Re: Maidstone's Pitch

By Hendonboy23/12/2015 15:57Wed Dec 23 15:57:48 2015In response to Re: Maidstone's Pitch

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If you assume the 100k figure and that it's only being used 40 weeks of the year, then that's £2.5k a week - at usual pitch hire costs that'd be around 25 hours (a few less in London) a week- if you're able to get schools/colleges involved that it's achievable even if you couldn't run 6-10pm every day. You'd also save money on training costs, lost the grass maintenance costs (yes, much lower, but still there) and benefit from lack of postponements (some years that's not worth much, others it costs a lots).

Obviously there's other costs involved in running the facility for more time - not least that you'd need to pay someone or get a very willing volunteer to staff/run it, but it's not that difficult to make a business case stack up unless you're unable to run it fairly heavily on Sundays. Where the biggest difficulty lies - other than staffing - is getting the funding to put a pitch in - even with 50% Football Foundation funding, that's the best part of £250k a club needs to raise... somewhere between 1-2 years of running costs for an average RPL team.