Our Club Community | If You Can’t Afford It, B&Q It

By Stuart Whitehurst – HUST MEMBER & HFC STADIUM ENHANCEMENT TEAM LEAD (Volunteer)

When money is tight, you need to be inventive. The Stadium Enhancement team are a hard working but unheralded bunch of volunteers who beaver away weekly at Edgar Street, quietly maintaining our national treasure. With financial resources limited, the team need to be imaginative as their efforts are without specialist tools and materials. They were very aware that the venerable Meadow End was showing its age and external titivation would not only enhance but protect our unique curved terrace. With Hereford FC such a key part of city life, there was a clear broad community benefit. Pride in your club, pride in your city.

Local relationships become all important an in this case, a very supportive B&Q store manager Shane Williams, handily based in Holmer Road, Hereford. Shane suggested that the team could apply nationally for a B&Q Community Day.

This is essentially a national competition where worthy causes compete for a whole day of free B&Q expertise and materials. The Stadium Enhancement team demonstrated that their skill set could stretch to penning a compelling application, outlining the benefits to the local community of repainting the walls, stairs and exterior exit doors at the back of the Meadow End. Ultimately, it was impossible to know the strength of the competition so all they could do was email in the application and hope.

Happily, their efforts paid off with notification coming through in mid-August. The retailer were so impressed they felt compelled to approve the application. On Wednesday 13th September, the B&Q team, led by manager Shane, duly arrived on site armed to the teeth with tools and materials to complete the task.

“We gave them a long list” explained Stadium Enhancement team leader Stuart Whitehurst. “We thought they’ll never get through that lot but we’d be grateful for anything they could do. To our utter amazement, the visiting team properly B&Q’ed it, getting through an enormous amount of remedial work in just one day.” Hereford people getting together for a common cause, that’s proper community. We now have a revived iconic home terrace.