A YOUTH football team in Wrexham is struggling to train and play games during pre-season due to council pitches not being marked. 

FC Queenspark under 15s train and play on the dunks at the back of Queensway Stadium during the season. 

The pitches, which are owned by the council are marked and maintained by the authority during the season. 

However, during pre-season, the team has struggled to train and organise friendlies due to the pitches not being marked. 

This is despite paying around £1,200 per year for use of the pitches, much to the frustration of manager Darren Williams. 

He said: "I’ve been trying to get the council to line our pitches so our boys can play pre-season games at home, something which at the moment we can’t fulfill as the council has stated during the off-season months the pitches will not be marked.

"Our season finished in mid to late April and whilst they have cut the pitches, no lines means I can’t train my boys properly neither can I host games.

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"I struggle to get boys to games as not a lot of our parents drive. We shouldn’t have to go out and spend more money that we don’t have on lining paint to attempt to mark the pitches ourselves, especially when we are volunteers and don’t get paid for anything we do.

"I’ve been told that the pitch fee is £600 every six months. So each and every club that uses a council-owned pitch is only getting nine months or so of the full maintenance they should be doing.

"I’m just a coach trying to do right by my boys and the bigger picture of doing right by the clubs in Wrexham who are in the same position as me, we are desperate to have these pitches marked as are the rest of the clubs in Wrexham who need it."

The council state that the pitches are left during the off-season in an attempt to preserve the playing fields. 

A spokesperson said: “The payments that clubs make to us are either for a ‘season ticket’ or they can pay per match. They do not cover payments for activities outside of the football season. 

"Part of the reason we don’t mark pitches during closed-season is to discourage teams from using the pitches to the same degree as they do within the season. 

"The grass pitches are used heavily and we have very little time between the end of one season and start of the next for the grass to grow and surface of the pitch to improve. 

"Where conditions allow we also try to undertake improvement works during the closed season (e.g. goal maintenance and repair, reseeding of goal mouths etc.)”