AS the celebrations die down following Bowers & Pitsea’s remarkable season, they now have another reason to cheer after they were awarded a £20,000 grant to improve their pitch.

The Len Salmon Stadium pitch saw eight games postponed last year, although manager Rob Small says it would have been more but for the efforts of the ground staff, committee members and management team.

This led to concerns as to how the surface would survive a busier league campaign next year, following Bowers promotion to the Ryman One North.

But £20,000 has now been awarded to the club by the Premier League through the Football Stadia Improvement Fund, meaning new drainage and a new surface are to be installed, with the work already well underway.

AT Bone and Son’s, who also tend to Concord Rangers’ pitch, have been tasked with the works and they are expected to be completed within six to eight weeks.

And Darren Scorey, who is the Project Manager, says the cash injection was a much-needed boost to the club’s coffers.

“We have been begging for this for an awful long time so it comes as a massive relief,” he said. “It will be a huge weight off the shoulders of the players and management as you wake up thinking the game will be off or knowing it will be called off if there is another drop of rain.

“We may have been forced to play our home games somewhere else if we hadn’t secured this deal so it is really important. We didn’t know if we could advertise games because of the weather last season but that should all be in the past now.

“It should be done in under two months and we look forward to playing Ryman football on the new surface.”

The new pitch is also expected to have a great impact on improving the clubs’ younger players’ skill levels as they train on the new turf.

“I would like to congratulate Bowers & Pitsea on securing this £20,000 grant from the Premier League, through the FSIF, to improve their natural grass pitches,” said Peter McCormick OBE, Chairman of the Football Stadia Improvement Fund.

“The Premier League is committed to investing in grassroots stadia projects like this one in Essex, in order to develop clubs at the lower levels of our national game. I look forward to seeing the works completed.”