New £600k 3G pitch will tackle ‘washouts’

A CITY sports club will be able to play football all year round after plans for a £600,000 3G pitch were approved.

Fairfield Sports and Social Club hopes to no longer suffer from washouts after Dundee City Council bosses approved their application for a state-of-the-art pitch.

The club falls victim to the winter conditions every season with teams of all ages left unable to play for months.

Club trustee Jim Sorrie hopes those days will be behind them once the facility is up and running.

He said: “Obviously it’s great news for us, as we were only just speaking about how long it seemed to have been taking.

“This has been years in the planning and it’s going to make a major difference to us.

“We’re bursting at the seams just now because we’ve got that many clubs here.

“At the moment we’ve got the one main grass pitch at Fairfield Park and they’re all fighting for it.

“That’s kids from the age of four all the way through to the senior team and we’ve got to keep it for them.

“In the last few winters we’ve had clubs that weren’t able to play for three months because of the weather. This should mean an end to that now so it’s good news.”

The club will put £300,000 towards the project which they hope will be matched by sportscotland now that the plans have been approved.

The new pitch will lie to the west of the existing ground at Happyhillock Road and feature floodlights.

Once up and running, people will be able to use the pitch between 9am and 9pm from Monday to Friday, 10am to 9pm on Saturdays and 10am to 6pm on Sundays.

Mr Sorrie added: “This is going to stop some of our clubs having to travel to other parts of the city for games. “Most of them can’t really afford it. “This area is one of the most deprived in the country.

“We don’t even charge sometimes and that’s the whole ethos of the club really.

“These kind of facilities are what should be built across Scotland. “That’s where we’ll see the difference. “But we’re just glad we’ve got it because it’s taken long enough.”