A MALVERN football club has attacked the town council for forcing its thriving junior section to move from their "spiritual home".

After 25 years based at Lower Howsell, Malvern Town Council now want Newtown Sports Junior Football Club's mini-football teams to play at Duke's Meadow.

The council, which spends £15,000 a year maintaining the town's football pitches, argue that the Lower Howsell surfaces are being badly damaged by the seven-a-side 'mini games' being played there on Saturday mornings.

But Newtown's president Don Loader has labelled the council's treatment of their budding players, some as young as eight, as "disgraceful".

He believes that the club should not have to see its mini-football teams move away, especially after the council increased its annual rent by 10 per cent to use its park facilities this season.

It means that Newtown have to find £1,540 to book pitches for its seven mini and five 11-a-side junior teams with the latter again playing in the Mercian Festival League this season. That money is on top of the some £6,000 needed to run the club annually.

Loader now believes that the council should have done more to keep the mini teams at Lower Howsell by better preparing the pitches.

"It seems to me that Malvern Town Council don't care too much for the youngsters here," claimed Loader whose club is also trying to accommodate girls' teams to play in the league this season.

"It really is a disgrace for our kids football."

And Newtown's chairman Martyn Twinberrow added: "We have effectively been told that we have to move these kids from the club's spiritual home.

"On top of that, we have to find an extra 10 per cent to pay the council this season when my personal view is that they shouldn't have to pay for these facitities at all when their parents are ratepayers in this town?

"I say that particularly when the children have been forced to play in appalling conditions at Lower Howsell."

But the town council's operations manager, Richard Chapman, has hit back - claiming that expensive verti-break draining work, similar to methods used at top Premiership and Nationwide football clubs, has gone on at there during the summer.

"There are two full size pitches at Lower Howsell and that's just not enough room to accommodate the amount and type of games being played on them.

"A lot of games were having to be called off last season because the pitches were not fit enough to play on.

"The ironic thing is, Duke's Meadow was being underused, so it just seems sensible to move some of Newtown's matches there."

Chapman claims that Lower Howsell's pitches suffer particular damage the breadth of the field is used for the mini matches.

But he claims that special, smaller mini-pitches can now be set up at Duke's Meadow to host such matches which will, in the long term, benefit the young players.

"We only want what's best for Newtown and the rest of the clubs in the area," added Chapman.

On the increased costs, he pointed out: "We spend £15,000 a year just maintaining the town's football pitches so we certainly don't feel we're neglecting our young players.

"But a lot of players also come from outside of Malvern and we certainly don't feel we should be subsidising them."