Update on club development at Prenton Rugby Club – Some who are close to the club may have thought it has all gone quiet on the development. However things are far from it, there is plenty going on behind the scene.
The RFU approached the club a couple of months ago to say that Birkenhead school are looking to sell off one of their rugby pitches for housing, and have to replace like for like.
The Club had a meeting with them, and they where very impressed with the club’s development plans including their new changing rooms. And it fell in with their plans to site a full size floodlit rugby pitch on the clubs training pitch. From that they have paid to have a full report done on the site, which all came back good.
As the plans are now, the changing rooms encroach very close to the proposed edge of new pitch, the ideal thing would be to turn the changing round to run along the end of the club.
This still giving the club a large members lounge, as well giving them more space for the pitch. To turn it around they would be going over our boundary line onto their neighbours land Dennis Morgan.
The club arranged a meeting with Dennis to explain about the proposed pitch, hoping to come up with some sort of a deal over the the land so they could turn the changing rooms around.
Not only did he agree to give them the land, he gave us an extra 7 meters from the back of the garages in a straight line down to the Brooke.
Also with turning changing rooms around it makes things a lot simpler for the drains and the lounge roof as well as the patio area. The school are looking to submit their plans in the New Year, part of their submission will be that they will be putting a new floodlit pitch at Prenton RUFC replacing the one they are losing.
Once the club have a letter off the school with their proposal to site a pitch at Prenton, it will improve their chances of funding when they put in their application to sport England. Having spoken to sport England the thing that’s going against the club at the moment is that they have no youth section at present.
This is why the club believe it is so important to get a youth section going. Currently Craig Cotty and Ritchie are in the process of starting a youth section.
The club are also in the process of upgrading their club accreditation, all these need to be in place for when they start putting in our application for grants. This is only part of what’s going on behind the scene, its all very time consuming but hopefully it will all be worth it, the club only get one chance so it has to be right. There will be a further update in the New Year.
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