Last season the playing surface at Oxhey Jets football club resembled a battlefield; a muddy, grassless quagmire not at all conducive to the beautiful game. How things change.

Thanks to the bravery, generosity and hard work of many of the club's members, the team's Boundary Stadium now boasts one of the finest playing surfaces in the county.

Faced with the prospect of forfeiting their home fixtures for the current season and plagued by the threat of financial ruin, the club was forced to spend more than £70,000 of its own money relaying a new pitch free of the troublesome clay base of the previous one.

As the original pitch was constructed by Three Rivers District Council (as compensation for the club's enforced move to its new ground) it was hoped by members that the authority would pay for the three month project.

However, they did not have time to wait on the success of a grant application and, faced with the devastation of the club they loved, went ahead with the project using their own money.

A small number of members gave and loaned money from their retirement funds and some even took out loans against their houses to ensure the work was completed on time.

Other funds were raised from community events held last summer. Things got so tight that at one point the club had only £159 in the bank.

Only at a meeting of the district council's executive committee on Monday night did they discover that a grant of £35,000 was to be awarded, allowing some of the members to be paid back.

General manager John Elliot, who founded the club in 1972, said: "We really had no other option.

"If we hadn't done it we wouldn't have been able to continue playing there. It was really like playing on Clacton Beach - it was awful."