Game over for sports club as owner gears up to pull plug

The club, which has been running the Muirhouse sports centre on Marine Drive since 1957, is home to the Civil Service Strollers and Leith Athletic football teams, and until recently the Murrayfield-DAFS cricket team.

However, it is now likely to close in mid-April after parent company CSSC Sport & Leisure, based in Buckinghamshire, told local officials that it was considering pulling the plug on the loss-making facility.

It has entered negotiations with several prospective leaseholders to take over the management of the sports centre, including Telford College, but the future of its nine full and part-time staff remains uncertain.

Edinburgh club steward Frank Boyd, 63, said: "Although it's still being presented as a 'proposal' it's pretty much a final decision. It's been losing money for a while and the CSSC isn't prepared to subsidise it any more.

"I've been club steward for the last eight years and I'm two years away from retirement, so where am I going to find another job at my stage in life?"

However, CSSC Sport & Leisure's director of finance, Peter Mayers, said the closure was not a done deal.

He added: "We will be holding a consultation with staff where they will have the opportunity to put forward any ideas of how the facilities could be run differently.

"It's been losing money for quite some time now due to a range of factors, including a drop in the number of people using the sporting facilities and a lack of people at the bar since the smoking ban and the recession."

Tom Brown, secretary of Civil Service Strollers FC, said he was aware of the "speculation" surrounding the club but added he was largely in the dark.

He said: "We've not been told either way but I've been given an assurance that, no matter what happens, the Strollers will always be playing at Muirhouse."

Murrayfield-DAFS Cricket Club played at CSSC Edinburgh until the beginning of last season.

Club president Don Wilkie said: "The facilities were starting to deteriorate and we knew that the writing was on the wall so we decided to move out.

"It will be sad to see it close but the silver lining is that the control of the ground will now fall back to Edinburgh Council, which owns the facilities and could restore it to full use.

"It would be a worthwhile effort because it's a good facility, it just needs a bit of money spent on it."

A city council spokeswoman confirmed that it owns the land, but said the clubhouse was owned and managed by the CSSC.

She added: "We have not received any official notification that the CSSC is looking to relinquish its lease.

"If they were to relinquish the lease then I can confirm that the land would fall back into council control, and we would then have to decide whether to manage the land ourselves or start looking for another organisation to run it."