AN OTLEY sports club that had its pitch wrecked due to a Leeds City Council blunder is still waiting for compensation - and a set of goalposts - days before the start of the new season.

Weston Lane Junior Sports and Social Club's planned major fund-raising tournament of the year had to be cancelled after contractors working for Leeds North West Homes (LNWH) mistakenly dug up its playing fields in late May.

The proceeds from the event, which 215 football clubs had been invited to compete in, would have paid for essential improvements to the clubhouse and grounds.

On realising its mistake LNWH began re-instating the pitch but Weston Lane -- insisting the ground would need months before it was safe to play on -- cancelled the tournament and had to send back the entrance fees, with apologies, to all the entrants.

Negotiations between the club and LNWH have been ongoing ever since to see if the housing ALMO (Arms Length Management Organisation) would compensate Weston Lane for its loss.

Chairman Richard Bolton said: "They have had their ups and downs but time has passed along now.

The new season is just around the corner, and we still haven't had a firm compensation proposal.

"We've said to them if they won't do the work they've talked about doing for us could they give us a cash settlement instead so we can do it ourselves.

"If we get no joy we'll write to the Chief Executive again because this has gone on for too long.

"They've kept saying 'leave it with us' so we left it with them and have tried to be as helpful as we can, but we're still waiting for confirmation of what it is they're actually going to do for us.

"We couldn't hold the tournament, it would have been impossible to re-schedule the whole thing to take place somewhere else in such a short space of time, it would have cost an absolute fortune in administration and the time and effort we would have had to put in.

"So we cancelled it and posted all of the money back. Although a lot of the other clubs were sympathetic some noses were pushed out of joint because they knew they could have gone to other tournaments.

"The pitch itself has been re-grassed, although it's still looking a bit bare in patches, but we're still waiting for one set of goalposts to be put back in, which they're trying to organise for next week.

"Our first game is on September 11, so we haven't got time to wait!"

Worried that the pitch may not yet be suitable to play on, Weston Lane has actually arranged for its first four matches to be played away from home to give it a bit more time.

A fire at the club's old pavilion in 2000 destroyed thousands of pounds worth of equipment and left it unusable.

The club was only re-opened after a public appeal, backed by the Wharfedale & Airedale Observer, to pay for a re-build and is still raising cash to finish off re-equipping the interior.

It had hoped to raise thousands of pounds from the cancelled July competition, and Mr Bolton says it urgently needs some straight answers from LNWH if it is to forge ahead.

"We're waiting to see what they're going to offer us in terms of either work or a cash settlement so we can plan for the club itself," he said.

"Until we get that I can't make any decisions to take to the committee about what we should be doing next.

"LNWH have also offered us a sponsorship deal but haven't come up with that yet, so we've got unfulfilled promises and we're running out of time."

LNWH's contractors had actually begun digging the pitch up, without notifying the club, to create a site compound for the ALMO to use while it carried out property improvements on the Oval.

It has since been looking for an alternative site to use on the Weston Estate.

LNWH Chairman Councillor Barry Anderson (Con, Adel and Wharfedale) said: "a new location has now been found for the site compound, which will now be split between an old garage site on Weston Ridge, the grass verge beside it and a plot of grass opposite.

"A total of nine works containers will be based there for around eight months until the housing improvement works are completed."