YOUNG soccer players are at risk of serious injury due to deteriorating grass and lack of decent lighting at one of Brimbank’s prominent soccer clubs.
Western Suburbs Soccer Club president Jim Condilis said the club was in desperate need of more than $250,000 to improve lighting and thousands more to improve the pitch at Ralph Reserve in Ardeer.
Condilis said most of the club’s 150 players were migrants who came from disadvantaged families and could not afford to financially contribute to the ground’s upkeep.
“One of the wooden lighting poles has been there for almost 40 years and we haven’t seen any improvement in those years,” he said.
“Every time we have a night game or players are training, they are slipping and falling and injuring themselves because they can’t see where the ball is.
“The ground is so worn it is also adding to the risk of injury.”
Secretary Zisis Paschalas said better infrastructure was needed because the club had expanded significantly, fielding a women’s team and two new junior sides.
The club’s cries for help follow claims from the state opposition that the government is leaving sporting clubs in the lurch.
Opposition spokesman for sport John Eren last week said the government was planning to abandon its community support fund.
But a spokeswoman for Sports Minister Hugh Delahunty promised the fund would continue, providing more than $1.4 million to Victorian clubs. She said Western Suburbs Soccer Club had yet to apply for funding to upgrade its ground.
Brimbank’s acting director of community wellbeing, Neil Whiteside, said the council planned for capital works at Ralph Reserve over the next 10 years.
He said the plan included a listing of ground lighting upgrades to be allocated in the 2017-18 budget.
Condilis said the club would write to the council, seeking urgent funding to improve the reserve.
