Luton Town

[Guy Profumo]

Hatters throw athletics club out of their training ground.

http://www.dunstabletoday.co.uk/news/local-news/outrage-as-groups-kicked-off-land-for-luton-town-football-club-1-7487026

(Didn't a team from the East Riding pull a similar stunt recently with a sports hall / centre they manage?)

[Big Boobs and FIRE!]

Luton Town

This was the sports ground for Vauxhall.

Most of the development was funded by workers subscription to Vauxhall Motors FC, including the wonderful wooden grandstand.

They played in the Spartan league, the United Counties and the South Midlands, before promotion to the Isthmian in the 1980s.

Anyway, in the early 1990s, the ground was handed over to the local community with a trust formed to manage the complex.

Very shittily, a local hockey club committee got the trustee positions, and immediately Astro turfed the main pitch, meaning the football club could not play on it and they disbanded.

I went back a couple of years ago, and the outer grass pitches were being used by a team interestingly titled Christians in Sport who were playing a game in the Luton and South Beds League.

The place looked really run down and speaking to another spectator, he explained that the trust had just built a big health centre on the old club house and were heavily in debt, so weren't spending any money on the playing fields as they didn't make any money and were looking to get rid of them.

Looks like this has now happened.

I went to the ground in the late eighties. It was one of the first grounds I ever took a camera, getting some shots of the stand and then Peaks at St Pancras, as they were in there last days then.

Happy days.

[Janik]

Luton Town

Vauxhall Hockey Club to be precise, so not exactly some random interlopers as BBaF implies but rather long-standing residents of the same facility.

I've played and Umpired on that pitch around ten years ago. It was a good facility for Hockey, and a rare one to find in Luton at that point. More have been built since, and Vauxhall must have seen this coming as they decamped a year or two back.

[Big Boobs and FIRE!]

Luton Town

Janik wrote: Vauxhall Hockey Club to be precise, so not exactly some random interlopers as BBaF implies but rather long-standing residents of the same facility.

I've played and Umpired on that pitch around ten years ago. It was a good facility for Hockey, and a rare one to find in Luton at that point. More have been built since, and Vauxhall must have seen this coming as they decamped a year or two back.

No, it definitely wasn't Vauxhall HC.

They carried on playing on the grass pitch adjacent to the old football pitch at the north end of the playing fields.

This meant the football club had to use the pitch at the south end of the complex, by the dual carriageway. Unfortunately this was shared with the cricket pitch so could not be fully railed, hence they couldn't even get accepted into the South Midlands league and eventually folded.

There was a good feature on it in Team Talk at the time. One of the pictures was an empty astro turf pitch, but then the Vauxhall HC playing behind it, and a football game going on in the lower pitch. It included quotes from the hockey club, stating how miffed they were that another club had been given the prime facility.

If it had of been the Vauxhall hockey club that moved to the astro, the football club could have taken over the hockey pitch and railed it, and carried on.

It also makes sense that the Vauxhall football and hockey clubs lived in co-existence for almost a century, and were from the same works, so it would be a surprise for one to shaft the other.

The hockey club may have well moved onto the astro pitch since, it would make sense.

[Janik]

Luton Town

Not just made sense, it was essential. Hockey at the level that Vauxhall HC played it became Astro only in around the mid-90s.

The only other ones who I can think of would be Bedfordshire Eagles (now known as Luton Town HC). I believe they won the National Cup back in the 80s or so. They certainly didn't stay at the Brache long if that was the case. Vauxhall HC's history page says they were there by 1995, and they seemed prime tenants when I visited in around 2005ish.

As a result of writing this post I've just clocked that Brache Sparta FC must be a Luton side, as well.

[Big Boobs and FIRE!]

Luton Town

The astroturf was installed in the summer of 1991.

So it fits that another club were in place then, and Vauxhall moved in later, possibly with the other club moving out.

When I'm next in Swindon, I'll see if I can find the article.