The football teams are naturally concerned how the plans for the Rugby Centre of Excellence would affect them.

Both Stu Murray and John McKenna, the finance director of the Sixth Form College, were at pains to point out the college had to continue to provide two soccer pitches as part of curriculum requirements.

The intention was to keep the two soccer pitches alongside Catcote Road while developing all of the playing fields to the east of the hedge into four full size rugby pitches.

The soccer teams were also told that the West junior sides would be moving to Brinkburn on Sunday mornings from this September.

The meeting was chaired Oliver Sherratt who has responsibility for playing fields for the Council.

He explained that the Council only owned a small part of the site, made up up mainly of the existing soccer pitch next to the swimming pool, but including the dead ball area of the existing first team pitch!

The rest of the site is owned by the Sixth Form College who have reached agreement with West for the club to take on the management of its playing fields, and to build a new clubhouse and centre of rugby excellence on the site of the existing pavilion on Catcote Road. An outline planning permission application has now been submitted for the clubhouse.

The soccer clubs were concerned that they would effectively be losing two of the four soccer pitches. They valued the facilities because of the poor state of council pitches and changing facilities throughout the town and the fact that other educational institutions, such as Manor College of Technology, were charging much more for the hire of pitches.

After the meeting Stu Murray said:"We wanted to let the footballers know about the plans and to seek their opinions on how best we could accommodate soccer in the future.

"The major part of the land is owned by the College and we will sit down with the Governors and discuss what the footballers had to say.

"Their opinions will also be considered by the Council in respect of their pat of the site.

"We feel it makes sense for us to run the whole of the playing fields - but that is by no means vital for our plans for a Rugby Centre of Excellence to go ahead."