This is the house that Jack built.Well, not Jack. And it's not a house. It's the Shire F.C clubhouse. And Jack didn't build it. Pete McCall did, ( pictured, on the right) with some help from others in the club, ( Like Mark Stockham, on my left) and some friends who helped provide the decking, and wives who helped advise on what nice ladies toilets look like!
It would have taken a council many fathoms of paper-work and planning to build something like this. Members of Shire F.C did it in a fraction of the time, for a fraction of the cost, with no payment, in their own time. Impressive and really quite humbling that people should give up so much of their time and resources to build facilities for the younger generation. It really sets the standard for the rest of us.
When I went to see the club play at home, it was a lovely autumn day ( one of the ones we should have had in August) and Shire F.C annihilated the opposition 5-nil. We celebrated with BBQ-ed burgers ( left over from the dismal summer) and a beer on the decking outside the club in the late autumn sun.
The club has got so much going for it - a dynamic welcoming group of club-members supporting it, superb club-house and facilities, lovely grounds, and it's one of the few community amenities still left to Shirehampton now. But as the chairman Pete, Mark and Kelvin, the club president told me, they want to take the club to the next level. Floodlights, for example would enable them to compete on a different level all together.
This is a group with ambition, a vision for Shire and its youth, who deserve masses of support.
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