No decision has been made yet on where we will be playing and it won’t before we hold our public meeting on the 10th of January at the New Courthouse, Stanford-le-Hope at 7:30pm. If you would like to attend please email us at eastthurrockcfc@gmail.com. Our process is about making the correct decisions and doing our due diligence at every stage.
When deciding where we will play next season the first decision was the most obvious, we want the club to be playing in either Stanford-le-Hope or Corringham. It is hard to be a community football club and then play outside of that community. After that we wanted to start by exploring every available option and assess it against the criteria for the leagues we are looking to go into.
For the Essex Olympian League the key criteria include: clubhouse is desirable but not required, adequate car parking, a perimeter to the pitch including rope, adequate toilet facilities as well as separate dressing rooms for both teams and officials.
Planning ahead for a future promotion to the Eastern Counties Regional (Thurlow Nunn) Football League there is a higher set of requirements which include a clubhouse, boardroom, public address system, floodlights and dugouts. Then for fans, we need to provide at least 50 covered seats and area of covered standing for 50 people. To be able to be promoted you need to have these in place by March with the exception of floodlights which can be added nearer to the season.
We are currently working with a list that is being vetted, based on facilities that meet our needs, such as being able to play on days and at times that are required by the league. The plan is to present the shortlist of every plausible option at the public meeting, then we together as a fan run club can make the final decision soon after on where we play.
Up The Rocks!
