Associate
Membership
Associate Membership is targeted at new clubs who are wishing to join the
Amateur Football Combination in a season or two, and may be of particular
interest to Youth Clubs who are looking to expand into Adult football. Normally
such clubs are asked to "play a season of friendlies" prior to joining
the league, and Associate Membership has been introduced to help new clubs to
organise these friendlies.
Associate
Membership allows a club to have its details published on the website and receive the weekly bulletin, in order to arrange friendly games, but
does not allow the club to play league football, nor have any voting rights
within the league.
An
application for associate membership should include a completed New
Club Application Form.
Requirements
for Application
A Club applying for Associate Membership must be able to submit its Rules,
Disciplinary Code, Estimate of Playing Members and details of proposed ground
and hospitality venue (i.e. points 2, 3 and 4).
Applicants for Associate
Membership do NOT need to be proposed and seconded by two Full Member
Clubs from the League.
Associate
Membership may be granted, suspended or withdrawn at any time by the Chairman of
the Amenities
Committee.
An Associate Club is required to affiliate to the Amateur
Football Alliance, our parent County Football Association.
An Associate Member pays a subscription to the AFC of £30.
An Associate Member
receives the fixtures/results bulletin each week to assist them in arranging
fixtures (the bulletin lists all AFC sides who are "spare" that week).
Associate Members are required to submit a CRS (Comprehensive Result
Sheet) each week, so that the league can monitor their progress in friendlies -
most of which we hope have been played against AFC Clubs.
Restrictions
An Associate Member has
no voting rights on the league (they can send representatives to General
Meetings, but not vote) and cannot send club representatives to the Executive.
No club shall be permitted to be an Associate Member without applying
to join the league proper for more than two years (the expectation is that
after one or two years associate membership, the club will have made a firm
decision about whether it wishes to join the AFC).
When an Associate Member wishes to apply to join the league as a Full
Member, they still need to get a proposer and seconder from existing full member
clubs (which, after a season of friendlies shouldn't prove problematic one would
hope).
Transferring
Clubs
It
should be made clear that Associate Membership is not a prerequisite of applying
to join the AFC, and is not expected to be suitable for all clubs. Existing
adult clubs playing in other leagues are unlikely to need to apply for Associate
Membership and play a season of friendlies. As long as they make their
applications by the deadlines shown above their applications will be considered
in the normal way.
Click
here to return to Joining the AFC