Club's bid to progress football gets early 'kicking'

Take Worthing Town Youth FC '“ like many of our local football teams, a great club with the likes of Ian Stewart, Scott Towers and Steve Hoare, amongst others, working hard to provide sport for a large number of youngsters in and around the town. At their training base at the Glynn Owen Centre, South Farm Road, not a week day evening goes by where youngsters of all ages don't enjoy training sessions. The club has ambitions to progress and one of those is to get improved lighting at South Farm Road. With this in mind, not that long ago, they looked at bringing in portable floodlights and fixed up a demonstration shortly before 9pm one evening. Within minutes, and I mean single figures, of the company showing them how the lights worked, the council was receiving a complaint from a resident about the lights '“ lights that point away from the resident's property and lights that help provide sporting facilities for our local youngsters. Not so long ago, half a mile away, other local youngsters smashed up war graves in Broadwater Cemetery, so what does the aforementioned resident actually want? Sickening vandalism of gravestones, or youngsters getting both enjoyment and exercise from sport? All of our local sports clubs and other youth projects are investing in the town's youngsters, which in turn will make it a better place for us all to live in, young and old. Would the grave vandals have reached that stage if there had been more sporting and youth facilities available? Remaining on that theme, we have heard the news that the Tory West Sussex County Council is planning to cut 2million from its youth budget next year, making it all the more disappointing. A 40,000 weekly cut from any service is quite drastic but for such an essential one, it's all the more worrying. In fact, it will be interesting to see what tack the Tories take over child obesity and youth inactivity during the upcoming general election campaign. They bang on about children not being as healthy as they should be. We all know milk is part of a healthy diet, but was it not Lady Thatcher, who, as education secretary in 1971, took away the right of every school to give out free milk? And, on the subject of obesity and the lack of exercise in some of our youngsters, never mind the rest of the country, just cast your mind back in Worthing in the last 30 years, i.e. going back to when Mrs T was quoting Francis of Assisi outside Downing Street, how many school fields and wide open spaces have Tory councils let developers build on? Thomas A'Becket first and middle schools are both classic examples of this short-sighted, get-rich-quick policy. Therefore, any high-profile campaigns highlighting these problems will almost not only have a sense of irony but also should attract a degree of scepticism from the electorate. ------------------------------------- Click here to go back to Worthing news. Where are you? Add your pin to the Herald's international readers' map by clicking here. Email the Herald: letters@worthingherald.co.uk Click here for the Herald staff directory. Want to read this page in French, German, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Urdu or 48 other languages? click here for Google translate.