Borders children’s football club hoping to start work on £700,000-plus extension within months

Melrose Football Club are in talks with both the Scottish Football Association and council officials about securing funding for an expansion of their Engine Room base in Gibson Park and they’re optimistic about their chances of success, believing that building work could start as soon as this summer after being granted planning permission back in September 2023.

“Our initial estimate of the cost, with value-added tax included, was £770,000 but we’ve since added in some contingencies,” said club chairman Greg Simpson.

“That estimate was produced towards the back end of 2023, when inflation was rampant, particularly affecting construction projects, so I’m expecting the actual cost to be lower than that, but we’re going with that figure for now.

“We’ve got two pledges of funding already, one for £50,000 from the Scottish Football Partnership Trust and one for £18,750 from the Tweed Forum’s Fallago fund, but essentially our spending portfolio will be down to the SFA’s facilities fund in concert with Scottish Borders Council’s place-based fund

“The SFA are now looking at reopening that fund for 2025/26 but we’ll have to apply again, so we’re waiting for applications to go live and we’re expecting that to happen in the next two or three months.

“We’re feeling reasonably confident. It’s a lot of money we’ve got to raise but I believe that if we can get the football money involved, it’ll get built, and without it, it won’t.

“If the SFA say they want this project to go ahead, then I suspect it will go ahead and we’ll be able to find matched funding from different sources.

“We’ve applied for £100,000 capital funding from SportScotland and they’ve deferred a decision on that, waiting for other funders to come on board.”

New changing rooms would take up most of the planned extension and they’re required due to near-50% increase in membership of the club, founded in 1995, over the last five years to more than 330 youngsters aged five to 16, so the sooner they’re up and running the better, says Simpson.

“The best-case scenario would be that we’d have pledges of funding in by February or March so we could get a tender out and begin construction in the summer,” he said.

“When you’re after grant funding, though, you never quite know how long things are going to take.”

Simpson reckons much of his club’s expanding membership figures is down to the ongoing rise in popularity of the girls’ game, saying: “Numbers have been sky-rocketing. We’re 43% up on where we were at the start of the covid pandemic and there are a couple of reasons for that.

“First, the popularity of girls’ football has ticked up, and that’s happened across a lot of clubs, not just with us, and our girls’ numbers have doubled over the last five years. We’re attracting girls from all over the Borders to come and play for us.

“Second, when it comes to our boys, we’ve managed to retain youth teams up to under-16 so that obviously adds another 40 players to our roster if those teams continue.

“The club have grown and developed and are now, as we approach our 30th anniversary in 2025, one of the largest junior football clubs in the Borders, with more than 330 players.

“This includes a huge expansion of girls’ football. We now have more than 110 female players aged five to 16 and are welcoming new players month by month.

“This extraordinary growth is placing great pressure on our facilities.

“With a footprint of just 17 square metres, the Engine Room struggles to provide our players, coaches, parents and visiting teams with a safe, secure and welcoming environment.

“We have no adequate changing rooms, nor space to meet as a club to watch games and training or grab a cup of tea and a bacon roll to socialise and fuel up after.

“That’s why we’ve come up with ambitious plans to supercharge our contribution to the wellbeing and health of young people in Melrose and sport in the Borders, as well as serving Melrose Primary School and the wider community.

“We want to create a modern changing room facility and clubhouse by extending and remodelling the Engine Room.

“If successful, a new twin changing room will sit alongside the historic building, which will be restored and opened up as a multi-purpose activity space for use by the school and community groups.”