The early summer shutdown has been hard for us all, but we have been trying to improve the surroundings here at Portland Park during that time.
BUT! There’s still lots more needing to be done – and we need YOUR help!
As you’ll have seen from our social media posts, there has been a significant amount of maintenance carried out by our socially-distanced volunteers in recent weeks, with significant investment as well.
Repairs have been carried out to guttering, turnstiles, soffits & terracing. Painting has been carried out to the outside of the building, with the entry gates, toilet block, turnstiles, clubhouse, dugouts, perimeter pitch bollards & railing, beer garden wall & kiosk.
Pitch work has been extensively carried out with reseeding, feeding & spraying going on throughout the summer to preserve Portland Park as one of the best surfaces in the West of Scotland, never mind just the Juniors.
Individually, Billy Inglis has been heavily involved with a lot of painting the whole stadium, along with John MacKenzie, Richard Henderson and Davy Haswell, and everyone is very grateful for their combined efforts, all the while adhering to socially distancing restrictions. They have also very kindly donated money, as well as their time (really hope their wives aren’t reading this!), into paint & materials to complete the jobs, which is invaluable to the club. Thanks as well to Eddie Browett for power washing the beer garden area.
A mention of thanks from the club also goes to Peter & Sharon McSkimming, who have very kindly donated £100 to the club for materials, as have Jim Kirkwood & Jimmy Kirkwood.
Without further assistance, this work is going to have to come to a halt & with the club moving into a new era in the West of Scotland Football League for the new season we are all keen for the club to be looking as good as possible as we push towards our Club Licence.
The next planned stages will take us into the dressing rooms, referee areas & physiotherapy treatment rooms – all of which need significant upgrading to be ready for the new era of the club.
If YOU want to donate anything to ground improvements, you can do it safe online via the “Donate a Ticket” website. You can donate the price of a ticket as many times as you like, or donate a one-off amount of however much suits you – and 100% of the monies donated will go instantly to the club for the likes of maintenance & improvements.
You can help your club – and many thanks for those who have donated so far!