Monday 19th July 2021
£22,400 awarded to Manorcroft United to improve the quality of grass football pitches in Englefield Green
Manorcroft United has been awarded a grant of £22,400 from the Premier League, The FA and Government’s Football Foundation, to improve the grass pitches at Coopers Hill Sports Ground.
The £22,400 six-year tapered grant, part of the Foundation’s Grass Pitch Maintenance Fund, will help Manorcroft United to improve the quality of the grass pitches at Coopers Hill Sports Ground.
The investment was provided following the completion of a pitch inspection using the Football Foundation’s specially developed app, PitchPower, which is a mobile tool used for assessing the quality of grass football pitches. Manorcroft United will now be able to use the grant to complete the maintenance work identified in their PitchPower Assessment Report, which includes applying fertiliser, aeration, seeding and other maintenance practices.
These grants are key to the Foundation’s aim to help create 5,000 more quality pitches before the end of 2024, in line with the FA
’s Grassroots Strategy. Alongside its PitchPower assessment tool, the Football Foundation has also created an online grounds keeping community called The Hive to provide expert support and advice to clubs. Anyone in Runnymede can find out more and sign up at https://footballfoundation.org.uk/grass-pitch-improvement
Leon Turner, Chairman, Manorcroft United said: “This football foundation grant will help us with the immediate improvement and longer-term maintenance of the pitches at Coopers Hill. Our volunteer grounds team have had to learn on the job and as the Club has grown to its current size the challenges of maintaining the high standards, we have always set at Coopers Hill have become more and more challenging. The grant will help with the direct maintenance but the ability to access courses and an online community of people trying to achieve the same results will help hugely with the medium to long term project, provision of high-quality grass roots pitches. The grant will allow children and adults in the community to benefit for years to come.”
Robert Sullivan, Chief Executive of the Football Foundation, said: “This grant award to Manorcroft United towards pitch improvements is vital for the local community in Runnymede they get back to playing football. Our Grass Pitch
Maintenance Fund is supporting clubs across the country, helping them enhance and sustain their pitches to improve access to good quality facilities for grassroots players.”
“This is part of our wider ambition to get more people involved in football, regardless of their background, age or ability. By unlocking the power of pitches, we can help transform the lives of players and strengthen communities through the nation’s favourite game.”
The Grass Pitch Maintenance Fund provides eligible clubs and leagues with a tapered six-year grant to help them sustain pitches already at a 'good' level or higher and enhance pitches that are either considered 'poor' or 'basic'.
The grant comes as part of an investment of more than £16m that has been made available to help clubs prepare for the restart of grassroots football following the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Football Foundation is the UK’s largest sports charity and exists to improve the experience of playing football for everyone, by championing fair access to quality facilities.
About the Grass Pitch Maintenance Fund
Opened on 15 March as part of the Football Foundation’s ‘Game On’ campaign, this fund provides eligible leagues and organisations six-year tapered grants to improve the quality of grass pitches. These grants form a key part in the Foundation’s delivery of the FA’s Grassroots Strategy and its commitment to add at least 5000 quality pitches to the current number by 2024.
About the Football Foundation
The Premier League, The FA and Government’s Football Foundation is the largest sports charity in the UK. It champions and supports fair access to quality football facilities for everyone, regardless of gender, race, disability or place. The Foundation receives money from the Premier League, The FA and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, through Sport England. This is matched with partnership funding and awarded as grants to create outstanding grassroots facilities that enable better games and attract more players, helping to transform communities. Since 2000, it has awarded more than 17,600 grants to improve facilities worth more than £710m – including 942 artificial grass pitches, 6,426 natural grass pitches and 1,200 changing facilities. This has attracted an additional £940m of partnership funding – totalling over £1.6bn investment in grassroots football so far. Through the Foundation, the Premier League, The FA, DCMS and Sport England have come together to create the National Football Facilities Strategy (NFFS) that will guide work over the next 10 years to transform many more local facilities. Local Football Facility Plans (LFFP) are being created to identify priority projects where demand is greatest, and the impact will be strongest and help stimulate the action required to deliver them.
Visit footballfoundation.org.uk for more information on the Foundation.