Forfar Athletic may have lost 2-1 to Aberdeen on Monday night but it was a night of celebration for everyone involved at Station Park as the friendly match between the two clubs marked the official opening of the new 3G pitch.
Representatives of sportscotland, the SFA, the SFL, the Football Partnership, Angus Council, Forfar Community Council, the local MSP and officials from other local clubs were all present as Danny Denholm gave the Loons a first half lead only for former loan star Nicky Low and his Dons team-mate Declan McManus to net in the second period to see the Dons win.
The scoreline was immaterial as the game was a showcase for the new Station Park surface and for the collaborative powers of the Second Division club, leading ladies football club Forfar Farmington, Forfar Boys Club, Lochside Boys as well as the various bodies involved in making the changeover from grass to an artificial surface over the summer.
For Forfar Athletic Chairman, Alastair Donald, it marked the end of a long journey and perhaps a journey that he would not have embarked on if he had known the paper mountains he had to scale to get a pitch in place.
Donald said: “Monday night was a really significant evening for the club as it marked the end of one chapter and the start of a new one. It has been a long journey to this point from the application process to choosing the contractors to installing the pitch. There were also the expected teething issues as our partnerships with Forfar Farmington and Angus Council grew and Service Level Agreements between us all were drawn up.
“It is all about the football from here on in but it has been an intense 15 months. We are in a great position now but if I had known fully what was involved in getting us there in terms of the hurdles to overcome, I may not have asked for the challenge.”
Station Park had seen a number of games postponed over recent years due to adverse weather conditions and Donald was asked if that was the driver for the new surface and he said: “That has been mentioned a few times but there was a lot more to it than just looking to reduce postponements. I was a coach with Forfar Farmington for eight years and there were hundreds of kids getting coached there but there was a severe lack of facilities and the area was crying out for either a 2G or a 3G surface.
“Finances made that impossible for Farmington to develop but the issue was bigger than just them. I had started to get involved in Forfar Athletic in trying to bring in a youth structure several years ago but some of the players were having to train in concrete halls and farm buildings as there was nothing else available to them. You could go for 20-25 miles about here and not see an artificial surface and if there was one, there would be hundreds of teams looking to use it.”
Donald had championed the cause of an artificial surface long and loud but with little success and he said: “I think it got to the stage where the SFA East Region Manager, Ian Lowe, would try and avoid me if he saw me at a supermarket. I have all the kids' coaching badges and was passionate about the whole thing but to be honest, at that time there was little Ian could do.”
The bull was grabbed by the horns with Donald advising: “I was well known in the area as I had been coaching for a while and ran a successful business so I decided to get all the interested parties together to see what we could do to get a pitch in our area. The cost was going to be between £300,000 and £400,000 however, before we could get into the guts of the meeting, there was a bit of a bombshell, a good bombshell that is.
“The President of Forfar Farmington, Colin Brown, received a letter on the day of the meeting advising him that Forfar Farmington and Forfar Athletic were to be awarded a grant of £300,000 to help with the installation of a new pitch. Ian Lowe at the SFA had been working away behind the scenes on it after being asked to identify suitable projects in our area.
“The meeting was hastily adjourned and the initial initiative looked to have the surface installed at Market Muir which is Farmington’s home. However, that is built on common land and £300,000 would not have been enough to put a pitch down and build all the required fencing etc. around about it.”
Station Park is situated 100 yards away from Market Muir and thoughts turned to there although there were further obstacles to be overcome with Donald saying: “The funding was ultimately coming from the Scottish Government and they were nervous as it could have been seen that they were supporting a senior club as opposed to a community initiative.
“What we did next helped bring everything together as we invited Angus Council to come in as partners. They are a neutral body who can look after youth football in the area and ensure that everyone would work together and they also had plenty of experience in running initiatives for communities.”
Donald added: “To show their commitment they invested £45,000 up front in return for five years rental of the pitch and the injection of that money along with the £300,000 grant gave us a budget that we felt could deliver the pitch at an established ground like Station Park.”
With a venue chosen and funding in place, only one thing remained and that was getting the agreement of the Forfar Athletic Board to agree to tear up the grass pitch and instal a new 3g artificial one.
Donald continued: “I had been involved at the club for a number of years but I could not just go and tell them to give up 127 years of history of playing on a grass pitch. There was an emotional attachment to it but thankfully, the then Chairman, Neill Wilson, approved the project quickly and he won everybody round.
