We've turned a massive corner this weekend and are so close to playing on The Athletic now!! 🥳
Since the last blog we had another leak in the changing rooms (our 4th!) and I lost all heart and kept away from there most of December to be honest.
But the New Year brought some fresh energy and we've been chipping away again, and this weekend a lot of things clicked into place! 👌🏼😃
Thank you Step-Up (Chris Rees) 💙
We had a large pile of rubble at the ground for some time from our works installing the changing rooms and services. It was not only an eye sore but also a dangerous thing to have lying around when the kids start using the facility. After reaching out for help Chris very kindly stepped up (pun intended!👀) and offered to clear it for us free of charge!!
The rubble getting cleared by the Step-Up grabber into the dark Jan 2023
The place now looks much better, cleaner and is safer for the kids. Thank you very much Chris, if anyone needs any skips, waste removal, demolition works or hardcore etc then please get in touch with them! https://www.stepuprecycling.com
Setting out and marking the pitch
It's only after retiring from playing football that you realise how much people actually do 'behind the scenes' so that you can play! Never in my life had I thought about how you cut and spike a field, set out a football pitch, or how to mark it etc - it's not as easy as you'd think!🙈
Myself, Ev and Andrew spent a whole Sunday just trying to mark out the four corners of the pitch and getting it square!!🤯
A day spent measuring, moving string lines then measuring again and again!😂
This weekend me and Andrew decided to go for it and not only set out the corners, but mark out the whole pitch!
After giving it a trim we started measuring and placing a marker where each line should go.
We then felt confident enough to put some paint down so I grabbed our brand new line marker and took it out of the box only to realise we had to build the bloody thing!🤦🏻♂️
Our 'build your own' line marker!🤦🏻♂️
After an hour of tightening bolts with freezing fingers we were ready to go! We mixed the paint and loaded it into the machine and were all set.
As we were doing it one of our u14s players dad turned up too and helped us the whole time we were there, Thank You Dean Bridges!👌🏼👍🏻
Although this is very sad, it was a big moment for us! Seeing the paint go down brought the pitch back to life. It's been about 8 years since it last actually looked like a pitch and I was playing on it then! (A lot has changed in that time! 🙈😂) I, like many others, have some amazing memories of playing for Treharris on The Athletic and I cannot wait for the kids to start making their own! 💙⚽️
Getting a lick of paint on the pitch for the first time in almost a decade! Feb 2023
Getting the posts in!
On Sunday I also met a very hungover, but determined Johnny, so we could put the posts up. I've been very nervous of doing this job for a long time as it's a very permanent thing and not something I wanted to mess up!
Thankfully Johnny knows his stuff when it comes to the physical side of Groundworks (I'm just an office boy!) and was digging before we knew it! We had to get the sockets in the ground and concreted in for the posts to sit in.
Again this isn't something I had ever thought about before now, and wasn't a simple thing. It had to be absolutely bang on for level and distance between the posts. There's no room for error in the measuring or they won't fit and the levels had to be accurate or we'd have the leaning posts of Treharris!🤦🏻♂️
Johnny and myself getting the posts in Feb 2023!🥳
I'm pleased to say that we managed to get both goals installed and, as far as I'm aware they are still standing?! 🤞🏻😂
Another huge milestone for us and another step closer to playing!
Apart from cutting and general maintenance the pitch is now playable and ready!👊🏻⚽️
The pitch ready and waiting to be played on 👌🏼
Outstanding issues:-
Now the pitch is ready there are only a couple of things holding us up which we hope to get sorted in the next week or two.
Changing rooms - We are waiting on our 4th leak to be repaired. The company we purchased it from have had an independent report carried out which says condensation seems to be the main problem - although we seem to be having a lot of 'condensation' everytime we have heavy rain?!
We need our electric from the changing rooms connected up to the now live feed asap so we can start getting the heating on and see if that helps the problem.
We also obviously need the electric so that we have lights and hot water for the kids to be able to use it!
We have pipework to box in and make safe inside the changing rooms as well as fixing the benches to the floor. We hope to get these bits done ASAP.
Car park - We are desperate for tarmac to the car park to make it safe and usable. There will be a very large cost for this and we can't get any grant funding for it so it will probably be something we need to raise funds for ourselves.
It won't stop us using the facility, but it is something that needs to be sorted ASAP!
Little reminder of how far we've come...
Whenever we reach a new milestone it's nice to have a look back as a reminder to see how far we've come. Here's some before and after photos of the pitch from March 2021 and Feb 2023...
We're almost there, finally!!
Thanks for reading, KJ ⚽️💙