FOR players at Hinksey Park Football Club, the grass is about to get a lot greener.

After unveiling a £750,000 new clubhouse in July, the club is having its entire pitch at Grandpont Recreation Ground in South Oxford re-turfed at a cost of £56,876.

Players hope it will mean they no longer have to cancel games throughout the winter because their water-logged pitch, which was never designed as a playing field, turns into “rice pudding” in the rain.

The pitch, used by the club’s hundreds of young players every week in the season, was salvaged in the 1980s out of mud and spoil from the former South Oxford gas works, and covered with a water-proof layer and turf.

But that surface offers no drainage and during the winter the club says it has to cancel up to half its matches because it gets so muddy it is unusable. All that is about to change.

The re-turfing has been organised by Oxford City Council, which helped secure £32,500 from Sporting England Protection of Playing Fields Fund and made up the rest.

The pitch closed for works on Tuesday, and the council’s contractor will now tear up topsoil and replace it with a new layer of sandy loam soil, before laying new turf on top.

From September, the players, including the club’s first ever adult team, recently-formed, will be able to take full advantage of their new pitch.

Club secretary Mick Conmy, who lives in Florence Park, said: “It should be magnificent.

“Over the last 20 years the pitch has worn away so now as soon as there is a shower of rain it turns into rice pudding.

“We have had lots of games cancelled, even thought it’s been a benign winter.

“Since we had the new clubhouse we’ve had a fabulous time using it, bringing people together, so there was a real mismatch between that and the state of the pitches.”

In the last three years, the club has grown by about 50 per cent, and now has more than 300 regular young players.

Mr Conmy, who works at Unipart in Cowley, added: “We are obviously a very successful organisation so this is building for the future.

“Our club is community-based, we are all-inclusive. We’re never at the top of the league but we have lots of kids playing football and that’s part of our value.”

Club chairman Jim Smith thanked Oxford City Council and the Football Association for helping the club obtain tens of thousands of pounds to completely re-turf.

Oxford City Council leader Bob Price said: “It is a very good project and in the long-term it will mean the problems the club have with not being able to use the pitch at certain times of year will hopefully be relieved.”

During the works, a strip of green turf will be left open around the outside of the pitch for dog walkers and nature lovers to use.

The club’s growing success also means it needs more committee members to help run the club.

To find out more about volunteering, email hinkseyparkfc@gmail.com