Been a bit quiet with the blog of late, the last month or so has consisted of applying for grant after grant which isn’t much fun at all and definitely not something worth writing about!! Thankfully we have been successful with 2 of them (Ffos y Fran intermediate grant=£1500 and Ffos y Fran small grant with some help from our local Councillor Gareth Richards=£500). With this money it meant we could at least get some quotes in for a new boundary fence and a gate for the main entrance of The Athletic instead of the crappy looking temporary fence we had up and the rusty old fence that was missing pieces!
The old rusty fence with pieces missing and the temporary fence at the entrance.
Luckily we came across an amazing company called Alphafence Sports & Security Fencing ( https://www.alphafence.co.uk/ )and their MD Bernard could not have been more helpful from the start! He understood what we are up against and the amount of work we have to do at the ground with a very little budget and he worked with us to get the best quote possible. We agreed a price which meant we had to do a little more fundraising to top up the grant money already secured. We ended up getting all our mini and junior teams to sell a sweep for the Euros (one or two failed but was still a huge effort by all!) with £150 going to the winner and £90 going into our Athletic pot from each sweep. From this we managed to raise the shortfall needed and within a week of agreeing the price Alphafence were on site and starting work! This involved removing the existing rusty fence from site, installing the fence posts and gate posts and leaving to set. Then coming back to install the fence and again to install the gate.
New fence posts and completed fence and new gate posts and completed gate
Theres still some works to be done to completely finish the above which are our next steps as soon as we get the funds together.
You may have noticed theres a big old gap between the existing damaged wall and the new gate which isnt ideal! We need to repair the wall and extend it up to the gate post as soon as the council move the live cable thats hanging into the entrance.
The other thing is that we only had the fence replaced that we could afford at the time. If you pass the ground youll noticed we have camouflaged the rest of the fence with ivy until we can afford to get that replaced too!
Since the last blog we have had another cut done by the council but we really need to start maintaining it ourselves as soon as our equipment turns up! Been on order for almost 2 months but still no sign of it yet.
We are also hoping to host a family fun day at The Athletic ground on Sunday August 15th to help raise more funds for the project. We have asked for permission from the council to do this just waiting on a response (hopefully it comes quicker than the mower!!) so watch out for that!
Thanks for reading! KJ
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