Harrogate Railway launches £10,000 fundraiser for new marquee

A fundraiser has been set up to help Harrogate Railway Athletic Football Club buy a new outdoor marquee.

The club in Starbeck has football and rugby teams.

Anne Mitchell, who set up the gofundme page, said the marquee was purchased during the covid pandemic for people to meet outside safely.

The marquee was used for birthday parties and other special occasions outside.

However, it was damaged during Storm Arwen in November and has since not been replaced.

The club aims to raise £10,000 to buy a new marquee to host events outside safely.

In a post on its Facebook page, Harrogate Railway said:

“During the covid pandemic, the club purchased a large marquee to provide an outdoor facility. It has been widely utilised during that time for local people to host a variety of events including  celebrations, group meetings, local events, social or family gatherings and much more. 

“Sadly during one of the storms this winter the marquee has been completely destroyed

“We want to be able to offer that same fantastic facility this year but we need your help to raise funds to purchase a new marquee.”

For more information on the fundraiser and to donate, visit the gofundme page here.

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Fire Ants’ fight to establish rugby league in Harrogate

A group of rugby league players struggling to establish the sport in the Harrogate district are taking on a fundraising challenge next month to raise money for their club.

Harrogate Fire Ants has had a short but turbulent existence. Founded last year, it first found it difficult to train because of covid and then at the beginning of this year the club had to rebuild from scratch after a change in personnel at the helm.

The team only had eight players for its first match in June but its fortunes picked up after Laura Symmonds, whose husband Tommy O’Sullivan plays for the Fire Ants, took charge and recruited new players.

The season has now ended and preparations for 2022 have begun. Weekly training takes place at Harrogate Railway FC in Starbeck, where the club is based, and there is also a weekly fun rugby-style fitness camp on the Stray for men and women of all abilities. Newcomers are welcome.

Some Fire Ants players are planning to complete the Yorkshire Three Peaks challenge on September 12 to raise funds for the club.

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Fire Ants player Jonny Binns said:

“it was tough at first and we thought we would have to fold. We were not in a great position. We had no one to run the club and were training on the Stray with very low numbers and struggling to recruit.

“Through Laura’s hard work we are now in a great position to build as a club and we are working hard to recruit new players.

“We have a new kit on the way and recently secured the help from a local coach. We have built a strong committee who are all very committed and hard working. We all believe that the Harrogate Fire Ants has a bright future ahead.”

You can support the Fire Ants’ Yorkshire Three Peaks challenge here.

Money raised from the challenge will also go towards Harrogate Hospital and Community Charity.

 

 

Harrogate Railway organises ‘rugby prom’ for charity

Harrogate Railway Athletic Football Club is organising a rugby match in which the players wear prom dresses to raise money for charity.

The club is fundraising in support of former Leeds Rhinos rugby league player Rob Burrow, who has motor neurone disease.

It has already raised £6,200 but would like to achieve £7,000 to match the number 7 Rob wore on his team shirt.

Anne Mitchell, the clubhouse manager, came up with the idea as a finale to the charity walks the club has done for the MND Association.

She said:

“One of the most exciting things is the team names — the sugar plum fairies and the nutcrackers”.

Rob Burrow, who has been raising money for the MND Association since his diagnosis, is supporting the event:

https://twitter.com/RunforRobMND/status/1409262293909753861

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Players from different districts, including Leeds, York, West Park and Stanningley, are taking part in the match at Harrogate Railway AFC.

Details of the event are available on this Twitter account.

Harrogate Railway FC raises £2,000 for school defibrillator

Harrogate Railway FC has generated almost £2,000 for a defibrillator at Starbeck Primary Academy and sports equipment at Hookstone Chase primary school.

To raise the money, the club spent two years organising events, including Halloween and Christmas parties.

In total, the club raised £950, which was match-funded by Barclays Bank, taking the amount raised to £1,900.

Railway’s juniors recently made Harrogate High School their new home base.

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Railway’s youth chairman Lee Holmes paid tribute to Rob Warren, Claire Hayden, and Jenny Vincent for their efforts organising fundraising events.

He said:

“We’re big on giving back to the community and we do as much as we can for our local schools.”

“Starbeck is a really close-knit, fantastic community.”

 

My Year: Tough time for young footballers in and after lockdown

Richard Foster is a youth team manager and coach at Harrogate Railway FC and also acts as the club’s child welfare officer. He writes about the psychological effects of the two lockdowns on the club’s youngsters.

Early 2020 seems so long ago now. After travelling to Bedale, Catterick and a few others, we started to see some progress and as a team we were pleased with the performances and the results.

But as the weeks went by we could see and hear the chatter around covid growing. At board level, we were speculating and hypothesising what this meant for football, but generally we were relaxed. Then bang… we thought it might not be all over, but it most certainly was.

Boris signalling the first national lockdown triggered a catastrophic ripple effect through the grassroots football community which we are still suffering from today.

