Dings eye brighter future after stadium upgrade

DINGS Crusaders chairman Steve Lloyd believes his club’s new £7.2m stadium will provide the Bristol-based outfit with a “launchpad” for success.

The doors of Shaftesbury Park, below, will open for the first time when South West Premier rivals Brixham visit on January 13 – a day that will herald the dawn of an exciting new era and see the closure of their crumbling current home in Lockleaze.

Lloyd said: “Refurbishing Landseer Avenue would have cost ridiculous amounts of money so we took up the gauntlet and the new ground’s going to provide a transformation of Dings that will sustain us for the next 60 years.

“You’re looking at some sharply run semi-professional outfits in the lower leagues now like Bury St Edmunds and Bishop’s Stortford, so if you want to even consider competing you have to move with it and provide the best facilities you can.

“We sold Lockleaze for £8m and think we’ve done the best we can – hopefully with a bit of money over to help create something really special.

“We’ve more than doubled our acreage from 12 to 26, we’ve got a main 3G pitch that’s superb and we’ve already trained on and although it’s been a hell of a job getting it done, I’d like to think we’ve got a facility that will allow us to grow.”

Dings are firmly in the promotion mix under head coach Luke Arscott, who is assisted by another former Bristol player in James Hall.

But Lloyd is reluctant to make bold predictions, adding: “If you state targets and don’t meet them it’s then seen as failure, but we’ll have facilities that could sustain us in National One should we ever have the chance to get there.

“We’ve got to get out of Level 5 first and then money starts coming into it, but, hopefully, this new ground will be our launchpad.”