by Roy Pearce
Summer 2006 will linger long in the minds of several people involved with Call to Arms, a hot summer that saw some truly outstanding people complete a project that took a massive amount of organizing and planning as well as a huge amount of work.
To sum up the amount of work put in to this project would read like a contract from a major building company;
The first task was to set up an area to work from. This was provided with a room underneath the stand, allowing us to store all our equipment and provide a room to store work clothes and a notice board for work to do next, cabinets and workbenches were installed as well as heavy duty shelving.
Once we were ready to start the work the first priority was the cleaning of the surfaces that needed painting. We set up jet washers to do this and we quickly worked two of them to death. They ended up as a testament to the level of work put in. Furthermore we had to ask several thousand spiders to vacate the site in order to complete the cleanup.
Once the entire site was cleaned we were able to set about the repainting.
The once dirty block work was now being transformed by a painting project that was influenced by the outstanding work of Ernie Jones who gave so much time to the painting that we would never had done it without him. The trust are truly grateful for the work done by such a wonderful man. We also want to thank his wife who hardly saw her husband during the summer. Thank you both.
Each toilet in the stand was in shocking state. We removed them all and the old doors, then repainted the cubicles as well as fitting new doors and fittings along with excellent new toilets that are far superior to the previous facilities. Some of the urinals required refitting and the pipe work refurbished.
All the toilet blocks were fitted with new sinks that were very hard to fit because of the concrete walls and the need for new pipe work. The floors were painted in a great shade of blue with black edges. The flooring paint is a high grade non slip paint that performs as well as looks great.
The entire length of the north terrace walls were repainted in white as well as the yellow on the terrace and grey on the steps up to the terrace. The finished project was a testament to some special people and I would like to thank Ernie Jones again as well as Gerard Campbell who fitted all the doors as well as painting them and adding fittings. Gerard is a superb craftsman who we are proud to have on board the trust. Others are David Hellyar - who despite claiming to be useless was in fact priceless - and the ever present Dean Tabor who devoted so much time to the project. Ian "Tabs" Tabor was master of the drills and screws with some help from Tuba along the way. Everybody involved gave of their time freely - it was a real team effort.
Dozens of other people were involved with the work and I would like to thank them all for their efforts. None of this would of course been achieved without support from Cardiff RFC Ltd and Andrew Thomas in particular.
This project was a true testament to supporters and the club working together and a project that all in the north stand will enjoy each time they go to a match at CAP, a brighter and cleaner facility for all of us. Take a look at the pictures and see the start and the result of the project.