Wimbledon Hawks fear losing their Motspur Park pitch to a Merton 3G plan

An Australian rules football club in Merton says a council plan for a floodlit artificial pitch on the Motspur Park fields where it plays could put its future at risk.

Merton Council wants to lay a pay-to-play 3G surface at the Sir Joseph Hood Memorial Playing Fields so that more teams and sports have somewhere to train. The Wimbledon Hawks, who have played there for more than a decade, and the Friends group for the fields say the council is pressing ahead without properly consulting the clubs and residents who already use the site.

What the Merton 3G pitch plan means for the Wimbledon Hawks

The Hawks have around 150 male and female members and are the borough’s only Aussie Rules side. The pitch is planned for the eastern corner of the fields, and current projections show it cutting into the oval the club plays on. Richard Beall of the Hawks said the first diagram he saw took away about a quarter of that surface. “If we don’t have a place to play, we don’t have a club,” he said.

Merton’s Playing Pitch Strategy states that if an artificial pitch goes on this site, the Hawks must be carefully moved elsewhere within it so the sport can continue. Mr Beall says the club has had no such assurance from the council, and he has seen no layout showing how both could fit.

Last year flooding forced the club to spend the whole season at Wimbledon Park, but that could never be a permanent home because the park is needed every summer for the Wimbledon Championships. Mr Beall said he could not think of another pitch with the same facilities, pointing to the parking and the changing rooms in the pavilion.

Two more artificial pitches planned in Merton

The council also wants artificial pitches at two nearby sites, Raynes Park High School Sports Ground and the Joseph Hood Recreation Ground. The strategy behind them aims to tackle a shortage of sports facilities and growing demand for grassroots football. The projects sit within Merton’s Borough of Sport ambition to make sport more affordable to reach. Funding would be a mix of national sports grants, such as Football Foundation money, alongside council capital funds and developer contributions.

Martin Halsall, who chairs the Friends group, described the council’s recent efforts to share details of the plans as “a promotion, not a consultation”, and said members had believed from the start that the decision was already made.