A celebratory brunch was held to officially launch a new state-of-the-art 3G football pitch in Chester.

The event took place at The Cheshire - formerly known as Cheshire County Sports Club in Plas Newton Lane.

Junior footballers from Newton Athletic YFC enjoyed playing affiliated fixtures on the pitch all morning, while special guests were invited to spectate and raise a glass to celebrate the success of the much needed and much welcomed 3G pitch.

The Cheshire County Sports Club

Among those special guests was Granada TV presenter Lucy Meacock, who has been a loyal advocate of the club for more than 10 years, plus representatives of the organisations who financed the pitch such as Keith Royle from Carlsberg (the club’s long-standing brewery), Megan Peats and Tracy Thomson from the RBS Social and Community Capital Scheme, the board of directors, Paul Kelsall from the Cheshire County FA and volunteers from local grass-roots football clubs.

The Cheshire’s general manager Jennifer Brookes said: “Although we are a multi-sport facility, we are home to a huge proportion of local football teams in this community.

“As an independent not-for-profit organisation we have the freedom to develop the site to suit our users needs, but raising large sums for capital schemes such as this is tough, so this 3G pitch has been a long time coming and we really wanted to celebrate the success of the project.”

The launch of the new 3G football pitch at 'The Cheshire' on January 27

The Cheshire hopes this is one of many exciting facility developments to come in the future.

The Cheshire also held a fitness open day in the main building on Plas Newton Lane to launch new fitness services, products and flexible fitness memberships.

Since the initial launch of Fitness@TheCheshire in January 2016, the club has developed as a modern and successful fitness provider for the local community, with an all-inclusive membership.

This year the club has launched a refreshed and innovative timetable with 38 fitness classes taking place each week, as well as a new personal training service.

More than 100 people attended the event with many enjoying fun free taster fitness classes that were being held all day.