Ground crisis for soccer clubs

ARCHAIC conditions at a Heathfield football club could leave two teams without a home at the end of this season.

Heathfield Hotspurs have tried their best to improve facilities at Tower Rec and their efforts won a reprieve for them to carry on playing this season but that is the final deadline, according to the East Sussex Brewers League.

Hotspurs are one step away from the Premier Divison, said Alan Apps, fixtures and registration secretary of the League. All intermediate football, which includes the Premier Division, has certain standards of accommodation. There have to be separate changing rooms for the away team and the referee and there have to be showers and heating and lighting.

Last year, he said, the club did not even have washing facilities. Everybody who plays football has to have washing facilities, albeit a bucket of water and a sponge, but Heathfield Hotspurs for most of last season didn t comply with that.

The time when you used to go out, play football and get back into your car have gone. Money has been made available through the FA to upgrade facilities and there is no need for anybody to have archaic facilities now.

The Hotspurs are hoping that a plan to provide a new pitch at Sheepsetting Lane will come to fruition in time to save the club. The parish council is to meet with club representatives to discuss funding.

Secretary Jeremy Smith said the club had played at the Tower Rec for 50 years but as well as needing better changing facilities the pitch was too small for intermediate football and there wasn t enough space to enlarge it.

There is already one pitch at Sheepsetting Lane, which is home to Heathfield United. There is enough room to provide a second and the pavilion on the site has four changing rooms.

We would obviously like better facilities because then we could attract better players and it would help us keep those we have got, but our primary need is to meet the League s requirements and if they can be met at Sheepsetting Lane then we would be happy, said Mr Smith.