By Cleethorpes Town helping community with new modern facilities
Following a devastating defeat at the hands of Hebburn Town, anyone would excuse some frustrated fans on a bitterly cold afternoon to call out the players for their lack of composure in front of goal, but no such shouts came, instead there were uplifting calls of “keep your heads up lads” a small, yet significant gesture which highlighted the community spirit which runs through the club.
Last week, Cleethorpes Town announced the approval of their long-awaited upgrade to the current changing facilities – replacing the current temporary facilities with four permanent, modern purpose-built areas alongside a new kitchen and training areas.
On the face of it, this may look like a lower league football club upgrading their facilities to boost their on-field performance, and while that will undoubtedly be a factor, chairman Jason Ledden told Gi Grimsby News that this is as much for the community as it is for the club.
“The club is a community club…I think a lot of people see the first team, [and think] that’s what Cleethorpes Town Football Club is about but it’s far more than that.
“The biggest thing about the new facility is, it’s a new model one – purpose built. We’ll have dual facility changing in there, which means on any given day or weekend, you could have the boys team to one side, girls teams, ladies to the other side.”
The area will also have more disability access, to allow everyone in the local community to get some exercise through football, no matter their age or disability.
It is hoped that the club will be able to host junior and senior tournaments in the near future and the club’s partnership with Grimsby Corinthians – a local walking football team – outlines their intentions to support the community.
“It means that we’re supporting people to play football in the sort of the age of six to 60 plus, so it is really community based,” Jason added.
A long time coming
Since we moved back to the ground, we always realised that we needed to make some improvements to changing facilities.
This project has been on Jason’s wish list since the club returned to their current ground in 2018, with the plans being accelerated in the past 12 months.
“Since we moved back to the ground, we always realised that we needed to make some improvements to changing facilities.
“We’ve been doing things in a structured way, we got the ground all ready, we had to do the ground breaking to get the pitch ready for the league.
“In the last 12 months we’ve been working with the Football Foundation to raise funding, working within to club to raise some other funding for it.
“The big issues have been working with the local community to make sure that we’ve been speaking to them about what we want to do, how we want to make improvements and what it means for the football club and particularly to the junior football club.”
This promising news is especially needed after a turbulent 18 months during the pandemic when football was put on the backfoot to prioritise safety, Jason says.
“When we had to finish the league early when Covid hit, it was obviously disappointing but then everyone had to focus [on supporting others].
“There’s a lot of people who have come to the club, they’re all carers who work for the NHS so the club was focused on making sure we could support them in whatever way,” he added.
Since football has returned, many fans have pointed to an added sense of romanticism of simply going to games and Jason agrees that this has been felt at the club too.
He says that before the pandemic there was maybe a sense of taking football for granted, but since the restrictions have been lifted, people “really appreciate the fact you can come and watch a game on a Saturday.”
What the future holds
This new facility means that we can push girls and ladies football to a new level…
With the club currently sat in fourth place in the Northern Premier League, promotion is a real possibility as they are comfortably in a play-off place.
Jason explains that promotion was his aim for the season, despite uncertainties around finances after coming out of the pandemic:
“We’ve just come out of Covid, so everybody’s a little tentative around finances but we said we want to compete this year, which we are at the moment.”
While promotion is on the cards for the men’s senior side this season, the facilities promise to be the start of long-term sustained success for the club and area, as a whole.
“I think we want to be a club that keeps every year improving, we want to keep improving the facility, we’ve got that for the local community,” Jason explains.
“We want to get our junior sections to become stronger.”
Pushing diversity is one of Jason’s key aims and he hopes that the new facilities will help them enormously in the future with that goal.
“We want to push diversity within our local game, this new facility means that we can push girls and ladies football to a new level.”
The work on these new facilities is expected to begin in the New Year and, it is hoped, will be ready for the start of next season.
