Reading City Football Club is delighted to announce that the club has recently been successfully awarded a Club Preparation Fund grant from the Premier League, The FA and the Government’s Football Foundation which will help to ensure the facilities here at the Rivermoor can safely reopen in line with the Government guidance around hygiene and social distancing and the FA’s plans for a phased return to football that were announced on the 18th July.

Here at the Rivermoor, we’ve been busy all summer making improvements to our facilities so that the ground is more welcoming to our visitors in the 2020/21 season, as a result of the £500 grant we will be ready for the restart as the grant allows us to buy Covid signage, sanitizer stations and cleaning equipment making the Rivermoor a safe environment for all during these challenging times.

This is the second grant we received this summer as we also were successfully awarded funding in last month’s Pitch Preparation Fund which was also delivered by Premier League, The FA and the Government’s Football Foundation.

The Club Preparation Fund follows the £7m of investment awarded to 2,900 organisations through last month’s Pitch Preparation Fund, also delivered by the Premier League, The FA and Government’s Football Foundation. This is enabling over 9,000 football pitches to be made match-fit and is benefiting over 33,000 football teams.

This will go a long way to help our efforts for the restart which we still hope will be next month.

The Football Foundation is a charity funded by the Premier League, The FA and the Government, through Sport England.