Fort William’s new chairman Oliver Stephen wants to have the club back playing at Claggan Park this season.
With their pitch not ready at the start of the campaign the decision was taken by the Breedon Highland League management committee in July that the Lochaber side would play all their fixtures away from home this term.
However, Stephen – who was appointed chairman at the club’s recent AGM – is hoping to change that.
Chairman’s three-point plan
The 39-year-old said: “For me there are three priorities. The first is getting the pitch into a playable state, so that we could return to the league management committee and try to get games back at Claggan Park this season.
“The decision was made in July on the basis that the pitch wasn’t good enough.
“We’ve had the involvement of a couple of specialists, the gentleman that does Newtonmore’s shinty pitch came for a look and said actually it wasn’t needing as much work as had been thought.
“The drainage that was done last year was a solid foundation point.
“Believe it or not one of the problems was that there hadn’t been enough rain in Fort William, the drainage was probably working too well, the pitch was very dry.
“We involved Gavin Irons, who is a pitch specialist, and he’s undertaken a lot of work in the last six weeks.
“We had Rod Houston, the league secretary, and Graham Wilson, the assistant secretary, down two weeks ago to inspect the work that had been undertaken.
“They were impressed with the progress and we’re expecting them to come back in another couple of weeks.
“But based on the experts we’ve spoken to, they think the pitch will be playable in two to four weeks.
“The expectation is that would be sufficiently playable to carry us through the rest of the season.”
Stephen to go on charm offensive
With work being undertaken on the Claggan Park pitch, Stephen hopes to convince other clubs that Fort William are now in a position to play home games.
He added: “My second port of call is to go back to the chairman of the other clubs and try to rebuild some of the reputational relationships and ask them for their support to overturn the decision.
“If we can’t play games at Claggan Park then income is going to be challenging for the club and the club doesn’t run on a massive amount of money as it is.
“Being able to get games at Claggan Park and get sponsorship, gate revenue and other revenue is fundamental to the survival of the club.”
Aim to keep the club in league
The final part of Stephen’s plan is to ensure Fort William remain a Highland League club.
The introduction of the relegation play-off means a side could drop out of the division this term.
But Stephen is backing manager Ashley Hollyer and his squad to keep Fort William up.
He said: “The third and final part of the jigsaw is keeping the team up because this season we could be relegated.
“We’ve got a good squad of 28 now. The manager put a post on LinkedIn a few months ago looking for guys from Glasgow and Edinburgh to come and trial for the team.
“He also had guys from as far away as London who were out of contract or didn’t have clubs and just wanted to play.
“There’s been a fair bit of squad building and we actually have a good chance of staying up and winning a few games.
“We’ve had a hard run with some of the teams we’ve played, but, once we get to the end of the September and into October, I do think we’ll start picking up points.”
