By Ethan Harris
CARDIFF City and Met Korfball Club have launched a petition of protest as they and other community sports clubs face being turfed out of their premises.
After a decision by Cardiff Council to transfer the daily running of the club’s facilities in Heath Park was reversed, it has now been decided to convert the buildings into commercial offices, which will force the korfball club and others who operate in the area to relocate.
With use of the sports facility also spanning back nearly 50 years for Archery club Castle Bowmen, the building has significant importance for lots of community teams in the area.
Chairman of Wales Korfball James Wilcox has created a petition to try to get the council to reconsider their plans and says the decision would remove a big part of the community.
“We would have to go to a different park, as would the archery club and they would have to find storage solutions,” Wilcox said.
“The archery club has been in Heath park for nearly 50 years and they’ve got a lot of heavy equipment that they need to store somewhere.
“You’ve also got situations like a football club that runs sides that didn’t know the facilities were there and they paid to hire a container storage unit in the car park maybe thirty metres away from this building.
“They have only found out because of the petition that it existed and now they’re very interested in starting to use it.
“I can see the Council’s point that it hasn’t been used as much as they’d like, but a lot of clubs like ours have only moved there last year.
“It’s an opportunity to support Korfball which is a niche sport but one that I think fills a gap almost. There are people who maybe haven’t found their place in traditional sports who find their place in Korfball.
“It’s an opportunity for them to support this which can only be a good thing considering the diverse and inclusive nature of it.
“I think combined with the fact that we’ve reached all these other clubs in the local area via the petition and with all the signatures we’ve got I think that’s a really strong case for keeping this facility available and for letting the local clubs in the community look after it.”
The petition has managed over 1800 signatures and Wilcox hopes the council will change their minds once more to allow a number of local clubs to reap the benefits of the facilities.
Photo © Matthew Lofthouse – Freelance Photographer.
A niche sport with similarities to both netball and basketball, Korfball has over 500 clubs and over 90,000 participants in the Netherlands alone thanks to Dutch inventor Nicolaas Broekhuijsen in 1902.
The Cardiff City and Met korfball side was established in 2002, and Wilcox states the inclusive nature is what first brandished his passion for the game.
Wilcox added, “it’s the only sport in the world really where you’ve got the same number of men and women on each team, there is no single gender Korfball and it makes it a really different environment when you’re playing sports.”
“Lots of people meet their partners playing Korfball, there are parents who are able to play with their children whether it’s fathers and daughters or mothers and sons, which is something that perhaps wouldn’t happen in other sports that are separated by gender.
“You just have this really inclusive environment and I think that shows throughout the sport into the social side of it, the training and the matches.
“With the kind of people who play Korfball, you just have this nice family friendly environment to it.”
The petition is available here.
