The Supporters Club has now passed its 25th anniversary and through the years has played a significant part in forging links and goodwill between supporters and Leyton Orient FC.

In addition to the services and facilities which the club organises for members, our other main objective is to provide ongoing assistance to the O's both in practical terms and in the form of financial input generated from our fund raising efforts.

The club's superb premises in the newly opened West Stand last season helped us to attract an additional influx of members taking our total for 05/06 to over 1300.

The Supporters Club has been raising substantial funds for the O's for almost thirty years and we are now well past the £1/2 million mark.

Help us in our efforts to continue our on-going support to the O's by joining the official Supporters Club and, in doing so, enjoy our excellent facilities and services in the friendly company of fellow O's fans

Together with regular social events, affiliated football and cricket teams and the club travel service to away matches, the Supporters Club offers a service to members which has attracted a good level of consistent support since our formation back in 1977.

The club is run by a committee currently comprising some fifteen O's supporters, all of whom provide their time and effort on an entirely voluntary basis and who must submit themselves for election at each Annual General Meeting of the club.

Establishing the club wasn't the easiest of tasks back in those formative days, working as we were on a meagre budget of around £1000, part donated and part loaned by the parent club.

With this princely sum we had to renovate, make safe, decorate and furnish the premises which in an earlier life had been some kind of staff dormitory attached to a hospital!

Be that as it may, the reconstructed 'cabin' fitted nicely into what at one time had been the infamous 'cage' area, which was used to contain the football hooligans of the day! Who has any personal memories of that, I wonder?

With endless enthusiasm we managed to have the club doors open for the first time in August 1978 for the pre season Anglo Scottish Cup tie v Notts County.

The rest as they say is history, and what a record of events and achievements the Supporters Club has amassed as we developed through successive years - all kinds of social events at the club and at various outside venues.

Reunion parties of past players; boxing dinners in association with our friends at the Lion Club; regular and occasionally stormy meetings with successive chairmen and managers; trips abroad; our end of season "O's Star Man" player award dinner; darts toumaments; the ever popular quiz and race nights; even stag and hen parties (but not any more!); the amazing fund raising efforts and lots more beside.

Having been "at the helm" so to speak since those formative days, and indeed with even earlier involvement with the old Sportsmans' Club back in the 1970s (for those of you who remember back that far), I must say that my personal enthusiasm for the O's and for the Supporters Club is as great now as it ever was despite the many trials and disappointments we have faced down the years.

I know that the same can be said of our committee, some of whom have held office for almost as many years as myself.

But, of course, the success we modestly aspire to could not have been achieved without the support of our members, many of whom are also club stalwarts, having been with us from day one.

The prospect of new and larger club premises in the proposed West Stand redevelopment will present a whole new challenge for the Supporters Club. It is a challenge which we shall be inviting supporters to become involved with, both in terms of practical help and through ongoing communication of ideas and opinions - which hopefully this website facility will encourage.

Thanks for looking in. Please check out our other pages AND, remember, if you are not already a Supporters Club member, please help the cause by joining shortly. Visit the membership page for details.

August 2006