Aberlour Villa prepare for new season ahead of centenary year
IT has been a busy few months for Aberlour Villa as the club prepares for a new season of welfare football.
The club, founded in 1924, will celebrate its centenary year next season and is in the midst of securing the necessary funding for a new pavilion.
The club also featured on the BBC’s popular football show ‘A View from The Terrace’ and Villa manager Lee Donald was pleased to get national coverage.
He said: “I think they’d been through Aberlour before and they saw where the pavilion sat on the football pitch. That just kind of fascinated them so they just wanted to find out about the history of the pavilion building really as well as the club.
“We did as much research as we could and we got older players and managers involved. Obviously the club has a lot of history so it’s good to see that being acknowledged especially with the BBC coming.”
The club’s current pavilion has no power, two toilets, two basins and no showers.
However, if all goes to plan, a new pavilion could be ready as early as next year. But with an estimated cost of £300,000, it could take a while before the club and the community see the benefits of it.
“We’ve applied for charitable status so once that goes through that will allow us to really kick things off,” Lee said.
“We’ve done a lot of fundraising ourselves as well. We raised £10,000 at a race night last month so that shows what can be done with support.
“The plans are in place for the building. All that’s been done by an architect but hopefully we have some work done by the end of the year but at the moment nothing has really started.”
The Villa finished third last season, losing out to eventual champions Fochabers.
However, Lee admits his side threw the league away after they had been in pole position for much of the season.
But, having retained the core of last season’s team, he is hopeful of going one better in what will be his last season as manager.
“I’ll be stepping aside to take on the chairman role next season,” he added.
“The team itself is looking pretty good. It’s the same every year though. You always lose one or two but we always find a couple to add to the team as well. We’re quite lucky overall though because the core of the squad have been here for years.
“Obviously, I’m hoping to go one better than last year and win something because I think we threw the league away last season. You know we only won one of our last six and even then we only lost the league by three points which shows how tight it was.”
