CLARBESTON Road AFC chairman Steve Brown says the club is looking forward to enhanced training sessions after being awarded a Be Active Wales Fund grant from Sport Wales to purchase portable floodlights.

The floodlights will enable the club to have greater flexibility in terms of the times, location and frequency of its training sessions, when the current lockdown restrictions are lifted.

“Clarbeston Road is focused on providing a really good community service, giving everyone access to football,” said club chairman Steve.

“Once football is given the green light to resume, the portable floodlights will free us up to run more training sessions and fun sessions, with smaller, socially-distanced groups of players. We don’t want Covid to get out of the habit of active lifestyles.

“We’ll also use the portable floodlights to run sessions on our own pitches – ground and weather conditions permitting – rather than being restricted to using the floodlit local authority all-weather pitches. So, we’re also planning to save money on pitch hire too.”

The Club has received an FAW Platinum Award, and was named as the 2020 West Wales Community Club of the Year, with teams at all age groups, from Under Sevens to Seniors.

The club has an active adult disability team – the Clarby Warriors – with many of the players having been with them since they were young.

They are cautious about returning to play during Covid but, thanks to the new equipment, Clarbeston Road will be in a position to offer them dedicated sessions, without the need to share facilities with others.

“We’ll have the flexibility to work with smaller groups, whether that is our disability team or our senior players who are eager to schedule some extra sessions,” said Steve.

“We’ve had some lovely feedback from parents about how their children want to get back to football as soon as possible, and so working in smaller groups will be one way of facilitating this.”

The community will also benefit as they’ll be able to use the floodlights and host outdoor evening events at the club. Last year’s Christmas tractor rally with the local Young Famers Club was canned due to Covid, but the club can’t wait to work with partners in the future.

The £4,663 funding awarded to Clarbeston Road towards the cost of portable floodlights came from the ‘Progress’ element of the Be Active Wales Fund, which provides grants of between £300 and £50,000 to support sports clubs and organisations with their future plans - so that they can offer even better opportunities for the nation to be active beyond the Covid-19 crisis.