Consett chairman Frank Bell has revealed that the club is now the biggest community club in the north east.

Consett moved from their old ground in the town just over a year ago to brand new purpose built facilities elsewhere in the town, and the club has now become the centre of the community thanks to its 4G playing surface. Today, they’re staging the FA Vase third round tie against Marske United, with a place in the last 32 of the national competition at stake.

“At the moment, we’ve got 41 teams using our facilities,” he said. “Next season, we’re aiming to start an under 23 team, a ladies team and over 40s teams. We started our new life with a junior structure, and we have steadily added to that.

“The new stadium has made all the difference to the club, because it means that all our teams are playing out of the stadium every week.

“Every team trains and plays here between 5pm and 10pm every weekday night, and to accommodate them, we’ve just spent £16,000 on training equipment.

“We’re very proud to have been informed by the FA that we’re now the largest community club in the north east – which isn’t bad at all considering we’ve only been in the ground for one year.

“We’re also talking to the FA about further money for ground improvements – we intend to continuously improve over the next ten years.”

In terms of the Northern League, Bell thinks that the season is going well. “We had a reasonable run in the FA Cup, we’ve got through to this stage of the Vase, and we’re midtable in the league.

“Our expectation is to finish top six in the league and to continue our run in the Vase. We have very good squad of players, but there are a couple of areas within the team that we need to strengthen and add to. We decided not to apply for the EvoStik this season, because we looked at our current league position and adopted a realistic view that we might not finish in the top three. We’re maybe a season away from that.

“We would love to win the Northern League and the Vase, but that’s not an easy thing to do. It takes a long while to build up for anything like winning competitions like those, it has to be done from the bottom up and done properly. We must make sure that with the right facilities and infrastructure, then the club is sustainable.

“Obviously we’d like to go further in the Vase today, and we know that the further we go, the tougher it gets. Consistency is going to be important.”