ONE OF our local soccer clubs was hit this week by one of those tragedies that everyone in non-league football, indeed any sport at any level, dreads.

The clubhouse of Pennington FC was completely gutted in a fire. If ever a club was deserving of the very best in luck, rather the very worst, it is Pennington.

Few can rival the Howe Bridge outfit's friendly atmosphere, club spirit and togetherness in a will to succeed - and all that in a shorter history than the vast majority.

It's the sort of place where everyone mucks in and on Tuesday afternoon, club treasurer Kevin O'Donnell locked up about 2.30 after doing his stint at cleaning the beer pumps. By 3.30 the fire alarms had gone off alerting police and fire brigade...but it was already too late.

As all the lads arrived for training about 7pm, they found their beloved social club was a smouldering mess. The fire brigade had done their best but the vast majority of the damage had already been done.

What a mess! The ground is sandwiched between the old LUT bus depot on the way from Atherton to Leigh and the new Leigh bypass.

The club's first team has progressed into the Manchester League first division after just a few seasons in the Bolton Combination. There is also a Reserve side and a number of excellent youth teams. Not only has the club progressed steadily up the local soccer ladder, the advancement of facilities at the ground has also accelerated at a rapid rate. Top notch changing rooms and absolutely first class bar and function room, all on site.

Or rather there were! Heartbreakingly, the club is now just a charred shell. £40,000 worth written off!

The culprit - a faulty television set, not used since the previous Saturday, had been left plugged in. It is difficult to imagine how all that damage could be done by just a TV!

I spoke to one of the club founders, Ernie Ackers, a gentleman who has done more for local football than most of the rest of us put together.

He said they had boarded up all the damaged side of the club but sadly the fire had re-ignited in the early hours and destroyed all the other side.

Everything those lads had worked so hard for over the years gone in just a few hours. The club's insurance man, ironically club secretary of big local Manchester League neighbours Atherton Town, Gerald Butler, had been to inspect the damage and, typical of the spirit that exists on our local soccer scene, had rolled his sleeves up and set to helping wherever he could. The insurance will take months.

To pick yourselves up when you've been knocked to the floor in this manner requires enormous courage, but that has never been lacking at Pennington.

As Ernie said: "When we first opened the club we had 28 burglaries in the first 12 months but you just do what you can and get on with it. The tragedy of this fire is that we were just really getting back on our feet." Club Chairman Steve Green reiterated those sentiments when he said: "There's no question, you just get on with it. We'll all go up and do what we can. The one good thing is that the dressing rooms have been saved by the partition wall, and, if we can get some power through, we will still be able to use them.

The first team is away this weekend and has no fixture the following one, so we do have a bit of time."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.