Drop-in and strike a CHORD for Campbeltown all weather football pitch

Campbeltown is unique in Argyll for many reasons and here’s another one. It has not one but two amateur football teams – each training twice a week.

It’s also unique among Argyll’s major towns in being the only one not to have an all weather pitch to support the development of the game and of its players.

These two facts just don’t match up.

The photograph above is of young players training at the new all weather pitch in Lochgilphead. The one below is of a game in progress at The Meadows pitch in Campbeltown – a decent surface in the summer – but how reliable is that and how long does it last? The photograph shows the regular reality.

Here is a town with the most energetic profile for the game in the entire county – and long out of date facilities to support it.

Young people in Campbeltown have all the restless energy of their stage in life – and have little to use it on, which can case problems. The pupils at Campbeltown Grammar School see their peers across Argyll – and nearby in Tarbert – with all weather pitches for training and playing. They are crying out for the same chances.

They want to be active. They want to be healthy. They want to play football. And they want to be good.

The all weather pitches the other towns have secured have come via the new school building programme. However, Campbeltown missed the list of schools in the great tranche of new school building to which Argyll and Bute Council committed itself and is now alone in having no such sporting facilities. (See the list at the foot of this article.)

The town will have to raise anything between £1million and £1.7 million, according to Kintyre Councillor John Semple, in an effort to acquire such a pitch.

The campaign is now pinning its hopes on success in attaching the all weather pitch proposals to the Council’s CHORD initiative for regeneration of the towns of Campbeltown, Helensburgh, Oban, Rothesay and Dunoon.

If this cannot be done, there will be no all weather pitch for Campbeltown, its two football teams and its young folk until such time in the undefined future when the town gets a new school.

If the all weather pitch is included in the Campbeltown CHORD project, it can be built to 3g (third generation) standard, to UEFA, FIFA and FA specifications.  If it has to wait until the sometime-yonder-but-years-away time when a new school is built, it will also be a 2G (second generation) pitch, not acceptable for official fixtures.

The presence of an all weather pitch would also support the reintroduction and development of rugby and shinty, two sports now all but extinct in Kintyre.

Here is some amusing evidence of the very real contrasts in resources now existing, even within Kintyre, never mind Argyll. Below is a photograph of the all weather pitch in Tarbert, up the road from Campbeltown, ready for winter evening training.

And here is a photograph of the situation for winter evening training in Campbeltown – by street light. In Campbeltown, it’s less a game of football, more a game of spot the other players.

Campbeltown has the glorious Aqualibrium, whose swimming pool has the most spectacular view of any in the UK and well beyond. The addition of an all weather pitch – and the proposed site at Kinloch Road is beside Aqualibrium and convenient for Council facility management – would give it a decent and co-located resource portfolio to support a healthy, competitive and ambitious population.

Look to the future. With an all weather pitch and the restoration of the Campbeltown-Ballcastle ferry – which will happen, new doors open. Imagine an annual home-and-away exchange between Campbeltown and Ballycastle, with the approach by sea. Here is an opportunity for fun, for enhanced competitive challenge and for a wider social network.

There is an annual match (it may be shinty) between Iona and Tiree that involves transport by fishing boat and an all-night ceilidh where the bruises from the game are anaesthetised out of existence. This is a highlight of the year in both communities.

If Campbeltown is minded to help itself – and all the evidence is there, with the momentum gathering behind the drive for a community buy-out of the MoD property at Machrihanish – Wednesday 10th march will be an opportunity to ram home the fact that this community is on the move.

The campaign for an All Weather Pitch to support the town’s unique position in the game of football in Argyll is asking Kintyre folk to make a real effort to get themselves to the Drop-in Day at Campbeltown Hall between11.00am and 7.00pm.

This has been arranged to update everyone on the quite breathtaking range of initiatives on the go just  now to develop Campbeltown and Kintyre. Together they provide a potential booster rocket to get this important Argyll stronghold to fly – as it can.

The campaign for the All Weather Pitch will be there with its proposals.

It wants people to drop in in significant numbers – and to ask specifically to register support for the All Weather Pitch proposals.

If you don’t ask, you won’t get. And if enough don’t ask, no one will get.

Do it. Drop in. Tune in. Turn on.

The photographs above – and the contrasts they represent – are taen fomr the Kintyre Forum,, a long time campaigner for an all weather pitch for Campbeltown.

And to dispel any doubt about how disadvantaged this major footballing town is in the current state of play (or  not), here is the list put together by the Kintyre Forum on all weather pitch facilities now available elsewhere across Argyll:

Full Size (106x66m) to (90x60m)
Oban Community Sports Field
Hermitage Academy x 2
Lochgilphead HS NPDO
Dunoon Grammar School x2
Rothesay Academy

7 a side (64x45m) to (55×37.5)
Tarbert Community Playing Field
KMMSF Tobermory
Kirkmichael Helensburgh
Lomond School (Private)
Rothesay Multi Use Games Area

5 a side (40×20) to (36x18m)
Garelochhead
Park Primary School
Tiree High School
KMMSF Tobermory
Innellan PS
Parklands Special School
Cowal Community Sports Project 4no
Lochnell SDA
Atlantis Leisure Oban
Taynuilt
Tayvallich
Dervaig