By Sue Hewett, Club Secretary

Last week, I wrote about my role in relation to transfers. For part two, I wanted to give some detail of other responsibilities for our administration department.

Loan moves
As well as permanent transfers there is always work involved with loan moves. We've had a lot of players out on loan at different clubs in the Football League this season. And while the paperwork for a loan is much less than for a permanent transfer, it still involves work for a Club Secretary and the department.

I have to be responsible for knowing when a loan ends, whether we have recall options available on those players, and what the League and FA rules are on recalls. If players who are away on loan pick up bookings or red cards during their time away with another club, those suspensions apply for Reading when they return. If they play in any of the cup competitions while on loan then they'll be cup-tied when they return.

There is a lot to make sure we are on top of. I need to make sure that Steve Coppell and Nick Hammond have the correct information on loan players for when they're making a decision on that player for the remainder of that month or the rest of the season.

Football disciplinary
Quite a lot of the rules on discipline are tweaked from time to time. What might have been the case last season might not be the case this season. So we need to be fully up to date with what the rules and regulations are and make sure they are applied.

Things can happen quickly and the situation with suspensions can too, especially if we have games in quick succession. As soon as someone is sent-off or picks up a yellow card which triggers a suspension, the manager must know straight away what the implication is ahead of the next game. You need a good memory and a good system to make sure the information is readily at hand.

International call-ups
This is also a situation which has changed lately as we've recruited more international players. Not so long ago, there would only be Adie Williams for Wales, and it was fairly straightforward dealing with one call-up at one time. Now we've got 12 or 13 in one go, flying to different places at different times for varying periods of time. We had difficulties earlier in the season about when and where in the UK the international players were returning to. That made things slightly chaotic in the build-up to the trips to some of our away fixtures.

So we looked at a new system ahead of the Blackburn Rovers trip, where we organised to fly some players back to Manchester instead of London. It worked much better for us and we repeated it ahead of the trip to Manchester City. Some players flew into Manchester or Liverpool and then met up with the rest of the squad up in the North West, and it cut down their travelling time. To achieve things like that you have to develop a relationship with the overseas football associations. There can be language problems there so it's sometimes a bit of a task.

Pre-season plans
Last summer's Peace Cup presented a new challenge for us as we'd never been involved in a big tournament like that in previous pre-season campaigns. The organisers were very good in terms of the planning of the tournament. In the past we would have relied on contacts in a country to do all the groundwork for us, but this time I had to travel out to Korea one month ahead of the team to assist in the reconnaissance work, finding out where the team would stay and train.
We're yet to discuss pre-season plans for 2008, so that work is all ahead of us. And of course, things like that are very much done in advance. So while we work game-by-game on some things, we also have other things that are slow burners going on in the background.

Matchday procedures
Matchdays are broken down into two elements for the football admin department. We handle all of the Directors' Box ticketing and hospitality allocations, for the VIP guests. For home games we would look after our Chairman's guests but also the Directors and officials from the visiting clubs. And we would request and organise our Chairman and Directors' allocations at away games.

At a home game we also need to liaise with the match officials ahead of time, make sure they know all the details of where they need to go and what the kick-off time is as well as any scheduled activity in pre-match or half-time that they might need to know. We meet and greet them and show them around on a matchday, as well as looking after their guests. There are also normally two referee's assessors that attend and again, we would look after them and escort them to meet with the match officials before and after the game.

If something goes awry you can sometimes be called upon for consultation purposes. A player might pick up an injury in the warm-up, which means there is a late change to the teamsheet. I'd need to check the rulebook and could be called upon in those circumstances. If there is a kick-off delay or need for a postponement, I would be involved in communicating that or liaising with the opposition and referee for new dates and timings.

There can be random drug testing on matchday as well. The drug testers don't announce in advance that they're coming to us. And when they do arrive, it's a very close time to kick-off and I'm their first port of call. They are then shown down to the drug testing room near the dressing room area. Then I'm involved with the physios and team doctors of both sides, helping to ensure the whole drug testing procedure happens correctly.

There are plenty of things that can happen at a drop of a hat on a matchday which you're not expecting but have to be prepared for.