Littletown Juniors Football Club in big fundraising effort for new equipment and barrier to prevent joyriding vandals

Children at a Heckmondwike-based football club have held a sponsored walk to raise over £4,000 for new equipment and netting, in addition to a possible barrier to prevent joyriding vandals destroying their pitches.
By Adam Cheshire
Published 29th Oct 2023, 06:00 BST
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Members from the lower junior section of Littletown FC, which consists of ten teams from the under 7s to the under 9s, as well as two girls sides, raised the money by completing a 5KM walk on the Spen Valley Greenway, on Sunday, October 22.

The funds will now enable the club to purchase metal goalposts to replace the plastic nets that are currently used when their teams play at their Milton Road home.

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Macaulay Parkinson, head of the juniors, said: “We were wanting to raise funds to support our coaches on a match day, especially with netting, as the coaches are having to get there early and put their own nets up and take them down.

Children at Littletown Juniors Football Club held a sponsored walk to raise over £4,000 for new equipment and netting, in addition to a possible barrier to prevent joyriding vandals destroying their pitches.Children at Littletown Juniors Football Club held a sponsored walk to raise over £4,000 for new equipment and netting, in addition to a possible barrier to prevent joyriding vandals destroying their pitches.
Children at Littletown Juniors Football Club held a sponsored walk to raise over £4,000 for new equipment and netting, in addition to a possible barrier to prevent joyriding vandals destroying their pitches.

“We are projected to raise £4,500. We didn’t expect to raise that much! We have got enough money now to buy some metal nets. We’ll be able to carry them over, one lock on each side, and they’re up. It will be so much less time consuming and will improve the facilities instead of playing with plastic nets which easily blow over. It will just be a better playing environment for the kids.”

The public grass area at Milton Road, which backs onto the club’s first team’s Beck Lane stadium, however, has been a target of joyriders leaving tyre marks on the pitches in the past, most recently on two separate occasions towards the end of 2022.

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The junior section, therefore, are hoping to use some of the money they have raised to install barriers to prevent future similar incidents.

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“We’re hoping to speak to the council,” Macaulay confirmed. “Due to what happened last year, we need to find out from the council what we can put there to prevent any further incidents. We know it needs to be opened for access to pedestrians but we want to prevent the vehicles from going on there.

“We are hoping to get some sort of barrier that will prevent vehicles from being able to drive on and vandalise the pitches, but still leave access for pedestrians.”

Thanking everybody who took part in the sponsored walk, Macaulay added:

“I just want to say a massive thank you to all of the juniors and their parents for being so supportive. All off the kids were brilliant. It was an absolutely superb turnout.

“We are very lucky to have such a fantastic football family at Littletown FC.”