Needham Market Football Club draw up development wishlist for the next decade with innovative hybrid first-team pitch being considered
Despite the challenges the coronavirus lockdown has forced upon them, the directors at Needham Market FC are already looking at ways to prepare the club for Step 2 football with the launch of a 10-year plan.
Increasing seating capacity at Bloomfields, probably with a new main stand, to meet the National League’s second tier (North and South) ground grading requirements is one of the projects included.
Moving from a grass pitch to an artificial 3G, or even becoming one of the first semi-professional or professional sides in the country to utilise new hybrid surface technology, is also on the agenda for the next decade.
An expansion of the recently built ‘Hub’ community building, additional classrooms for the academy and expanding the Bloomfields site to adjoining land are other ideas the club wish to look in to.
But the priorities for the first decade are set to be a new storage area and a car park in between the allotments and the main pitch, as well as new LED floodlights.
The new car park will potentially provide 48 additional spaces, plus a coach parking area and a much-needed alternative to parking on the grass which can become troublesome in the winter months.
This week saw confirmation the club have been awarded £5,606 from the Football Foundation for the refurbishment of a storage area and new fencing, part of a £7,506 project.
Robert Peace, Needham’s operations and academy director, was the author of the ‘10-year development vision’, which has deliberately not set timescales on the projects.
He said: “We got to an end of a decade and a lot has happened in that decade with the 3G and The Hub and we started a new one.
“This has been something I have been looking at for the past couple of months. And you have to gauge the current climate, as we don’t want anything to come across as unsavoury, but we are going to get back to football at some stage.
“It is good for people to aspire to ‘this is what we want to be’ and with it being a 10-year vision, and it is not the greatest start with the coronavirus, but this is what we aim to get to over the 10 years.”
The vision sets out how the club – currently playing at Step 3 in the Southern League, the highest level of any non-league side in the county – want to continue to lead the way for football facilities in Suffolk outside of Ipswich Town.
It reveals the club invested more than £1million on new facilities over the past 10 years, including a 11v11 3G artificial grass pitch, new community building hosting ‘The Hub’ and Viridor Credits Community Room.
On the aspiration to explore moving away from a main grass pitch, Peace explained: “The demand for the 3G we have is great and we are maximising the use of our 3G pitch.
“So then it is looking at the current first-team grass pitch. And as with any grass pitch, come the winter you play a couple of games on it and it can get battered.
“So a hybrid is a middle ground between a grass pitch and a 3G and it can allow up to two hours use per day, no matter the conditions. That would then result in training or all football matches to be played on there without the worry or concern about having a detrimental effect on the pitch.
“The technology is quite new and we are looking into that.
He added: “There is obviously a debate about grass pitches and 3G and who likes them and who doesn’t and that was a question we had internally three or four years ago when we were decided where our 3G goes.”
The club decided then to go with the artificial surface on what was their adjacent practice pitch.
But Peace believes moving away from a grass first-team pitch could be the answer to a problem of still not having enough capacity to have all the club’s associated sides playing within their Bloomfields site. Some youth sides are still having to play at Crowley Park.
The full vision document can be viewed via the club’s website.
