St Edmundsbury Council agreed to pass plans for the new development last Thursday, with the final £500,000 of funding for the £1.8 million project set to be put in place shortly by the Football Foundation and Football Stadia Improvement Fund.

It will see Haverhill Rovers move from their iconic yet dilapidated Hamlet Croft ground to the Chalkstone estate and begin a new chapter on and off the pitch for the whole club.

Rovers have turned this week’s game at home to Woodbridge Town into a celebration day, with supporters able to pick up free tickets from Haverhill Arts Centre.

Rovers president Terry McGerty, who has been the main driving force behind the plans, said: “I’m certainly pleased, for the club and the town. It’s a facility that the town will benefit from.”

Mr McGerty was due to meet with officials from the FA, Football Foundation and Football Stadia Improvement Fund yesterday to try to finalise the club’s football development and business plan, so the £500,000 can be released to them, to go with £1.3 million of St Edmundsbury Council funding.

Mr McGerty joined Rovers about 15 years ago and went on to become chairman, lifting the club from financial dire straits to its first profit in years in 2006.

He said: “It’s always been my aim to hang in there until we have got this up and running and that’s just one large hurdle. The next is going through the Football Foundation and Football Stadia Improvement Fund to get the rest of the money in place.”

Current chairman Steve Brown said the new community football project would allow children of any age and ability to play football in Haverhill and help the best of those local players to progress through to the first team.

He said: “Hopefully the structure will come into place where we are bringing players of quality through the system, starting as young as we can.

“Also we want to keep players with lesser abilities playing and interested in the club.”

The building of the community football project will see five pitches created at Chalkstone, the main of which will have two stands and be used by Rovers.

There will be four other pitches and a building that will provide a clubhouse, changing rooms, meeting rooms, treatment rooms and act as the headquarters for all the youth teams, currently scattered around playing fields in the town.

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