football pitches

The council has finally completed the new football pitches in Clanfield. They have signed an agreement with Clanfield Football Club for their junior teams to play on the pitches. The goalposts are already in place and the pitch will be ready for games in early November. There are plans to improve the path from the car park to the pitches. The club is thriving with over 30 teams, including juniors, adults, and girls football. The council hopes that the new pitches will benefit the junior players and inspire them to continue playing. I'm out actually at the new football pitches in Clanfield with Chair of the Council, Dave Harris. How are you today Dave? I'm very well, lovely day now, good at last to see the goalposts in the corner. Yes, goalposts on this field! This has been quite a long story, so where are we now? I think you've just crossed the line haven't you? Yeah we have, so I won't go into the full history, I think everybody knows the difficulty we've had in with making these pitches, agreeing the pitches etc, and this is the final, we hope, iteration of a proper football pitch that our junior teams can pay on. This is a junior pitch, we won't be playing senior football here for a number of reasons, so we looked at Clanfield Football Club to allow their junior teams to play up here. As of two weeks ago we finally took possession of the pitches from the developers when East Ends District Council signed off the planning. We finally got ownership of the pitches and as of last Friday we've signed an agreement that Clanfield Football Club plays junior football up here. So we're all set to go, the pitch will be cut again for playing this week, we hope, should be today actually, which is Monday. Football Club will then line it, so put the pitch markings down. As I said we already have the goalposts so they're ready to go and there is a target, whether this is achieved or not, that Sunday week will be the first games that are played up here on around about the beginning of November, so 3rd or 4th November, and we'll publish that somewhere the actual day. Are you planning any kind of event, a kind of opening of the football pitch? We're actually not, maybe we will do when there's a number of things to do here in terms of some signage about the football club, making sure everything is good to go. We're also looking to put a path up from the car park, anyone that knows the position there's a car park and then a sort of a bank to climb up, so we're pathing that a bit better so people can not get too muddy. So I think we'll talk to the football club, they're the ones that probably organise a grand opening, but we haven't got anything in the diary yet. Well, knowing how long this has taken and what a state it looked at the beginning of this process, I have to say it looks tremendous now doesn't it? It not only looks great, it's in a great location. I mean we're standing here looking over South Downs, it is a beautiful spot, so let's hope that it inspires the children to even more to play football for Clownfield, who I would say on behalf of Clownfield Football Club, they are thriving at the moment. They have 30 plus teams, which is an astonishing number. Wow. A lot of them are juniors, the first team, second team, and the under 23 I think adults, we'll need to talk to them about that a bit more, but there are over 30 teams with juniors and girls football. They have a ladies team now in one of the Portsmouth leagues, so it's all thriving and what they need is good places to play. And you've provided one for them. Well, we hope that this is good for the juniors and will help them develop. We're all looking forward to seeing football up here. Excellent, thanks for talking to us.