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Dear all,
You may be aware that the League's Website Manager, Cory Shackleton, has closed down the Alliance Website and Forum.
He did advise us earlier on in the season that he would no longer be acting as Website Manager after April, 2010.
This news will no doubt raise some concerns with you and your club and this message is to advise you that the issues raised are being addressed by the Alliance as a matter of urgency.
We will keep you fully informed of developments. I expect that we will be in a position to advise you of our new Forum address later this evening and we would be grateful if you would circulate it to your club officials, players and friends when it becomes available.
The question of email addresses and the on-line result form will be clarified shortly.
We are sorry about this unexpected disruption. We shall be contacting you again in the very near future.

Regards
Dennis
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As this email looks as if I have switched the website off for no apparent reason, I feel that the other side of this sad sorry state of affairs should be brought to your attention.

I came across a couple of emails last month which was sent to all of the committee members but not me (acting as website manager at the time) which pointed out that the league were actively looking to find a new website and the email gave a couple of suggestions saying that it's something the league should look into, it had potential and was looking for volunteers.

I challenged the league with the emails and they just back tracked and said it wasn't what I thought and they weren't looking at other options.

I found this very underhanded and devious and to say that I was disappointed was an understatement. I found it utterly deflating that the league would go behind my back after all the years of service and dedication I had put into giving up my time to put them on the map and to get them were they were at that point.

Anyway, not wanting to let the players and teams down, I carried on but pointing out that even though the league were actively looking for a new website and someone to run it, I would keep the current website going - updating it until the end of the season...I thought this was very reasonable?

Not many of you would know, but my other duties I had with the league was to create their literature - such as the handbook, fixtures covers and cup final programmes - which, as you can imagine take a long time to sort out and get to printers on time etc. This alone took up a lot of my spare time - especially when I have to key in the names and addresses of each team into the handbook document and then put all the same details onto the website.

As you can imagine, the Alliance League stuff was quite full on.

As the annual meeting shows, each member of the Alliance Committee gets some cash (honorarium) of which I got just over £500 per year - £10 per week to do all of this. With everything going on and my poor trust in the established committee members, I challenged the league to see if I was still on course for my yearly fee - or any for that matter (you could say I was looking for an assurance in case I got to the end of the season and didn't get a penny - wasting my time helping the league out). The league couldn't commit to me getting any money - even though I had spent all that time creating this seasons handbook and updating the website with fixtures and results etc.

At this point, I switched the website off.

I can only apologise to those faithful who relied on the website for their daily fix, If you know me, you'll know I'm not one for letting people down, but if you were putting all of those hours into something and wasn't sure you'd be paid anything at the end...what would you do?

It's a shame that it's come to this after all of those years ago when I started the website, got the forum up and running, tore my hair out and stayed up until the early hours when the slightest thing went wrong. As I've said before, I'm disappointed and deflated to say the least regarding the underhanded way the committee have handled the situation.

Still, the league have promised you a website which is bigger and better so there's something to look forward to...

I hope this lengthy email has shed a bit of light on the way this has ended and I hope you realise that I haven't just 'switched off' the website just because I could, and I also hope that you realise that not everyone is who they say they are...

Yours in football
Cory (web geek) Shackleton