As well as facilitating a return to training and playing for the many rugby teams at the club, and the Pentyrch Rangers soccer sides and Pentrych cricket XIs, it will also help the two new additions to the clubhouse raise more money.
The East District rugby club haven’t been resting on their laurels during lockdown and have marked a return to outdoor drinking across Wales by building an extra hospitality area alongside the main entrance to their clubhouse.
This £16,000 structure will not only improve the provision for members to enjoy themselves on sunny days, but will also provide shelter during the winter months for the Mums and Dads who turn up for training and matches when the weather isn’t so kind.
On top of all of this the club have also installed solar panels on the clubhouse roof to reduce their bills. The money saved will be used to invest in walking rugby groups for both male and female players.
None of this would have been possible from their own funds, so the club made a successful bid for a grant from the Be Active Wales Fund, which has now moved into the stage of trying to help sports clubs become more sustainable after the current pandemic.
Just over £8,000 was given to the club 24 solar panels have been installed in two sections on the roof of the clubhouse. The club are hoping the investment will not only by help them to generate their own electricity, but also massively reduce their carbon footprint as well as their bills.
“We use a lot of electricity and our bills are around £6,000 a year,” said Gareth Williams, assistant secretary of the club who play in the Welsh Rugby Union’s National League Division Three East Central A.
“With all the fridges and freezers and various contraptions working in the cellar, we eat up a lot of electricity. The hope is that we can reduce that by at least 50 per cent, if not more. The idea came from our own club treasurer, who’s very thrifty, and has made big savings on the panels installed at his own home.”
The financial projections are that the panels will have paid for themselves within five to six years and the bills will be down to around £2,000 a year. The club benefit from being situated within a large open space, with the main roof facing south – a useful benefit in trying to catch all those valuable rays.
Solar panels have been on the club’s wish list for a few years and they are also keen to replace their old style gas boilers with new heat pumps. Again, the up front costs would be recovered through cheaper bills with the money ploughed back into a club that runs two senior teams, a youth team, a women’s touch rugby team and 250 children in their mini and junior sections.
They produce quality elite players, too, including recent Welsh internationals Seb Davies and Robin Sowden-Taylor and before them, Brian Davies, who captained and coached Pentyrch and also won three caps in the 1960s, but sadly died last September.
