Quorn Football Club

The recent sale of Luke Varney to Divison One side Crewe Alexandra in a deal worth £50.000 plus a 20% sell on clause in favour of Quorn F.C . This represent the progress made by the club in the last ten years, coming from the bottom of Division One Leicester Senior League to the top of the Midland Football Alliance.

Last year we were the only non league club in England to sell a player to a Football League Club. Luke signed for us at 17 yrs of age and developed from our youth team to the first team very quickly. After leaving us in April he has made three appearances in the Crewe Alexandera First Team. This demonstrates the work he has put in throughout the summer training three days a week with Dario Gradi his manager, our recent game with Crewe drew a good crowd to see a very good game.

Their first team minus three internationals who were on duty with their countries beat us 3.0 after we held them to a 0.0 at half time.

On the administration side of the club maintaining three sides in high grade football is expensive and support from the village could be a lot better An entrance fee of £4 and (£2 concession) includes viewing the game seated in a New Cantilever Stand, car parking and the use of our clubhouse for hot food or a drink which is a cheap afternoon.

Looking back over ten years and our fight to win the necessary planning permission which were well documented at the time. I am sure people will agree that the facilities at our ground which are widely used make a big asset to the village When the Football Club's original ground on Warwick Ave was sold, land was donated by the club to the Abbeyfield organisation for an Abbeyfield House to be built.

The ridiculous scare mongering about the trouble our new ground would bring by peoples intention on stopping the football club progressing and Abbeyfield being built was overcome.

Most of those people have now left the village and probably don't remember where Quorn is onthe map. The person who used such a high profile attempts to stop permission for our two mobile phone masts, and was going to monitor the heath of the village near the football club also left the village shortly afterwards. The income from these masts is very important to the clubs finances, which brings me to our local M.P Andy Reed who presented himself at the entrance to our ground to be photographed by the local press in an attempt to stop the masts.

He didn't have the courtesy or good manners to pick the phone up and speak to the FootballClubs Committee about the matter at all.

In recent years the village has won for itself a new swimming pool first open air and later enclosed as money was raised .

A Forty Million pound bypass which has a massive improvement to the village , a new football ground and a new Abbyfield, the nonsence of putting the Cricket Club of their ground after nearly a century was also overcome. The reason Quorn is the village it is, with the facilities it has, is because for generations we have had a small core of people who voluntary work hard for the good of the village in many areas, and it definitely is not luck.

Stuart Turner, Chairman of Quorn Football Club.

Ed: At the request of Mr Turner, this article has not been edited in any form.