Arsenal-backed Islington sports complex named 'outstanding London sports venue'

James Benge3 November 2015

An Islington sports complex part-funded by Arsenal has been announced as the first winner of the ‘Outstanding London Sports Venue Award'.

The complex, which contains two of the five full-sized pitches in the borough (of which another is the Emirates Stadium) was opened in September by club legend Liam Brady. Its facilities include three five-a-side 3G pitches, a training room and spectator viewing facilities.

Speaking to Standard Sport on its opening Brady, who was the head of youth development at Arsenal between 1996 and 2013 and currently works in an ambassadorial role, said: “It means everything to the community.

“Anyone who wants to play football is attracted to this place, you can see what’s gone on here… It’s a really important part of Islington, and London for that matter. There’s not many facilities like this.”

The £2.1 million redevelopment received funding from Islington Council, the Premier League and Football Foundation. It is one of 14 pitch projects supported by Arsenal in recent years.

The award is voted for by users of MyLocalPitch, a platform for sports players to find and book venues across the capital. It is currently used by 250,000 people and includes details on 1,000 facilities.

Jamie Foale, co-founder of the website, said: “We were hearing so many positive stories that we thought we should let the venues know what our players thought of them so we set up the awards.

Arsenal Training

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“Given the quality of experience people have at Market Road we are delighted that they are the very first recipients of this award.”

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