Open letter from James Cunningham of Shortlees Amateurs
Hi everyone, I am lying in bed it is 12.58am in the early hours of a Saturday morning.
I am kind of relaxed but at the same time slightly annoyed, that Shortlees Amateurs have a game of football tomorrow.
As up until this evening we didn’t have a game tomorrow as we didn’t have a park anywhere in Ayrshire, to play our supposedly home game.
The committee have spent all today trying to find a park in East, North and South Ayrshire, we finally got one after three days of trying every single Astro in Ayrshire.
So tomorrow our meant to be home tie, in the Ayrshire Cup quarter final, is being played at Queen Margaret School in Ayr, some 12 miles away.
This is an ongoing weekly theme for Shortlees Ams.
Despite 60/70 meetings with council officials over 13 years pleading and explaining to them that there is not one football park in Shortlees, that’s right not one, we have had absolutely no help, just unfulfilled promises.
They promise us they will help but after a few emails we are forgotten about, again and again.
I am not ever going to accept that, as the people of Shortlees deserve much better.
What do we have to do to get a football park in our own scheme, please someone tell me.
Every scheme in Kilmarnock, every single one, have a football park of some kind, but not us, despite being one of the biggest populated and impoverished schemes in Kilmarnock.
Please why is that, can someone somewhere come to me personally and explain why I have to repeatedly tell our next home opponents, ashamedly I must add, that we have no home park to play them on.
Our opponents are astonished and can’t believe it or believe how successful we have been without one.
That is a stain on Kilmarnock and East Ayrshire council, I don’t care what they say to the contrary and it needs rectified as soon as possible.
Are Shortlees people or Shortlees football teams not worthy of a park where the local support can come out and watch them play their home games.
The old school had 2 football parks and the new school was meant to have a full size football park when it got built.
I saw the plans for it, a woman from the council followed me out of a meeting one day, as I had said at a previous meeting, I had seen the building plans, she said you are right Jim, I found the plans in the council offices
I started this football team in 2010, we had to start at the bottom of five divisions and went to the top winning every single trophy that can be won at Scottish amateur level. All done within seven years, including winning the national trophy the Scottish Cup at Hampden.
We have continued to be successful despite not having a home park.
That victory got us in to the big Scottish Cup that Darvel recently beat Aberdeen in, we can’t be any more successful at our level.
We are crying out for a football park in Shortlees and it is a scandal that we don’t have one.
We are the first and only team ever to win the Scottish cup from Kilmarnock.
On winning that cup that year we had eight home games to the Semi-final at Douglas Park Hamilton
That though wasn’t significant in helping us win it, as we had to play every single one of our home games away from home, as far away as Kilbirnie.
I would bet no other previous winners have ever done or had to do that.
Now I understand the council is under pressure for money, but why is there five Astro parks within a mile of each other at the top end of the Kilmarnock, while we at the bottom end don’t even have one astro, a seven a side, or even a grass park.
We don’t have anywhere for the football team to train in Shortlees, nowhere, we are 80/90/100 pounds a week just to train, at the Grange, or Soccerworld and 80 pounds on a Saturday to play wherever we can find somewhere.
Our Secretary John Sivewright deserves a medal for what he does to try to get us a park on a Saturday, getting up at 5.30 am on Monday mornings to book a park which teams can only apply to book after 6am.
All this still doesn’t guarantee us to get one, as has happened this week.
You would surely think our record and continued success as probably the top team in Ayrshire, and one of the top teams in Scotland would add some weight to our cries for a football park, but no, it repeatedly falls on deaf ears and is all to no avail.
We have nowhere to keep our goals, strips, training gear, our aluminium goals lie in the front garden of our Secretary John Sivewright’s front garden in Treesbank Road and have done so for 13 years.
We applied recently for permission to put a container to keep all our stuff at Burnpark, where we play in the summer months before it becomes a swamp, even that got refused.
Burnpark is not a football park, we make it one, we cut it and line it in the summer months ourselves and it is only thanks to the hard work our brilliant committee and management do, that this miracle happens.
In the summer months when we have games on at Burnpark, which is in the centre of our scheme, all the nearby shops make money from our large support, so it is good for all the local business’s when we play there.
Then the Autumn rain arrives, and it becomes annually unplayable.
Why have asked them to put drainage in it for us at the very least, that gets met with the same no money excuse.
Hurlford Thistle win the Scottish Cup and deservedly get a civic reception, Shortlees were the first Kilmarnock team to win it, where was our civic reception?
Are we not worthy? Shortlees won the West of Scottish cup last year again, along with the Premier League again, the Ayrshire Cup again, and the James Scott Trophy again.
Please can someone somewhere, anywhere, help us get a football pitch, as the council have given us no help whatsoever, despite meetings and talks, where they say they will help us and they don’t.
We also have another young Shortlees Under-12s team who have just started and can’t play out of Shortlees as they have the same problem.
The last boys team left Shortlees and eventually folded as they had nowhere to play.
I was advised not to do this letter to shame the council, but I am past caring, as nothing positive has happened from any of our meetings.
In almost 13 years of trying, we have had nothing, it is as if the people of Shortlees don’t count, I again won’t accept that.
Everything we have achieved has all been down to ourselves, with zero help from the council.
Please can someone somewhere listen to the people of Shortlees.
This isn’t just about Shortlees Amatuers, it is about the future of our club, the Shortlees Under-12s and the local kids who have nowhere in Shortlees to play football or a park to play a game.
We need a playable football park in Shortlees, we won’t be ignored, and we won’t stop till we get one.
Yours in good faith James Cunningham.
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