IT USED to be home to the champion football team in Southampton.

In the season 1924/25, the days when the Saints would enter the Southampton FA Senior Cup, Thornycroft Football Club - the old name of the club associated with the former Woolston-based shipbuilders - were city champions.

They played their games at the Veracity Ground in Merry Oak Road, Sholing, and in 1920 the site almost hosted an FA Cup first round tie between Thornycroft and Burnley FC before police intervened and moved the game to Fratton Park, Portsmouth.

Now council budget proposals for 2004 recommend axing football facilities at the ground and ending a century of footballing tradition.

After dozens of complaints from readers to the Daily Echo about the council plans, we have joined forces with Southampton Football Association to ask the council for a rethink.

SFA secretary Stuart Gemmell said: "The changing rooms at the ground are widely regarded as some of the worst in Southampton. It's just one big hall.

"We need investment here."

The council plans, which are not definite, propose making a saving of £58,000 by no longer maintaining football facilities at three sites across the city - the Veracity, two pitches at the Bitterne Park end of Riverside Park, and not to reintroduce football facilities at Mansel Park.

City MPs John Denham and Alan Whitehead have labelled the savings as "peanuts" when the council deals in millions of pounds.

But the Cabinet member for leisure and tourism, councillor Peter Wakeford, stressed that cuts needed to be made to reduce the burden on the council taxpayer.

Chairman Bob Boyle of Vosper Thornycroft Football Club, who now play their games at their own site in Portsmouth Road, said: "We will be backing the campaign.

"I know a lot of local sides use our ground on Sunday morning and Saturdays so there is a need for football grounds."

A final decision on the council budget is expected next February.

What do you think about the council plans to axe these football facilities? How will you be supporting the Save Our Soccer campaign. Contact Kieran Fox at the Daily Echo on 023 8042 4504.