A club which has served young people for almost a century faces the axe after missing out on vital funding.

Sedbergh Club lost its dream of becoming a multi-million pound sports village last December and its funding from Bradford Council has also vanished.

Since then volunteers have worked tirelessly to keep the club - which opened in 1906 - afloat and funds have been pledged locally.

But the club's premises in Huddersfield Road, Bradford, desperately need repair and volunteers said the club is cut to the bone financially.

Today hononary manager Arnold Butterfield said: "We could be forced to close and are doing everything we can to try to keep the doors open. It is only the volunteers who keep things going ."

The club will present a petition bearing 500 signatures to next week's Bradford Council full meeting, appealing for help to save the facilities being used each week by about 350 young people.

Mr Butterfield said the club used to receive between £35,000 and £42,000 a year from a pot of money set aside by Bradford Council for voluntary groups.

The Council switched to a controversial points system two years ago and Mr Butterfield said although the club reached the points level for a grant, it never received one.

The club hoped its problems were over last year when it drew up plans for a £2.75 million sports complex with businessman Brendan Larkin's company, Skylark Leisure. But Skylark pulled out to concentrate on other plans and there was a snag with sports lottery funding for the scheme. The club also lost its sponsorship from Allied Colloids, when it was taken over and became Ciba. The club originally opened in 1906 in a room above a baker's shop in Little Horton.

Bradford textile barons, who sent deprived children to Sedbergh School in Cumbria decided to set up a club with the same name to enhance the "physical, spiritual and moral well being of young boys."

It became the first sports and youth club of its type in Britain and a national success story.

Its mission is to provide sport and cultural opportunities to keep young people off the streets in Bradford South and teach them skills for adult life.

But Mr Butterfield said its purpose-built premises in Huddersfield Road constructed in the 1960s were falling into serious disrepair.

"The heating system is atrocious and we are using buckets because the roof is leaking. We need £25,000 a year in running costs to keep our doors open."

Bradford South MP Gerry Sutcliffe, who used to play football at the club, said: "I think it is sad the Council has been so short-sighted over funding."