“Neill was great and even though I replaced him as the Chairman in May, he was a big figure during the past few months as he helped project manage the installation. I had worked with him in the past on a couple of things and it was great to work with him again on something that meant so much to both of us.”
After working for years on getting agreement and obtaining a commitment to the installation of a new pitch, one may have been excused for thinking that the sleepless nights for Donald were a thing of the past however, they were actually about to get worse.
He said: “The funding was late and whilst we knew it was coming, it was not in place in May. We had chosen our contractor, Hunters, but they could not give us a guarantee of when the work would be finished as the weather over the summer was so unpredictable.
“Thankfully, the weather was not too bad and I went on holiday to the South of France 99.9 percent certain that everything was in place. I looked in via the internet and saw the pitch getting ripped up and that was a nervous period in case I had ticked the wrong box or had not signed an important piece of paper.
"I did lie awake at night in France sometimes wondering if we had done the right thing despite all my years of knowing it was the right thing to do.”
Donald added: “In hindsight, everything was always going to be in place and we had the pitch down before we kicked the season off against Dunfermline in The Ramsdens Cup. Our Manager, Dick Campbell, was very supportive of the pitch going down and the players were as well
“Airdrie United’s pitch is seen as a great one to play on and when we told the players we were using the same surface and the same contractors, the vast majority of them bought into the idea. The only difference between the two pitches is that we have a wee bit more underground springs in ours but that is about it.”
The installation was done in time although just, with Donald saying: “The players had one training session on it before the Dunfermline game and, of course, when we beat them, everyone said the pitch was a factor. The following week, Partick Thistle destroyed us on it in a Scottish Communities League Cup tie where for the first 20 minutes, we hardly got a touch. Jackie McNamara praised the surface afterwards so that was a welcome endorsement.”
The Aberdeen game to officially mark the installation of the new surface came about through Campbell’s friendship with Aberdeen boss Craig Brown with Donald saying: “There is a very healthy respect between the clubs as a result of Dick and Craig. We have managed to get some loan players in and there has been a number of bounce games for the benefit of both sides.
“They brought a good number of first team players down with them and it was a real hairs standing on the back of my neck moment to meet them on our new pitch. It was a great occasion and, of course, Archie Knox used to be the Manager here and talking to him was a real thrill. Neil Cooper was also Manager here and both of them are very fondly remembered at the club and in amongst them all, I am just the newcomer.”
The Forfar Athletic Chairman added: “I am happy with the role I have here and to have been so heavily involved in such a transformation at the club. I was really pleased when, despite only a few years of experience in the senior game, I was asked to become Chairman earlier this year.”
The move however, has ended one of Donald’s interests in football as he explained: “I was running a youth team until recently. I would be down with the first team at say Cliftonhill on a Saturday and then with a youth team at Berwick on the Sunday. I still go to youth games but I have had to sacrifice the coaching role."
As for the future, it is certainly Sky Blue as Donald said: “With the old pitch, we were a club that could not get close to its community as we could not let them on the pitch. We maybe had 100 kids on it over five years but we have had 500 kids on it in the past 10 weeks undertaking coaching courses and playing games.
“Forfar Farmington will use the ground for all their home games and hopefully, that will allow them to continue being one of the top teams in the country. They have just brought in a goalkeeper who has come over from America just to play for them and they have five internationalists in their team under a great coach called Mark Nesbitt who is a really sharp guy.”
Forfar Athletic and Forfar Farmington are obviously tied closer now through using the same pitch and that relationship will continue to grow with Donald saying: “The clubs will move closer naturally but that should also happen with Forfar Boys and Lochside Boys. I can see a situation where everyone is flourishing under two badges, the one for Forfar Athletic which represents the community that the clubs are from and then the club badge whether it be Farmington, Forfar or Lochside.
“When I was with Farmington, we reached the Scottish Cup Semi-Finals against Motherwell at Toryglen in Glasgow three years running. We would turn up in a mini-bus and they would have the full team bus, full tracksuit kit for players and backroom staff and that gave them a strong sense of identity. That impressed me as the way to do things and I am sure that helped them on the pitch as well.”
Donald finished by saying: “My vision is that every child in this area has access to Station Park for either training sessions or playing on it. The more we involve them the more we can hope that they can move on to becoming supporters and the investment we have made now will hopefully increase our fan base.
“We have a great platform to build on and part of the grant funding for The Scottish Communities League Cup from the Scottish Government is to be used for community initiatives and we can now say that we are a community club.”
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