TECHNICAL


The Pannal Sports team l-r: Club Chairman Nick Viles, Club Secretary Graham Barker and Project Lead Mark Taylor


Pannal Sports Junior FC The Pannal Game


On the outskirts of the North Yorkshire town of Harrogate, a huge project is coming to fruition to provide a ‘homeless’ junior football club with their own dedicated grounds to boost community sport. Greg Rhodes reports


P


annal Sports Junior Football Club is a Charter Standard Club founded in 1966. It runs twenty- three squads ranging from U5s to U18s and currently includes more than 490 players and some 100 coaches and helpers among its ranks.


Run by a small, dedicated committee of volunteers since 2007, the mission to find a place to call home after more than fifty years as a ‘wandering’ club is nearing its end as recontoured and prepared former farmland turns green as the prospect of year-round sport nears. The club’s U5s, U6s and U7s train on Sunday mornings, U8s and upwards on


120 PC February/March 2019


Saturday mornings - not on a single coordinated site, but a merry-go-round of hired public and private pitches across Harrogate. But that’s all about to change in 2019. Work started last May on Pannal Community Park, a sporting hub for the district’s grassroots provision and a permanent home for Pannal Sports JFC. The oldest, continually active junior football club in Harrogate, it is witnessing a dream come true after ten years searching for and negotiating terms on its new headquarters. Made possible by Premier League & The


FA Facilities Fund, Football Foundation and Harrogate Borough Council grant awards,


Pannal Community Park is an impressive expanse of sporting commitment - 3.25 hectares of a total 4.29 hectares devoted to playing surfaces on three purposely- fashioned terraces, the stages for junior and senior football and cricket. Committee member Mark Taylor is the


ground’s team leader steering the £1.45m undertaking, which embraces eight natural pitches, pavilion, function room and facilities for other sports clubs and community groups - oh, and a 1.5m wide, 760m long trim trail skirting the perimeter of the Park. “Phase 1, constructing the pitches and


cricket square, complete with drainage, is complete,” he says, “and the spring and


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