ROSS-on-Wye is facing up to life in 2010 without Ross Town Football Club following its demise before Christmas.
The club was formed in the summer of 1993 following the amalgamation of Ross United and Woodville, and joined the Herefordshire Premier Division.
They have been struggling to find players and have now withdrawn from the Herefordshire League and other competitions. This has been a body blow as they were losing finalists in the Journal Cup played at Hinton last April.
The news has been met with sorrow in the town and resident Chris Parsons said: “The ramifications run very deep as our children and grandchildren will have no senior football team to play for locally in years to come.”
As a former first team coach and director of football, he added: “After winning promotion to the Hellenic Premier League four years ago, Ross sadly had to spurn the opportunity to progress through lack of facilities.
“The team that had been built up, broke up, with the lads going elsewhere to play at a higher level.”
An application for floodlighting was rejected, he said, and the town was in need of a new sports centre.
“I can only hope that our hard-working rugby club has better luck in obtaining the facilities they need to progress.
“I was privileged to work alongside some very driven individuals at Ross Town.
“You only have to look around you to see how vitally important sport is. I have coached lots of teams and taken them all over the country and every little market town, with the exception of Ross, has a long established clubhouse and good facilities.”
Travel in Europe, he said, and even tiny towns had superb, floodlit, grass and all-weather pitches.
“Until relatively recently we had ten teams at Ross Town with other 200 people regularly attending annual dinners at the Chase Hotel.
Now director of football at Cinderford Town, Chris Parsons said: “I truly hope that Jim Loftus and his aides at Ross Junior Football Club can keep going.”
The rowing and cricket clubs continued to do a sterling job keeping children off the streets, he added, along with Tudorville Boxing Club.
