Newmarket Rugby Club hit by pitch issues as new league season looms

Newly-promoted Newmarket Rugby Club is facing a race against time to be ready for its first game of the new season after being shut out of the ground in the town which has been its home for 55 years.

The club is in dispute with the Newmarket Sports Development Association (NSDA) which leases the Scaltback site from Suffolk County Council and then charges the club a fee to use the pitches and the clubhouse and for preparing and marking out the pitch - an amount in excess of £10,000 last year.

It is believed that the relationship between the club and the NSDA had been strained for some time but came to a head earlier this year with a disagreement over an invoice.

For about two months the two sides have been taking part in mediation, set up and conducted by county council officials, but neither the rugby club nor the NSDA was prepared to go public on the specific issues involved. Both have said that they hope for a decision very soon.

The club has played its home games on the pitch since 1969 when it rented it from the old Newmarket Urban District Council.

The land was purchased by Suffolk County Council in the early 1970s and became the site of Scaltback Middle School, with the sports field used by the school during the week and the rugby club at weekends.

When the last remnants of the school were pulled down in July 2017 leaving a gymnastic club and two badminton clubs with no home, the rugby club's status there was not affected.

The NSDA was formed in 1971 with a remit to facilitate local sport and recreational development. It obtained registration as a charity on May 1 this year.

During the late spring and early summer, it has been carrying out work to update the clubhouse on the site where it hopes to obtain planning permission for further extension and improvements in the future.

It is not clear where the funding for this work has been obtained but the rugby club met the £58,000 bill to install floodlights around the pitch for winter training sessions.

The site has been closed while work was carried out because builders' tools and equipment were left there and the NDSA did not consider it safe to allow access.

A club spokesman said that the 'green area' of the site was completely unaffected by the work and that they would have been prepared to pay for temporary toilets and changing facilities while the work was being carried out.

As things stand, the rugby team's first XV will start life in Eastern Counties One, the highest tier the club has ever played in, without a home ground and while training anywhere they can find, with both adults and the club's 250 young members of the under-four to U-18 sides scattered between The Severals, Newmarket Academy grounds and the George Lambton Playing Fields.

The Newmarket Journal contacted both the rugby club and the NDSA but neither wished to comment publicly.