Football in the Bulgarian community

The second half of the football season is upon us and training has been taking place in fits and starts due to the wintry weather, the pitch has been water logged several times, or it has rained as training begins after a morning of sunshine!
Last year there were no problems with training through the winter as they had the gym at the school of course with the parquet flooring collapsing this year it has been impossible to continue.
The new flooring from Crystal palace is still on its way later in the year I believe, so that is something to look forward to, for now we are begging for some spring like weather so that the training can become a bit more consistent.
The lads have made a start on painting the ?new? caravan, for the changing rooms, and it should be completed in the next week hopefully, again weather stopped progress as it has been bitterly cold the last few days.
However, I have some exciting news for all!
Thanks to Twiggy, (who is bringing us the flooring for the gym) telling his mate Dave about us, we are to receive a substantial amount of kit.
Dave?s girlfriend Andrea placed an ad on our behalf to the site Freecycle and before long was getting offers of lots of kit and equipment.  
There was even more to come when someone told Andrea about a UK based charity called KitAid who collect kit old and new from various organisations and then distribute the kit to Africa and Eastern Europe.
We are the first people in Bulgaria to be lucky enough to have a donation of kit, and I hope that we will have a lot more to do with KitAid in the future.

So we were over the moon on Monday night when we got the email from Dave stating the following

Blue dsX ball bag containing 20 footballs; 1x size 1, 9x size 3, 8x size 4 and 8x size 5. (1 Rugby Ball)  (Mixture of KitAid, Freecycle & Donations)
4x jumpers/sweatshirts (Freecycle)
1x Puma football boots (size 6) (Freecycle)
Training bibs; 5x red, 11x blue, 7x orange, 5x blue/green and 5x green (Mixture of Freecycle & Donations)
7x yellow football socks (pairs) (Freecycle)
4x blue football shorts (Freecycle)
1x goalkeeper gloves (Freecycle)
1x black/grey goalkeeper shirt (Freecycle)
12x yellow/blue football shirts (Freecycle)
5x training cones (Donations)   
9 Speed Hoops (KitAid)
1 Net (needs some repair?) (KitAid)
1 Pump (KitAid)
8 Corner Flags (KitAid)
10 Speed Poles (KitAid)
 
We also have
7 Boxes of kit that I will have a look through and give you more details on. (KitAid)  
1 Box of England Shirts (Junior Sizes) (KitAid)
1 Box of Fulham training kit (mixture of sizes with Ball)  (KitAid)

Dave went onto say that he also has some more boxes of kit coming (not sure what but have been told it for the colder weather). Also a few local clubs have said they will sort some stuff out for me.

So you can all imagine how excited we were Monday night.

Tuesday I emailed David and also Derrick from KitAid to say thank you and I got an email back from both.
Derrick went onto say that he likes what we are doing, and is going to a meeting that evening and wants to put us forward for a substantial donation of money, and could I make a list of stuff we need.
I couldn?t believe what I was reading as I have only emailed the guy once, why would he want to do this not knowing us from adam!
Anyway I discussed with Darren and we felt it best to do as we had done before when asking local businesses in Yambol, and when I emailed over 300 clubs from the premiership and below, local and sporting associations for help.
We have a wish list and some of it is a huge expense like sorting the gym out, sending some of the older lads onto coaching courses and sponsorship for next season, and some of it for material things like junior goals for the under 12?s, a line marker for the pitch as at present we use dry lime, a lawnmower, benches for the caravan, drinks bottles and ongoing help with kit especially boots.

So the next day (Wednesday 25th Feb) I got an email back from derrick later in the day, to say good news, the trustees have agreed to giving us a donation of £1000!
It has to be spent on things they can see as apposed to costs in running the club, but we are not going to argue with that, it is just such amazing stuff, we are just gobsmacked that after a couple of emails we have been approved to receive a big cash injection!
And not only that, Derrick went onto say ?Also, we received 200 pairs of brand new boots yesterday so I have agreed with David to hand over some of them for you when he comes in to collect more kit boxes soon.?

WOW!!

If anyone knows where we can buy a linemarker for a grass pitch from within Bulgaria, as near to Yambol as possible I would appreciate details, thanks.

Nikki and Darren