Penzance AFC, founded in 1888, is the Cornwall County Football Association Charter Standard Community Club of the Year for 2015 and is trying to raise a total of £2,000 to resolve an ongoing problem with its floodlights.
The floodlights, now almost 13 years old, have developed an intermittent fault, which causes complete failure of the system and has resulted in two matches having to be abandoned and numerous others being re-scheduled. Various attempts to identify the source of the problem have failed and we are left with no option other than to systematically replace the various electrical components of the switch-gear in each of the 8 columns.
Having 14 teams within the Club – including Men’s, Veterans, Disability and Youth Boys & Girls teams – pitches to play on are at a premium in and around Penzance, particularly at the weekends and the ability to play midweek matches under lights eases this problem considerably; hence the desire to get the floodlights working properly once more.
As well as our own use of the pitch and floodlights, we regularly allow other local teams to use our facilities so that they can catch up on fixtures missed due to bad weather. Last year we were able to accommodate St. Buryan, Gulval, Helston and Mousehole as well as some of our youth teams who really enjoy their experience of playing under floodlights at their Senior Club. We have also hosted many cup matches on behalf of local Leagues. In addition, we provide the venue for the local Rotary Club to hold their annual Firework Display – which we could not do without working floodlights to ensure the safe entry and exit of the spectators.
Your help with this project would be extremely beneficial to a large number of players across all ages as well as the local community and would be greatly appreciated by those tasked with ensuring the economic well-being of the Club in order to provide a secure future for Penzance AFC.
The electrical 3-phase switch gear for the floodlights was installed in 2003. This now needs systematically replacing and due to the age of the installation some parts are no longer available. Therefore we have to reassemble the switch gear to accommodate new components. This will bring the system up to date and hopefully it will then last another twelve years. The estimates for the costs of this overhaul are around £5,000. We are using this crowd-funding platform to try to raise 40% of the project costs – i.e. £2,000. All donations to this community project will be gratefully received and with many thanks.