.

I can recall two such instances in the league when Ivor Benveniste of Oakwood had a cardiac arrest on the pitch and sadly passed away. Also, at a match that I attended, a player swallowed his tongue and went into spasm. He turned blue and all that could be done was to place him in the recovery position and wait for the ‘fit’ to pass. I had only just finished a first aid course with Gary Lewin, the Arsenal and England physio, so I had some idea as to what should be done but shamefully the one point we were taught, that is not to panic, passed me over to my regret. Thankfully the player, Benjy Wreshner, made a full recovery, and we laugh about it now. The incident was featured in Esther Rantzen ‘That’s Life’ and one of the reporters ‘mocked’ the incident and made light of it.

The reason for my going into these two incidents is to highlight the fact that we should have at least one person at every game that has some idea as to how to handle such a situation, and in fact Maccabi GB are holding two courses for this purpose. I would ask you to consider this very seriously and if you need further details please let me know.

There are now only a handful of teams that I have not been able to get to this year and I apologise to them for that. I will try to make up for this next season. Some of the divisions are now determined and I congratulate the winners and runners-up. I will make a full speech to them at the presentation evening.

Special congratulation to the finalists of the JC Cyril Anekstein Cup, Hendon United Sports and Brady Maccabi and also to the finalists for the Peter Morrisson Trophy, Hendon United Sports and Oakwood.

I am disappointed to note that the’ London Inter-League Cup Competition will not be played this year due to a lack of interest.

The Maccabi GB team to Marseilles for the European Maccabi Football Trophy has now been selected and I am sure you will join me in wishing them luck.

Now to Upton Park, my spiritual home. If we could win our games at the Boleyn we would be sitting comfortably at the helm of the Championship points in front. Instead we are in third place, hoping to win against Reading at home on Saturday and then a nail-biting few weeks to see if we can get into the automatic places. You cannot expect to win matches without strikers, but Sam Allardyce is yet to work that out!

Promoted or not our football has been dire this year (once again) and if we do go up we will need to overhaul the squad to say there. Come on you Irons!

Wishing you all Chag Sameach and well over the remainder of the season.

David Wolff
Chairman
JCMaccabi (Southern) Football League