Yorkshire uncovered: Club Website on tour
Club Website hit the road again at the end of January as we paid a visit to Yorkshire on the second stage of our tour of some of the worst football facilities around the country.
Having found out that half of Club Website users have to put up with sub-standard facilities for their regular football - while many don’t even have any changing rooms to use - we decided to get out there and take a look for ourselves.
After an eye-opening trip to Birmingham in December - as revealed here in The Club House last month - we headed a bit further north this time around to check out some of the facilities we’d heard about in the South Yorkshire area.
Our first port of call on the Saturday morning was Birdwell Recreation Ground near Barnsley, where one football pitch and a small changing room facility are used by four teams over alternate weekends.
The first thing to strike you about the building is the graffiti that covers two of the exterior walls, but it turns out this is just about the best thing about the facility.
The graffiti certainly helps distract attention from the fact that all of the windows are boarded up, along with the side door.
The inside is even worse, as we soon found out as we were given the guided tour by Dave Capp of The Acorn FC, one of the teams to use the venue (click on the image of the building to see more).
"The lights don’t work, there’s no power to the building and there’s bags of rubbish everywhere," Dave warns us as our guided tour begins.
"The toilets are in very poor condition and there’s no door so there’s no privacy. An electric heater is the only source of heat in the whole building but that’s obviously no use if there’s no power on!"
It's the third season that The Acorn FC have used the facilities and Dave has been in regular contact with the council over the condition of the building but has found that little has been done:
"We are constantly going on to the council about the condition of the clubhouse and there's been very little response. There was some vandalism to the building and they've carried out some repairs, but we're still concerened about other things.
"We've got concerns about health and safety, about asbestos content in the building and about fire exits - this one is boarded up.
"Legionella is a big concern as there is stored water for the showers. There's no legionella survey available from the council, no asbestos survey and no electrical hard wire testing.
"There's no power on at the moment which means we can't have any showers and there's no lighting, no fire alarm. It's a death trap really.
"We're embarrassed about away teams coming in and welcoming them to our ground, our facility. It's shameful really. That's why I contacted Club Website."
After checking out the facilities with Dave, we left him to head off to his away game that afternoon, while we hung around to speak to some of the players from the afternoon game about the facilities at Birdwell.
The game in question was from the Premier Division of the Wragg Football League, a veteran's league for teams in the South Yorkshire area. Elsecar Dynamos were playing host to Bradway FC and, as the players headed out to the pitch, we noticed that one of them looked familiar.
Ex-Newcastle and Portsmouth star John Beresford was turning out for the visiting team and we took the opportunity to speak to him about the facilities on show. Despite spending a career turning out in Premier League stadia, he didn't seem too concerned about having to get changed in a dark and dingy changing room, but he did wish that the facilities "could be a bit better" because he thought it would "improve the football" for those who use them.
Beresford played in the top flight of English football for a number of years, during the time when the Premier League explosion was just beginning. The professional game in England has never been bigger than it is at the moment and the amount of money spent by the top clubs is vast, even compared to the time when Beresford himself was playing. So, we wondered, did he feel that there was enough money finding its way down from the top of the game to the grassroots?
"No there isn’t. The amount of millions that are banded around, it should be filtered down. The facilities should be looked after for the next generation.
"The FA and the PFA should do their utmost to make sure it gets filtered down. There are kids out there who are maybe not at academies, but just need a little bit of help.
"Sometimes you’ll turn up at facilities and a kid who’s got great talent won’t be able to show how good he is because the facilities are not as good as they should be, so I think it would be a great help if you could filter some of that money down."
As it stands, it seems that very little money is filtering through in this part of the country, either via the football bodies or the local council. Each of the four teams who play at Birdwell Rec pay almost £500 each per season for the privilege, so they are left to wonder what exactly happens to this cash.
Daz Wilkie, secretary of local side Hoyland Town JFC and committee member of the Millennium Junior Football League, feels that the prices in Barnsley are not that expensive in comparison to elsewhere, but feel that the big problem isn't the cost.
"We've not got changing rooms!" he told us, putting his finger on the point immediately.
"There's a field in the middle of Hoyland where one of the most successful local sides - Hoyland Jaguars - used to play. They won everything but they've packed in now altogether because there are just no facilities for them. They had to keep moving around and they had nowhere that they could call home from one season to the next.
Having been involved in local football for over two decades, Daz has seen a huge decline in the situation over that time. "We've probably got two sets of changing rooms in the area, but twenty years ago there would have been at least 10," he tells us. "It's just been a continual erosion of all these facilities over the years. Nobody's come forward to try and change the direction it's going. It's just going backwards and backwards."
Daz told us about the detailed plans he has in place to build new pitches for his football club. The land has been earmarked, funding has been found and the people are there who can do the job, but the plans are being held up because Barnsley Council are currently "having a stocktake of the pitches in Barnsley and until that's complete they can't go forward."
The frustation Daz feels at this is plain to see, not just for his club but for the community as a whole. "We've got 20 teams, 200-odd kids involved in our football club, that's 200-odd families so it's a big impact on the local community," he told us.
"If these things were looked after properly then it would be better for the whole community, not just for football but in everything that we do. People get more respect, more responsibility is given to people and it becomes a big issue generally, not just through football. It's extremely frustrating."
Disappointed at what we'd heard - though not entirely surprised - we headed out to catch up with the Acorn FC and watch the end of their scrappy 2-2 draw with Rawmarsh Earl Grey, a Rotherham-based side who had recently left their council-owned facilities because they felt they were paying over the odds.
They decided to re-locate to Silverwood Miners Welfare Club, which is where we caught up with Dave and the rest of the Acorn lads later on to watch the closing stages of their game.
As we like to do on the Club Website tour, we sorted the players out with some Lucozade Sport and gave the watching spectators a hot drink to cheer them up on a cold day, but if we’d known what awaited them back at the changing rooms, we’d have made sure the drinks contained something a bit stronger!
The changing rooms were in a shocking state (click on image of the bathroom to see more). Many of the ceilings had caved in leaving rubble all over the floor and it looked like the place hadn’t been cleaned all season, with the walls, floors, toilets, sink and solitary shower all completely filthy.
It comes to something when the players of a team based at Birdwell Rec are wishing they were back in their home dressing room. Maybe the Acorn lads didn't have it so bad after all!
As we headed back to The Acorn for a couple of drinks with Dave and the football team, we were left pretty dismayed - yet again - at what we had seen.
It was another eye opening experience on the Club Website facilities tour, but one that added yet more weight to the campaign to get something done about this important issue.
Thanks to all of you who joined us in South Yorkshire to support the cause. It was great to meet everyone, put a few faces to names and to share a beer or two after the work was done. Keep in touch and hope to see you all again soon. |
