Football club nears £1m target to start base
A HOMELESS junior football club with more than 500 players hope a charity fundraiser will take them close to £1m and trigger the start of construction work to create a permanent base.
Guiseley Juniors are one of the UK’s largest junior football clubs but have no home. Instead, they play up to 30 games a week at 15 venues around the West Yorkshire town.
But yesterday they started training to tackle a marathon obstacle course which, they hope, will raise the final funds they need to build a clubhouse and pitches.
Andrew Driver of the club’s management committee is excited at the prospect. “We’ve been fundraising for 10 years to get to this point.
“It’s been a huge sustained effort by an awful lot of people but we’re approaching the finish line and we hope this latest event will get us to where we want to be.”
More than 200 boys and girls, aged between six and 15, and around 40 adults are due to take part in the Total Warrior event at Bramham Park, Leeds, on the weekend of June 23/24.
The adults will tackle the 10km course whilst the youngsters will run the 2km Junior Warrior route.
The club has 10 players at the Leeds United, Bradford City, Blackburn Rovers, Burnley and Chesterfield academies.
The club already has use of two seven-a-side pitches and a nine-a-side pitch at the site of the former High Royds Sports and Social Club in Guiseley. The plan is for these pitches to be upgraded, for a clubhouse to be built and for this site to become the club’s permanent home.
Charlie Tatman, of Total Warrior said: “There’ll be upwards of 10,000 people tackling our Total Warrior course in June.
“We think it will be the largest mass participation event in the county that day.”