Golborne Sports and Social Club has been in Golborne for over 50 years and offers a whole range of sports including cricket, hockey, football, rounders and bowls. A community club, Golborne Sports and Social Club prides itself on being able to offer local people the opportunity to try out new sports and join the teams - most importantly we want to encourage children to join the club to have fun while exercising and meeting new friends.
Our sports sections have teams playing in local and regional leagues across the ages, from 5 years old to adults. In the cricket section we are also often asked to host regional games which brings a focus on the facilties at Golborne.
The sports sections are completely self funded so we are always looking for ways to raise money to improve our facilties so that we can offer the best and compete with other clubs across the region. We do have some sponsorship from local companies. This is fantastic as it means we are able to buy some kit for our clubs so we can reduce the cost that we have to pass onto the parents. While this funding is great, there is so much more that we need to do.
The people that run this club - the coaches, fundraisers and so on, volunteer their own time and energy because we believe in encouraging the local community to take up sport - none of us are paid or profit from the club.
One thing which has been on our list for a while is the rebuild or complete refurb of our changing rooms. To be honest they are in a dire state - watch the video and you will get what I mean.
The changing rooms are used for all the sports but are a bit of an embarrassment when we have visitor teams. The changing rooms do not have seperate male/female rooms (not great when we are trying to attract more girls into sports) and we dont have disabled access. We have been asked to host disability cricket games in the past, but havent been able to due to our lack of facilities.
We want our players to take pride in their club through our outstanding facilities and to be able to compete with other clubs in the area who may have access to some funds through an onsite sports-owned club house.
So what do we want to do ?
We want a brand new changing room area, with seperate male and female areas with showers and toilets. We want to include storage areas for all the sports. We want to make sure that the facilties have disabled access, so there is no exclusion on who we can welcome into the club. We want to be able to welcome visiting teams with pride in our facilties and be able to compete with other clubs in the area. The changing rooms need to be fresh and clean and a great environment to be in and use.
For visiting teams the changing rooms say something about our club and we want that something to be 'we are professional with professional facilities'.
What will this mean to the club?
As well as being proud of our club when we have visiting teams, brand new facilties will mean that we can host more competition games and start to establish Golborne Sports and Social Club as a venue of choice in the north west. If we host more competition games, we can raise more funds for the club.
This means that we can look at other initiatives such as hiring professional sports coaches for school holiday clubs and also reduce the cost of membership which we have to pass onto parents at the moment.
If you give to the fund what do you get out of it?
We would like to offer shares, or a free gift, but we sadly can't. What we can say is that if we achieve our aim and we are able to rebuild or refurb the changing rooms, we will invite everyone who donated to an Opening Day (with all the fanfare of an Opening Day - afternoon tea, music etc ) so that you can see what you contributed to.
You will be able to see what this means to our sports clubs and see this first hand. Of course you will also get the chance to try out the sports we offer.
You never know - you might even sign up !
What you will get is the chance to say that you made something good happen for the community.
We will commit to making sure that we use local trades for the rebuild or refurb. We want to be able to give something back to the community so by using local trades your contribution will support local businesses.
We are asking for a lot - we know we are, but even the smallest contribution will make a difference and not only help us to keep a fantastic multi-sports club here in Golborne, but also help us expand the opportunites we can offer to young people right here in our community.