Before we could return we had many Zoom calls, fallings out, healthy debates, changes to policy and insurance, and a huge amount of red tape to negotiate along the way. It’s been truly stressful for all involved.

‘Social and psychological regression’

When we had the all-clear, we had all the sanitiser a club needed, buckets of disinfectant for the balls and our own apps for track and trace. Three months out, that’s all it was ,and if you’d asked me before “what would happen if you locked children up for three months with their games console?”, I’d have said they would have loved it and been in their element.

What I actually found on a large scale was social and psychological regression. This was massive as the two areas are 50% of a player’s game and, if I’m being completely honest, I was stumped. I had spent over a year coaching a team that played up a year and drew little significance from our results: they were more focused on the objectives, communication and improving their game.

What I got back was a team that had interactions limited to a microphone on a headset and a need to win that I’d never seen from them before. Essentially, the result has become emotive, as it is with gaming on a console.

These are challenges I’ve never faced and it has been interesting to coach these things out of them, but I can say that as we enter 2021, the team are back to their best and have been challenging some of the best teams a year above them. So the short-term effects of the lockdown were obvious on the players, but the long term effect of grassroots football is yet to be determined.

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Focusing on the positives

The positives are that as a club we are in a better position financially and asset-wise than we were pre-covid. We have a progressive chairman in James Loundoun who has worked tirelessly, along with our secretary Dave Martin.

The first team have seen an uplift in fortunes too: Mick, Josh and Ryan have been a breath of fresh air and have helped keep the relationship between the juniors and the seniors strong.

I would like to say thanks to all involved in the grassroots community. This has been an extremely difficult year and we have pulled together to keep it going. I wouldn’t be here still if it wasn’t for the parents and players!

I wish them all good luck for 2021.

Harrogate Railway FC juniors to make secondary school its new home

Juniors playing for Harrogate Railway football club will play all of their matches at Harrogate High School’s playing fields.

The club previously had juniors playing at its Station View ground in Starbeck, as well as other playing fields across Harrogate.

However, they said this “diluted” the feeling of Railway being a local club so they wanted a permanent base for children to play.

A Harrogate Railway spokesperson said:

“By consolidating teams into one location we will be able to further build on the youth development roles, which have been so successful. It will also help us increase the support we offer coaches, managers and team admins.”

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The club recently announced that they will offer one year of free football training to under 5s and under 6s, to try and spur on the next generation of footballers in Harrogate.

They are also looking for businesses to sponsor the playing fields and a storage facility for goals and equipment.

Richard Foster, youth development officer at Harrogate Railway, told the Stray Ferret that there’s been “no better time” to be involved in youth football in the town, thanks to the recent promotions of Harrogate Town and Leeds United.

Richard said the club wants to offer a clear pathway from grassroots through to the first team to give their young players something to aspire to. The club will also offer financial support to adults looking to get their UEFA coaching licences.

He said:

“This past six or seven months have been hard for the entire community and as a club we are here to support and serve them. The club has been here 85 years and is still going strong.”

Harrogate Railway Football Club to offer free coaching to youngsters

Harrogate Railway will offer one year of free football training to under 5s and under 6s, to try and spur on the next generation of footballers in Harrogate.

Richard Foster, youth development officer at Harrogate Railway, told the Stray Ferret that there’s been “no better time” to be involved in youth football in the town, thanks to the recent promotions of Harrogate Town and Leeds United.

At one stage in the 2000s, Harrogate Railway were synonymous with football in Harrogate, especially after their FA Cup second round tie against Bristol City, which was watched by 3,500 supporters and shown live on the BBC. However, the club, which is based in Starbeck, has struggled in recent years and in 2019 were relegated to the eighth tier of English of football.

Richard Foster, youth development officer at Harrogate Railway.

Richard said Railway is putting their hopes into youth football to try and inspire local youngsters and potentially provide new players for their first team.

He said with many children forced to stay indoors during lockdown for months, it’s meant they’ve been more used to playing FIFA 20 on an X-Box than kicking a ball around with friends, but he said some age groups at Railway have now started to return to regular football.

He said:

“We have seen some regression both socially and psychologically from players, this accounts for 50% of the player’s abilities so we have had to work hard to build these key areas back up.

“These issues are due to the lockdown, excessive playing of videos games, and a lack of a structured educational setting. This has hampered some age groups return, with some players and parents still not wanting to return, but on the whole, we are in a healthy position.”

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Grassroots football in England has declined sharply in recent years, with the FA reporting thousands of clubs folding over the past decade.

Richard said the club wants to offer a clear pathway from grassroots through to the first-team to give their young players something to aspire to. The club will also offer financial support to adults looking to get their UEFA coaching licenses.

Details of the free coaching programme will be announced over the next week weeks.

Richard added:

“This past six or seven months have been hard for the entire community and as a club we are here to support and serve them. The club has been here 85 years and is still going strong.”