I never saw Daw Mill in it's full glory, it's facilities had long since gone when my first team started playing back in 2003. During one of earlier my matches a bull dozer turned up and demolished the remnants of the old stand which was on the bank by the adults pitch. The kids loved it, but it was a sad sight to see.

Over the next couple of seasons the condition of the site got worst (see the images below) and unsurprisingly the number of teams started to deminish. 

We had to force through a few changes to the Club's committee and with a lot of hard work by the newer managers we started to rebuild the Club. In 2007 we put together a 3 year plan which was primarily focused on raising the profile of the Club in the local area. We reached out to the local schools and Borough Council and forged some great relationship with Hurley Primary School and the Recreational Team at North Warks Council.

In the summer months, when we were not allowed to use Daw Mill, Hurley Primary School allowed us to play on their field. That Christmas we had great fun installing a storage shed and some floodlights which were powered by very unreliable generators.

The Club attended the Council's Sporting Roadshows at the various High Schools in the area and steadily numbers started to increase.

Another of our core objectives was to keep running costs to a minimum - even today our membership fees are amongst the lowest in Tamworth Junior League. Funds were very low and we were struggling to afford kit for the new teams so we approached Kingsbury Parish Council, TNT and the Football Foundation to sponsor kit.

At that time there was no club image, so the committe decided that we would only purchase green and black striped kits. Green denoted our rural location, black would represent our ties to the coal mining industry and the stripes were to reflect the manicured pitches that we hope to have in the future.

We applied for £5000 to pay for portable floodlights. The ideas was to try and avoid having to pay for indoor or astro turf training, but also have some more reliable than generators. 3 weeks after applying for funding we received a cheque from the Heart of England Community fund for £5000. Kat Hall from the Heart of England came along to winter training one cold December's night to take some photos of the kids.

She must have been impressed as 6 months later she asked if we would be interested in applying for a further £6000 towards our running costs.

This was the catalyst for us to start applying for more funding, and by in large we received what we applied for.

Our discussions with the Council re improving the home ground were always cordial, but painfully slow. We participated in the Borough's strategic review of their green space, during which we expressed an interest in taking on the maintenance of the site. The picture below show you how bad the maintenance was!

In October 2013 we met with a lady from the FA, Hannah Buckley. Over the next few months we started to appreciate how influential this lady was and to receive her formal backing went a long way towards our success in receiving signicant funding.

See Inspired Facilities page

d