THIS is my first piece for the 2014/15 season and much has changed in the Bolton, Bury and District Football League.

Huge thanks firstly have to go to Lesley Allon, Tom Allon, Jaimie Brown and Steve Hill who have stood down from the league committee.

All four will be sorely missed as each have huge experience with grassroots league football.

Lesley and Tom will be concentrating on the growth of Horwich St Mary’s, Jamie with Farnworth Hurricanes and Steve with Bolton County. We wish all four well.

Incoming we have Gareth Johnson who takes over as under-7s rep, Hollie Blears who is now our under-11s rep and some guy called Warren Barlow who has taken on the under-14s age group.

Last but certainly not least we are pleased to welcome the chairman of Moss Bank Junior Football Club, Gary Russell, on board as our new general secretary.

Each of the newcomers are committed to continuing the legacy of those who made this league what it is.

They are not the only changes as visiting our website at www.bbdfl.org you will see this has also changed with thanks to Paul Flood and the guys at Storm Software Solutions, Bolton.

Our years of using paper to register players has now been consigned to history as we move to an electronic registration system with thanks to Paul Anderson at www.iteammate.com – another local IT company and entrepreneur.

Finally, we have also moved to an FA system called Full Time in order to register teams, players, results, referees, referee marks and monitor the Respect campaign Full Time is a fully-integrated system which links directly to the FA in order that we are able to support the development of the game including players, referees and coaches Lots of change, but we believe these changes, once bedded in, will bring great benefit to our members and the game as a whole.