Blanche Pierre second pitch gets go-ahead
ST MARTIN’S won’t go another long winter without football at Blanche Pierre Lane due to a combination of bird damage and a waterlogged main pitch.
With the agreement of Guernsey Football League Management and the GFA referees, the green light has been given to use their smaller training pitch for youth and senior games on a regular basis, if required.
But that won’t include Leon Meakin’s FNB Priaulx League title chasers, who will move elsewhere if required.
‘It’s a back-up,’ said Saints first-team coach Meakin, who along with his fellow St Martin’s coaches had to play a large chunk of their home games away last winter and it cost the club a small fortune in lost revenue.
‘I’d say it is wider than St Andrew’s and I wouldn’t say it is particularly short,’ said Meakin.
‘It’s a good quality pitch which had a lot of work done on it in the summer when they were doing the main pitch.
‘There’s plenty of room and it’s familiar surroundings for us. It’s a football pitch at the end of the day.’
Meakin called it ‘a step in the right direction’ when there is real concern that the main pitch will be rendered unusable for long periods.
There will probably be a need to bring the pitch in from the fence at the parish church end to provide extra run-off, but such a small alteration is a small price to pay when the alternative, another absence from the ground, is a major loss of badly-needed income.
