All change at the Davey Fort

NOW that I have relinquished the chairmanship of Lyme Regis Football Club after ten years, I've got the chance to see a bit more sport rather than spending every spare moment at the Davey Fort.

Through my job as chief executive of View From Publishing Limited, which has very strong sporting links, I'm in the process of setting up partnership arrangements with Yeovil Town, Weymouth Town and Dorchester Town and will report on these when plans are finalised.

I'm retaining my link with the Seasiders by becoming the club's main sponsor and hope to be presenting a new kit to them soon. I've managed to keep away from the Davey Fort on Saturdays so as not to cramp the new committee's style, although I must admit I miss the matchday atmosphere greatly.

I've always said "Once a Seasider always a Seasider" and I don't get the same adrenalin rush watching other local teams.

I've been up to the Fort a couple of times to do a "SportsView" with Nomad for Lyme Regis Radio. They always get good hits and the players really respond to the interviews. "Well Pip, it was like this ...." They're all naturals. We hope to do many more of these throughout the season.

I'm delighted to see the Lyme first team back on top of the Perry Street Premier division and the Reserves and Bantams doing well in their respective divisions. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see a shelf full of trophies at the Davey Fort at the end of the season. I vowed that I would not be one of those ex-committee members who start running the club down as soon as I left. The club has enough of those already.

New chairman Lee Caddy, who was my assistant for several years, is doing a great job and it's really good to see a few youngsters on the committee. Well done to Luke Clifton who organised the new pitch perimeter signs. They make the Davey Fort look like a real football ground and have brought in much needed funds.

Someone told me that they thought the football club would be a shadow of its former self without Pip Evans. I never subscribed to that view. A club like Lyme Regis FC, formed in 1885, will always be bigger than any individual and that's how it should be.

The club will be different but that's no bad thing and the big mistake that Lee and I made in the latter years of our custodianship was to try and do everything ourselves. Lee now has much more support from the committee and players and that can only be a good thing for the long term future of one of the area's top sporting organisations.

I still plan to do my bit and I am currently involved in trying to secure grant aid to improve the changing facilities at the Davey Fort which are now well below standard.

We postponed spending any money on them when we were involved in the Strawberry Field project but the players deserve better facilities and we hope to be able top deliver these in the near future.

Whilst on the subject of the Strawberry Field, it would seem the project is well and truly dead. When the football club withdraw as the lead organisation Lyme Regis Town Council decided to continue working with the district council in the hope of getting at least one pitch at the Strawberry Field. But the town council's working party has not met for months and things have gone very quiet. District councillor Daryl Turner admitted recently that the project had fizzled out.

During the town forum session at a recent council meeting I asked for an update on the situation but the council have not had the courtesy to come back to us. The club deserves to be treated with more respect, especially as we paid for all the engineering reports and then gave them to the council for their own endevours.

In fact there is an agreement between the club and the council that the cost of the main engineering report (about £10,000) will be reimbursed to the club if the planning application was refused. Technically, planning permission has not been rejected as we withdrew it at the last minute after seeing the planning officer's comprehensive rejection of the scheme and the cost of continuing consultants' fees. WE never had any intention of giving the Uplyme mob their day in court.

I suppose that could be rectified if the club still went ahead with the original planning application in written form only and without employing any experts to present our case.

It would be ironic if the plans were approved in those circumstances. But that is not likely to happen.

The council can hardly say they can't afford refunding the £10,000 as they have just approved a £70,000 loan to the Lyme Regis Young People's Club and are considering giving another £120,000 to the Marine Theatre. These are both worthy projects but what about the sporting club that provides well organised activity for dozens of young people every week?

The handling of the Strawberry Field project by the district council is little short of a public scandal and one day I hope we can expose how appallingly the club was treated by the planning authority.

The young people of Lyme Regis should not be penalised by inadequate facilities just because - by an accident of birth - they were born in a beautiful area controlled by over-protective planning policies.

Well, that's got that off my chest. As chairman of the club I was never able to say it.