News

BACK TO NEWS LIST

Industry support for local sports

funding to support the Island Games team and the NSC facility

As the Falkland Islands prepares to send its largest ever team to the Natwest International Island Games that takes place in Guernsey next month, I went to meet NSC Chair Mike Summers to discuss the levels of community support the NSC had received for the team but also with regards to the development of the new sports complex and the wider facilities.

Mike told me that the sporting community, (both directly and indirectly) has benefitted substantially in recent months with the construction of long required facilities. These included the new football pitch, a new bowling green, cricket pitch and clay target range, adding that as far as he knew, the NSC had received, “very substantial funds” in the form of donations and sponsorships from the vast majority of the FIFCA membership and some of the wider business community.

Speaking of the football pitch and sports hall he said that they will both be significantly enhanced by the addition of spectator stands and toilet at the pitch. There are plans for an enhanced climbing wall, skating/indoor football rink (possibly including artificial ice), lift to the mezzanine floor to assist the disabled, the elderly and families, and two state of the art exercise studios to make exercise for health and wellbeing available to all. There are also discussions taking place about the possibility of adding a running track at the school pitch to compliment the new long jump facility, where the cricket nets once stood.

Mike said that whilst there were other sponsors within the Falkland Islands outside of the fishing sector, the level of contributions received from our major industry for the Islands games and the new complex exceeded £850,000, and that this was just an over-whelming demonstration of community corporate support which now enables not just our attendance at the Guernsey Island Games in July 2023, with a team of 76 athletes in 10 sports, but also allows for investment in healthy lifestyles long into the future.

Recent News