WINCHESTER City are getting closer to their neighbours in a bid to persuade the local council to invest in their planned Denplan City Ground facelift.

Players from Winchester Youth FC and Winchester City Flyers Girls & Ladies FC were invited along to City’s recent Friday night showdown with Moneyfields in the Sydenhams Premier Division.

And if director of football Dave Malone and chairman Paul Murray had their way, they would be welcoming the neighbours round on a regular basis to use the full-sized all-weather pitch and half-sized training pitch that are central to City’s ground redevelopment plans.

Malone explained: “Both these clubs were invited along to the Moneyfields game and we hope to form a united front with them in our quest to persuade Winchester City Council to invest in our planned ground redevelopment.

“We want the ground to provide training and playing facilities not only for WCFC, but also for many of the local football clubs in the area, including Winchester Youth and Winchester Flyers.”

City lodged their plans with the council around 18 months ago, but have yet to hear any concrete news.

“We’re talking about redeveloping all the way down the stand side of the ground with low-level seating, changing rooms and so on,” Malone explained.

“The estimate for that and the all-weather pitches is £1.5 million.

"There’s a working party looking into the costings, but it’s all so slow.

“The council own the ground and we’re in their hands.

“They’ve said ‘yes’ in principle all the way along and it’s evident that there’s an acute lack of facilities for training and playing in the Winchester area.

“We’ve got the local MP, Stephen Brine, behind us and we’re trying to chivvy them along, but we haven’t got a precise costing yet.”

Since stepping in to save the club two summers ago, Murray and Malone have already overseen significant ground improvements aimed at getting City into the Southern League.

But Malone said: “We don’t want to go on spending money on the ground only for it all to be ripped up and started again if the redevelopment goes ahead.

“Paul and I have done what’s necessary to get it up to Southern League standard and, if the council don’t play ball with the redevelopment, we’ll just have to plough on and add to what we’ve done so far.

“We think the work we’ve done is perfectly adequate for the next level, but we’d love to be able to share the facilities with other local clubs.

“Winchester Flyers, for example, is a big organisation with around 300 girls. We’ve tried to help them by playing a few games at our ground, but it’s a grass pitch. If it was Astroturf, we could have them here every week.

“If the pitch was used five or six days a week, it would satisfy local demand and increase revenue with all the secondary stuff that comes with it.

“We had a 462 crowd in against Moneyfields. It was cheaper to get in, but the fact we had more people through the turnstiles doubled our bar take and trebled our catering take.

“Friday night football is a way forward for non-League football. It definitely attracts bigger crowds and I think the Wessex League should try and get at least one game a week on a Friday.”