Accrington Stanley Community Trust start works on £150,000 upgrade of the grass pitches at Stanley Sports Hub.

The existing grass pitches at Higham Playing Fields, now the Stanley Sports Hub, are in desperate need of renovation works to enable them to be used by local grassroots teams. The pitches have been prone to waterlogging over the past few years and they are now at a point where the drainage and surface need a complete overhaul.

The investment into the pitches will include a replacement primary drainage system and outfall, secondary drainage system and a completely new surface. Further investment includes 7 sets of brand-new goalposts and a 50m x8m ball stop net.

Martin Fearon, CEO at Accrington Stanley Community Trust said: ‘’It’s now absolutely essential that we invest into the grass pitches at the Stanley Sports Hub to give our local teams a top-class surface to train and play matches on. We’ve been the leaseholders of this site for 2 years now, and we are yet to host a single training session or match on any of the grass pitches due to the extremely poor condition of the current drainage system we inherited. We’ve worked with stakeholders to secure some funding towards the costs and we hope to have them back in action for the new season.’’

Once works have been completed the Stanley Sports Hub will have the following pitches available; Two 11v11 full size, two 9v9’s, one 7v7 and two 5v5’s.  This will enable all age groups to be covered and open up the opportunity for the hosting of league matches, cup matches and tournaments.

After securing a £25,000 grant towards the costs from the Football Foundation, more good news followed when they also agreed to provide a further £37,200 to go towards maintaining the grass pitches for the next 6 years.

For regular updates on the pitch renovation works, please visit our Stanley Sports Hub twitter profile; https://twitter.com/ASFCsportshub