Pitch battles take a toll on frustrated Kiveton Park FC

Kiveton Park FC has been besieged by waterlogging despite its best efforts, disappointing hundreds of kids and senior players.

Its first team pitch hasn’t hosted a match for more than six months.

"It's been such a demoralising season for us,” said Kiveton’s Lee Hicklin. "We have 32 teams, providing a recreational outlet for more than 300 people, but this season has been pretty much a washout.

"Two years ago we worked our socks off to have an astroturf facility which means we can train year-round, but most of our teams play their games on grass and some of them have gone months without being able to.

"For kids that have been at school all week the last thing they want to hear on a Saturday or Sunday morning is that their game of football has been postponed for the umpteenth week running because the pitches still resemble a swamp.”

In a recent social media post, Kiveton Park pointed out that a week’s wage of a Premier League squad player would be enough to solve the problems.

“When you consider how much money there is in the professional game, it's scandalous that grassroots clubs are still being run by ill-equipped volunteers on less than a shoe-string budget,” said Lee.

"There's been a chronic lack of investment in sports facilities for a number of years now and it's starting to catch up with us. Pitches used to be properly maintained by the schools, miners' welfares and councils that operated them, but cutbacks have led to antiquated drainage systems failing, less maintenance work and pitches becoming more prone to waterlogging as a result. Add the fact that we're getting wetter winters year on year and it's a recipe for disaster as far as grassroots sport is concerned.”

Postponements mean Kiveton have had to cram a quarter of the season into the month of April, causing chaos with training schedules.

“While professional clubs moan about playing twice in a week, some of our teams are playing three of four days in a row just to get their season complete,” added Lee.

I'm one of the few volunteer groundsmen that look after the pitches, and it's so disheartening when you put in hours of work to get games on, only for more rain to come along and put the pitches out of action again. You feel guilty that you could have done a better job, but in truth we're fighting a losing battle because of the worsening weather and failing infrastructure.”