Caister FC receive funding for new dugouts

We are proud to announce our latest funding has been awarded to Caister FC, a club with seven youth sides ranging from under 9’s up to under 16’s and three adult sides. With players, managers and committee members they have over 200 members!

The grant has been awarded to support the build of some permanent dugouts beside the football pitch.

The club provides people across all ages, genders and ability the opportunity to participate in grassroots football. Success is not just measured by winning but by how many teams and players they are able to give the opportunity to participate in sport. The new dugouts will allow all members to stay warm and dry, whilst they are on the sideline, not to mention other groups such as the cricket team for example.

"Funding for grassroots sport is difficult at the best of times but in the current climate, it is especially so. Caister F.C. is an ambitious club and to get additional support from GYS&LT is vital to our plans. We are really grateful to everyone at GYSLT that share and believe in our ambitions by the awarding of this grant." Alan Peace Chairman, Caister Football Club.

You can follow their progress on Twitter here.

If you are part of a fantastic team in our borough and would like to apply for up to £500 of funding, we are taking applications for awarding in November 2020.

Martham Village team awarded latest grant to support new security measures

As we head into August we are delighted to announce our latest funding to Martham village football club.  

A local village football club offering sport/activity for all ages, they have many youth sides for boys and girls in the community and 4 adult teams (including 2 veteran teams). They really are using football to bring together people in the community.

Sadly they have recently endured some issues with security and inappropriate use of the dugouts. This grant will go towards securing the playing ground and making those desperately needed security improvements. We can’t wait to see the team playing again! You can follow their progress on Twitter.

If you are part of a fantastic team in our borough and would like to apply for up to £500 of funding, we are taking applications for awarding in September 2020.

Newly Formed Youth Group: Hopton Harriers Receive our Latest Grant

Our latest funding is going to the all new, youth football club: The Hopton Harriers FC. With a huge 61 players and 10 coaches, we know this grant is going towards amazing things.

The grant is to enable them to be fully equipped for the start of the new football season and will go towards the purchase of new goals and equipment, giving them a great foundation to start up this new club. The equipment includes items such as: goals, balls, bibs cones, agility poles and more! Furthermore, the money will enable them to provide football to the local village and items of equipment would be used on a Saturday by the Harriers Footy Fun Club as well as the 5 playing teams several times a week.

"We, as a newly formed youth football club, Hopton Harriers FC, are bringing youth football back to the village after a 12 plus year absence. We will make use of the local playing field maintained by GYBC and run by Hopton Parish Council. We will be bringing football as well as Harriers footy fun club on Saturday mornings to the area once safe to do so. This will be encouraging local children from various backgrounds to take part in our club and doing exercise regularly and build up new Skills, abilities and form new friendships outside of school. We will be running 5 teams for the new season who will be playing in the Norfolk and Suffolk Youth League each Sunday,” says Rob Smith, Secretary and Treasurer of Hopton Harriers FC.

You can follow the team’s progress on Instagram here

If you are part of a fantastic team in our borough and would like to apply for up to £500 of funding, we are taking applications for awarding in September 2020.

Great Yarmouth Girls Football

With the success of England’s The Lionesses, we are seeing huge leaps and bounds in female football. We are therefore incredibly excited to announce that our latest approved funding will be going to Yarmouth Football Club, a new girls football club to promote the women’s and girl’s game; increasing opportunities for younger girls to get active in the Great Yarmouth area. With weekly training and participation in a competitive league they are a very exciting endeavour we look forward to supporting.

Despite being relatively new they already have 14 players signed up and 5 committed committee members!

The funding will allow the club to purchase new training equipment for their weekly training sessions. Fundamentally, this will not only support the needs of the start up but boost the quality of training the girls undertake. The planned purchase list includes cones, bibs, balls and a new training software called ‘dribble up’, which is a fun and interactive way of developing ball skills!

“Having the money to invest in training facilities allows us to attract more local young people as we can provide high quality football coaching that is engaging and specific to their needs. With the equipment that we intend to buy, we will be able to run activities involving more people as we will have more balls or more cones to mark out a larger number of work zones. It also gives our members a sense of pride in their club as we will be able to provide facilities that other clubs offer.

Lastly, it will allow us to continue to grow our coaching team as we can offer the tools most coaches look for when joining a club. This in turn will help us to achieve a club development plan and continue to strengthen the quality of coaching that we offer at our club,” said Glen Joyce, Chairman.

We can’t wait to see what these girls achieve, and we are so excited that our funding will have such an impact on their club, giving them stepping-stone needed to continue developing and to maintain maximum engagement with their members who are all aged 9-12 years of age.

If you are part of an amazing sports team and would like to apply for up to £500 of funding, then we are taking applications for awarding in February 2020.

Stock image: Pexels

FA says only one in three pitches at grassroots level adequate

The FA is considering selling Wembley Stadium to release funds to support community football, which we think is a great idea. But how is your pitch looking? Did you know we can help football teams in the borough of Great Yarmouth with seed funding of up to £500?

There are 21,000 grassroots clubs, 50 county FAs, 25,000 schools and 330 local authorities which are catered for by the FA and, along with the finding that only one in three grassroots pitches are of adequate quality, the FA's written evidence also highlights:

• 150,000 matches were called off last season due to poor facilities
• One in six matches are called off due to poor pitch quality
• 33 of 50 county FAs are without their own 3G pitch
• Cancelled matches account for the equivalent of 5,000,000 playing opportunities lost this year because of poor facilities
• There are half the number of 3G pitches in England than there are in Germany

"The word for grassroots football is 'crisis,'" said Kenny Saunders, who runs pressure group Save Grassroots Football. Read more about how the FA support grass roots football here

WE MAKE AWARDS OF UP TO £500 TO SUPPORT SPORT AND LEISURE COMMUNITY PROJECTS TO GET MORE PEOPLE ACTIVE IN THE BOROUGH OF GREAT YARMOUTH. CAN YOU HELP? THE APPLICATION FORM IS HERE!