A NEW Kesgrave sports pitch is due to open this weekend and will kick off appropriately with a football match.Kesgrave Kestrel football team managers dressed in drag and Kestrel mums dressed as they please will start the launch and it is hoped an Ipswich town footballer might also make an appearance.

By Jessica Nicholls

A NEW Kesgrave sports pitch is due to open this weekend and will kick off appropriately with a football match.

Kesgrave Kestrel football team managers dressed in drag and Kestrel mums dressed as they please will start the launch and it is hoped an Ipswich town footballer might also make an appearance.

The new pavilion will also be opened, boasting four team changing rooms with showers, official changing rooms a kitchen and a huge club room big enough for meetings, after match meal and parties to boost the social sides of sport.

There is a full sized adult pitch on the eastern half of the ground next to Dobbs Wood and a junior pitch on from of the pavilion with an informal kick about space next to the car park which will be in use at weekends during the football season and some evenings.

So much work has gone into providing the new pitches in a bid to generate more sporting space for the town which had been lacking for the amount of people living there.

But some people have already been damaging the pitches by riding over them with motorbikes and quad bikes.

Hoof prints and horse manure have also been left on the pitch because horse riders have been riding across it rather than using the bridleway along the side.

Kesgrave town council clerk, Veronica Read said that the pitch had been repaired and was now fine but wanted to get it through to people that the pitches were primarily there for football.

She said: "If they get down there and there is a hole or a divot we could end up with an injury.

"But we don't always know when people have done it to be able to repair the holes straight away."

And it is not always youngsters that have been causing the damage.

Mrs Read said: "We have had reports of people using it as a golf practice range.

"There are also horse riders who can use the marked bridle way along the southern edge.

"The quad bikes are also children who are being supervised by adults."

n. the Big Match launch game will kick off at 10.30am at the Century Drive/Millennium Way ground and everyone is welcome to go along.