MEMBERS of Wellington Town Council have been told that it looks as if Wellington Football Club was giving up on its ongoing plans to find new playing pitches.

Cllr Andrew Govier, speaking at the council's town centre committee and who helps run Wellington U18s, said: "The football club is not going to pursue this because the costs have escalated since the Covid-19 pandemic."

The club wanted to move their senior sides from the Playing Field to a new facility at the entrance to the Longforth Farm housing estate.

Wellington currently play their senior matches on the council-owned ground at the Playing Field and share this with the local cricket club.

This poses a problem, particularly for the football club, who have to play early and late season games away from home, although this year the cricket club kindly allowed them to play on it when they, themselves, should have been preparing and playing on it.

Wellington's first team are sometimes faced with playing about ten of their opening games of the season away - which is not good and disadvantages them so early on in a season.

The answer would be to have another ground but the cost was estimated to be £500,000 some time ago. This figure would now be much higher today with rising costs.

Another idea some time ago was to move to a ground on the other side of the A38 but this never materialised.

Meanwhile, Wellington play at Bishop Sutton this afternoon in their last pre-season friendly before their first league game at Helston next Saturday. It will be one of ten away matches before they play at home to St Blazey in the Toolstation League on Saturday, September 16.