WORK has begun on Frome Town Football Club’s brand new 250-seater stand at the AlderSmith Stadium, made possible by generous donations from the local community along with a grant, which totalled £55,000.Months of local fundraising initiatives recently came to fruition as the first diggers entered the stadium to begin construction on the new stand.The club, along with support from local businesses, individuals and philanthropists managed to raise £27,000 toward the stand, which was then backed by a £28,000 grant from the Football Stadia Improvement Fund.With construction plans now steaming ahead, it is hoped that the new stand will be up by the end of the month.The stand became a necessity for the Robins after they received an ultimatum from the FA. Under FA regulations, the club had to increase the capacity of their stadium or face automatic relegation. Secretary of Frome Town FC Ian Pearce said, “After months of planning, meetings and hard work the dream became reality when the diggers pulled in to the ground recently to start preparing the foundations for the new stand.“Its been a long and stressful few months for those who have been dealing with the project and over the last few weeks that was cranked up even further with emails and phone calls flying backwards and forwards as time was starting to run out. Panic? No not really, but the longer it dragged on the more you start to think the worst!“On behalf of the club I would like to thank John Theophilus and Chris Davies from the Football Stadia Improvement Fund who have supported us right from day one and made sure that when it came to submitting our grant application, everything would be in place and ready without the need to find out other paperwork and information. “Special thanks also go to Kevin Smith, our architect, who has been outstanding in helping us get to where we are! One thing’s for sure, there will be plenty more work for him to do around the ground in the future!“Let me stress that just because the stand is looking like being completed we will not be standing still and the next project will now be looked at. The momentum needs to keep going and slowly and surely we will transform the AlderSmith Stadium into a top class facility. Everybody involved in the club is in this for the long haul and for the right reasons, so over the next ten years we hope that you will see plenty more changes and improvements throughout the entire club.”
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