Westhoughton Lions community clubhouse.

Aim: We dream of having changing facilities and a clubroom with heating & running water for the benefit of our members and local community.

Who are we

Westhoughton Lions are the only Rugby League club in Bolton with both a junior and senior section, we currently have upwards of 220 junior members in age groups from u4s to u18s with 2 openage teams and a girls team in development.

What we do

We are very proud of the fact that our whole club is voluntary. Everything from the clubs committee, to the coaches and the ground maintenance is all done by volunteers, of which we have approximately 45 giving a minimum 5 hours per week throughout the year for our members and local community !!!

What are our beliefs 

The club ethos is to give inclusive opportunities to everyone to be involved whether it's to administer, train, play, coach, officiate, volunteer or spectate. We can honestly say we stick to that ethos and have a glowing reputation as a family friendly club which gives everyone a chance.

Our story so far

'The dream' - The Lions were formed 25 years ago, when rugby league was a winter sport played in often awful conditions. We are still playing at the same venue where we have a large and small pitch and a shale carpark, rugby league is mercifully now played in spring and summer (we do still train in cold/wet months) !!! 

Throughout the clubs existence we have never had running water or electricity on site, using generators to heat converted shipping containers as changing rooms and going to local pubs, football or cricket clubs for aftermatch changing & hospitality. As we play in summer now we have been able to get our pitches into good condition too but have always lost players due to not having changing / aftermatch facilities or even toilets that other clubs have in surrounding Boroughs.

For the last 20 years we have been looking for funding and building methods which would give an opportunity for us to give our club's community a facility they deserve. During this period we have attempted to improve our facilities, despite our best efforts nothing ever materialised.

Moving on a year or 2 we felt we had found a modular type build design which was possible to fund through fundraising and small grants, we submitted and got planning and got a pot of grant funding from the local council to match other potential pots. Amazingly for us the 2021 Rugby League World Cup organisers approached us late in 2017 with a grants programme for clubhouse renovation/builds and told us to halt any planning or building as their grant would build a purpose built building, but needed £for£ match funding. 

We went away searching for large pots, in 2019 a local business woman came forward with a large donation. We had the funding to build, our dream was back alive !!!

Following the development of drawings, business planning and elongated / costly planning process we finally started building in March 2021 to be completed October 2021. 

Again we've watched our dream grow out of the floor, this time more involved in deciding where and how things are going - we've watched it grow from 1 floor to 2, seen the roof go on, noticed floors being layed and enjoyed the changing rooms taking shape. All of this happening during the Covid pandemic while Bolton has been in extended local lockdowns and seen the rise of the Delta varient across the Borough. The contractor has had staff off ill, others isolating as contacts, had trouble in getting materials and seen massive price rises all knocking the build time back. 

Early October '21- our dream was dealt a hammer blow when due to Covid the investor officially pulled out her funding !!! leaving us a small amount of funding to continue the building. We have so far spent virtually all our club's fundraised cash and Rugby World Cup grant to get to this point, sadly we are now left to tell our volunteers and members our issues, hoping the dream can be continued by rapid further fundraising.

With this building we truly believe we can offer children & young people and our older members the opportunity to "develop into their best selves" through playing rugby league whilst utilising our volunteers within a great purpose-built facility !!! We would be honoured to show anyone around "The Den" where you can see our members playing with our dream as it stands.

We want to tell the story of where we are now and where we have come from. 

It is felt that much of our club history has been around fighting to get the best facilities for our club's members and surrounding community which has dwarfed the great work we have done in our core function, offering opportunities to be a part of the Lions family, and supporting them to grow into the best person they can be. Something I estimate we have done with appropriately 1000 children over the last 25 years (a large number of whom are still involved in club activities).

Thank you for reading this story, we are now looking for your financial support and hope we can develop a relationship now for the future of our great club.