So here we are.  The almost unthinkable has happened, something that none of us have ever experienced before and we have to go on from here and get through it.  As a professional coach, I have always taken care to have my eggs in lots of baskets - income from both school/leisure centre gigs and from clubs, different venues every night of the week, different groups and approaches.  When one thing faltered, there was always something else to back it up.  I never imagined losing all the baskets at once!

Fortunately, and the thing that has kept me going over the last few weeks, is that we have an incredibly cohesive and supportive group of people in the club and I have always had the sense that we could battle through this together.  With circumstances changing by the day, sometimes by the hour, it has been very difficult to plan or see a way ahead but giving up has never for a moment seemed to be an option.

We are all, in the fencing world, now in uncharted territory.  Clubs and coaches on all sides are rushing out with material and videos to keep people going but my feeling is that there is going to be a lot more to this than sticking a few things online.  The most important thing at this moment is to get used to a new way of doing things.  Our fencers will need to learn to do on their own what they are used to doing with a tremendous amount of supervision, support and company.  They will need to learn to interact with fencing in a whole new way.

The upside, if we can get this right, is that when this is over - and it will be over eventually - the fencers that survive will have made tremendous progress compared to their peers.  For our competitive fencers, this can be a great opportunity to get ahead and hit the piste running when fencing life resumes.  Philip and I won't get all this right - it has never been done before, and we are feeling our way through the darkness - but I am confident that if we have the input and enthusiasm from our fencers and their families, the results will be outstanding.

It will be a long road and there is no sign yet of any light at the end of the tunnel.  But we have plenty of torches for the journey and as long as we keep our spirits up it won't be long!

Well now, when I designed our original logo back in 2006, I had no idea that one day the motto I chose would turn out to be quite so prophetic!

For those who haven't heard the story before, Four of Clubs started life back in about 2004 as Moorlands Fencing Club, a small recreational club set up by two graduate students at Sheffield Hallam who managed to bag an Lottery Awards for All grant to buy some kit and start a fencing club. It was based at Brough Park Leisure Centre.

​ I arrived at the club in 2005, with no intention of ever coming back to fencing but quite happy for my two young sons to have a go.  Long story short, I was persuaded to dust off my old fencing gear, rejoin the club and qualify as a coach . . . at which point the remaining coach left me holding the baby, so to speak.  The club was down to two or three young members by that point, but, with  lot of hard work, it gradually started to expand and I found myself starting three other clubs as well - Bakewell, Hope Valley and Dronfield Fencing Clubs.  At one point, we had members from all four clubs wanting to compete and wanting a club badge.  I decided it would be easier to have one badge and one identity for all four and someone suggested calling it Four of Clubs, which we all thought was a good joke.  So I found an online logo designer and came up with this - 

The letters stood for the initials of each club (D for Dronfield was later replaced with A for Abbots Bromley when Dronfield decided to go its own way).  The logo needed a motto and at the time, I and a couple of others in the club were great Bruce Springsteen fans so we took the motto from the lyric 'We made a promise we swore we'd always remember/ No retreat, baby, no surrender'

At the time, I thought it would do until I could thing of something permanent, but as time went on it became more and more part of our identity and 14 years later, I still haven't come up with a better one.

Today I am very glad I did as it seems to sum up the only way to get through all this.  Thank you all for being there.  Let's weather the storm together.