MORLEY Road Recreation Ground’s days of football training and tournaments will be no more as Waverley Borough Council oust Sandrock FC and Morley Road FC from their ground - leaving players devastated.

According to Waverley, with no changing or toilet facilities and parking limited to on-street in the local area, Morley Road Recreation Ground has become unsuitable as a football ground and the council has received a number of complaints as a result.

Sandrock Football Club, which is today a veterans’ club, is part of the Farnham Sunday League. This league is itself confined to veterans teams with a catchment area from Wimbledon to Andover.

“At the outset our grounds locally included The Bourne, which had a punishing slope and Elstead Tennis Club grounds which was plagued by moles,” said the club’s secretary, Ian Shearer.

“In the mid 1990s we started to use Morley Road Recreation and that quickly became the players’ favourite pitch. It was wide, flat, sheltered and on its own.”

The football pitches in the surrounding villages, normally sharing the space and pavilion with the cricket teams, are under the control of a local committee who ensure that cricket has priority when the seasons overlap.

Ian continued: “A bad quality pitch can ruin the game. My view is that the pitches at Farnham Park are poor. One has an end-to-end slope and the effect is reinforced by the prevailing wind. The other is not level at any point with mounds and hollows and a camber to the edge, I consider it dangerous.”

According to Ian, Waverley has been trying to persuade Sandrock to move to Farnham Park for some years. However, this idea was set back by some severe damage to the second Farnham Park pitch from a circus, putting it out of action for two seasons and returning this year.

For the past two seasons Sandrock have shared the ground at Morley Road Recreation with Morley Road FC, a club founded by Farnham College old boys, who moved from the college pitch opposite to the better surface of the recreation grounds.

“Neither club wishes to move but we have not been given the option. Any regular reader of the letters page or the front page of The Herald will be aware that residents of Farnham believe Waverley has secret agendas,” added Ian.

“I doubt that our eviction from Morley Road Recreation is simply a matter of cost-cutting. I cannot say for definite what will happen to either Morley Road FC or Sandrock FC.”

Ian is prepared to fund the considerable extra cost of using Weydon School’s 3G pitches. What is certain is that Sandrock will not be moving to Farnham Park.

Waverley Borough Council has engaged with both the Morley Road Football Club and Sandrock Football Club to identify how the football facilities could be improved.

With no additional land and limited on-site parking there are no feasible options to improve the facilities at the site.

Therefore Farnham Park has been offered as an alternative location as it has adequate space to accommodate Morley Road FC and Sandrock FC as well as existing users, Farnham Park FC.

A Waverley spokesperson said: “Farnham Park also has excellent changing facilities that can support four teams at one time, separate public toilets and on site parking.

“The quality of the pitch has been upgraded, with improvements to the drainage, soil aeration and topdressing, making the pitch a nicer surface to play on.”

In Waverley Borough Council’s ’Playing Pitch Strategy 2012 – 2028’, it states that Morley Road Recreation Ground was given a pitch quality score of just 46 per cent – meaning it is a ‘below average pitch/changing facility’.

Farnham Park has two pitches for adult football but these are given an even lower quality score of 24 per cent, and Waverley recognises that improvements are needed here too, and again vows to “support pitch owners [Waverley] with external funding applications for pitches and/or changing improvement programmes” at Farnham Park.

Waverley wants to clarify that since the publication of the strategy Farnham Park pitches have been upgraded. The ’Playing Pitch Strategy 2012 – 2028’ is part of the evidence base that supports the Draft Local Plan and will be reviewed in 2017.