THERE are fears that the final whistle has been blown on a well-known Aberporth football field.

Question marks over the future of the sports ground at Parcllyn were raised this summer when the Tivy-Side revealed Ministry of Defence plans to sell the facility as well as the children’s play area opposite.

Aberporth Community Council called a meeting where chairman Cllr Aled Thomas stressed the future of the ground lay in the hands of the community.

He disclosed that the community needed to set up a charity in order to access substantial government funding enabling them to purchase the site which, he said, had ‘huge potential’.

Cllr Thomas also pledged that future meetings would be organised ‘to establish peoples’ ideas, wants, grants and fund-raising for the area once the land has been secured’.

However, Aberporth FC chairman Rhys Evans today revealed that Aberporth FC were now excluded from the ground which has served as their headquarters since the 1940s.

“On a weekend when Wales progress in football and the Wales FA offer grants to grassroots football we have suffered another blow in Parcllyn,” he said.

“Having lost our village shop and then our sports and social club we now find that our changing rooms on the sportsfield will be out of bounds and demolished, so ending years of sporting history.

“Without such facilities it is difficult to see how any sporting activities can take place.”

Aberporth FC’s nickname “The Airmen” acknowledges the club’s long links with the area’s military history dating back to World War Two.

Back in July Ceredigion MP Ben Lake pledged to write to the MOD ‘to underline to them the importance of such a community asset’.

“Getting rid of such a facility would fly in the face of all the physical and mental benefits we know can be gained from sport and recreation,” he said.

“To see them maximise financial returns at the sake of losing both a sports field and children’s play area would be a stain on the MOD’s record.

“I would respectfully suggest they pause to consider the human consequences of such actions rather than financial returns.”