CULCHETH Sports Club – “the Daten” – has applied for planning permission for a £100,000 all-weather playing pitch on its former bowling green.
The pitch would consist of two five-a-side soccer pitches which could be joined together to make a single pitch for larger teams.
But club secretary Stuart Nightingale, who last month told Warrington-Worldwide the club had only a 50-50 chance of surviving the coronavirus pandemic, said: “We have applied for planning permission but it’s a long term plan. We haven’t got the money to pay for it.
“We need to have planning permission before we can think about raising the money. Once we get permission it will open up the possibility of getting grant aid.”
The two five-a-side pitches would contribute to the club’s ambition to establish a football academy at the Charnock Road club.
They will be named after local soccer legends, Liverpool and England World Cup hero Roger Hunt and Liverpool and Scotland goalkeeper Tommy Lawrence.
Mr Nightingale said the club had to alter if it was to survive. It had to concentrate on sports which were growing, not those that were in decline.
Sports such as badminton, snooker and darts were in decline. The bowling section, which closed early in the summer, generated £5,000-a-year when it had a full membership. But the operating costs of maintaining the bowling green was £4,200 – and the bowling section did not have a full membership.
Soccer was thriving and the tennis section had doubled in membership during the lockdown and was planning to increase the number of courts. Other activities which were growing included dance, yoga and keep-fit.
Currently, the club’s soccer team had to train at Birchwood but with improved facilities at Culcheth all training could be brought “in-house.”
“Our problems, even before the pandemic, were that we were a club in a 60-year-old building with a poor business plan that was 30-years out-of-date. The building, which used to cater for wedding receptions and social functions, no longer meets present day expectations
“The new facilities will bring in customers and the income will cover the costs.
“But it will still be a community club – a facilitiy for the people of Culcheth. If local people give their support it can become a superb local sports centre again…”
Originally a social club for employees of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, the “Daten” was purchased by the club in 1998. In the event of it failing, it would revert back to the UKAEA who would decide its future.
