HOVE Rugby Club scored a winning try todayby scooping more than £300,000 from the National Lottery.

Plans to move the 65-year-old club from its current home in Hove Park to nearby Hove Recreation Ground now look set to proceed. The English Sports Council is giving the club, which has outgrown its present venue, £309,941 towards the £514,000 needed to buy a long-term lease at the recreation ground and to build a multi-purpose pavilion. Two new full-size rugby pitches, a floodlit training pitch, a small pitch for mini and colts rugby and a cricket square are also on the cards. The grant is the largest in the South East in the latest round of sports council hand-outs. It's a major boost for sport in Hove. The pavilion will have two large changing rooms, a fitness room and a clubroom which will available to numerous local clubs. Growing numbers of juniors at the club, among the first in the country to promote women's rugby, prompted the lottery bid more than two years ago. Club bosses are thrilled. Chairman Richard Beecham said: "It has been a very long process and there were times when we wondered if we were spending too much time on it. "The senior and women's side of the club are going strong but the focus has always been on dealing with our 350 juniors. "We have managed but we are finding that an increasing problem is security. We have a very large responsibility to these youngsters." Mr Beecham pledged to the community that the new pavilion would have an open-door policy. He said: "The interests of the club are paramount but we will not lose sight of the fact that it has been a community club since 1933." Work at the new club is expected to take three seasons, but it's hoped the new pavilion will be in use by the year 2000.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.