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Ambitious Sports are
forced to leave home
PETERBOROUGH Sports have been forced to leave home to preserve their place in the ChromaSport & Trophies Peterborough & District League Premier Division.
The city club have waved goodbye to their PSL base on Lincoln Road for at least the remainder of the current season to allow improvements to one of the changing rooms to be carried out.
The dressing room in question is currently two square metres smaller than the required size laid down in Football Association criteria for Step 7 football.
And with Sports not having sufficient time to rectify the issue before the February 19 deadline, a temporary move across the city was their only option to avoid an enforced relegation.
They will now play their football in Gunthorpe at Campbell Drive and Sports chairman Tommy Cooper admitted the club couldn’t afford to risk their top-flight status as they have ambitions to secure promotion to the United Counties League next season.
Cooper said: “We want to be playing in the UCL the season after next so there is no way we could contemplate taking a backwards step and sacrificing our place in the Premier Division.
“We took the decision to do whatever was required and the move to Campbell Drive will cost us around £1,000 as we have to carry out improvements to the pitch and put in dugouts. “I wouldn’t say it is something we are happy about but it is a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things given our ambitions as a club.
“Had we not have done it we would have had to change our future goals and faced losing most of our players – well the ones that haven’t already gone to Deeping anyway.
“What I must stress is I have a lot of sympathy for the Peterborough League on this matter. They are getting plenty of flak but I feel they have been hung out to dry by the FA at national level.”
Revamping the changing facilities is all part of grand plans for the PSL site which will eventually include a floodlit pitch.
Cooper revealed the club have secured around a quarter-of-a-million pounds worth of funding to plough into the project.
In the meantime he will head back to Campbell Drive with fond memories of past glories achieved in that small corner of Peterborough.
He added: “I won a couple of league titles as Ortonians manager when we were based there so it’s a place that has happy memories for me.
“Realistically we are looking at being there for around six months but I think the fact we were left with a choice of Campbell Drive, Ringwood or Lawson Avenue as a temporary home is a damning indictment of football in Peterborough.”
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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