The Scottish Football Partnership has made an award of new portable changing facilities to Glentanar Community Football Club in Aberdeen. The club are delighted with this award from the SFP which equates to an investment of around £40,000. Club Secretary, David Adams commented;
“Glentanar Community Football Club are based out of Woodside Sports Complex, Aberdeen. The Club has around 200 players representing age-groups from U8 to U19 with approximately 25 coaches and officials. The Woodside facility is shared with Glentanar Juniors, Great Western United and Aberdeenshire Rugby.
The Community section of the facility has 4 pitches; two 11-a-side and two 7-a-side. These pitches are carefully maintained and significant resources are invested to make them amongst the best in the Aberdeen area. Through careful management of these pitches, the requirements of all teams for training and matches can be satisfied. Typically, 11-a-side players (U13 and above) utilise the existing changing rooms with 7’s and 4’s arriving and departing from the facility already changed.
The problem is that there is a large bottle-neck in the facilities on match-days and training evenings. On a typical match-day Saturday, 2 Rugby and 3 Football teams compete for use of the facilities. This means that including officials, up 12 changing rooms are required. This is further complicated by the regulations surrounding Junior football where, due to the size of the existing changing rooms, 4 changing rooms are required for a single fixture. All this means that one community 11-a-side team typically loses out on playing at Woodside on a Saturday, despite the fact that a quality pitch is available. The alternative is to play matches at local municipal facilities where Glentanar lose home advantage and have additional expense of paying for pitch-use when we have one on our doorstep we can’t use.
With the help of The Scottish Football Partnership, 2 new changing rooms are now fully installed at Woodside. This allows full Community participation on match-days. It also allows us to provide changing on training days when we haven’t typically been able to offer this. The added benefit here is that players don’t return home after training in wet clothes. The new changing facilities will also improve our ability to recruit and maintain female participation. Although the existing girls section is still restricted to U-10 and younger (hence no changing required), we still need access to toilet facilities. The new units allow us to provide segregated toilets outside the main facility which is already severely over-crowded. Going forward, we are now well placed to provide the necessary changing as the girls get older and require this facility.
In conclusion, the addition of these new changing rooms has significantly improved our facility and will continue to add value in the years ahead. As well as the immediate ability to play games every week, the Club has big plans on increasing participation, especially with females and minority groups. These facilities are a great advertisement for our Club and go a long way to help us reaching this goal.”
