CHAIRMAN Chris Pugsley insists the future is exciting for Weymouth as they reach their 125th anniversary.

The club was reported to have been set up during a meeting 125 years ago today at Cook’s Assembly Rooms with Mark Frowde as secretary, after he, Robert Bennett and Jimmy Newport were walking along the beach seeing members of the community playing football on the sands days before.

From there, the club are believed to have played their first game (as a junior side) at its original Lodmoor ground against a ‘Mr Popes XI’, winning 2-0 on September 24, 1890.

Fast forward through a number of extreme highs and lows, title victories and legendary players, Weymouth chairman Pugsley insists the club is currently thriving, and is eager to see it grow and develop further.

Commenting on the current anniversary celebrations that are lined up, he told Echosport: “We are looking to have another golf day with an evening meal and a special anniversary dinner in October.

“It will be at the club and we are going to invite some of the older players back to do some talks.

“We also have the anniversary shirt which is going to be worn only once by the players.”

The Terras’ celebratory dinner is set to take place on Friday, October 2, and the first team will wear the limited edition shirts the day after in their home league fixture against Bedworth United.

The club indicated that there will be 125 limited edition shirts made in total, each will be uniquely numbered with manager Jason Matthews’ men claiming numbers one to 24.

Shirt number 125 will be mounted in the boardroom at the Bob Lucas Stadium.

And on the subject of stadiums, chairman Pugsley also gave an update on the Terras’ ongoing search for a new ground.

He added: “We have a meeting on September 2 and things are still progressing but they are progressing considerably more slowly than one had hoped.

“It’s looking like the earliest we might be moving now is 2019, which is disappointing, but we are still hoping that something is going to materialise.

“It’s far from dead in the water. It’s still very positive at the moment.”

The Weymouth chief is also keen to further showcase the football club to the local community and he believes that could result in big things.

He added: “Getting into the community is absolutely paramount.

“We need to get out there and get people involved in the football club whether that is in year 125 or not, we want to get people involved and interested.

“On the field, I would like to see us in the next league up next year. Then it is really a case of what we can build on from there.

“The Conference South compared to the Conference National is a world apart and it would be silly for me to pretend that we are in a position to get into that league at this moment in time.

“A lot of work needs to be done and we need to assemble a better team, off the field, to put more things together, and slowly that is happening.”

Asked where he would like to see the club in between five and 10 years time, Pugsley claimed: “If we can get a new ground and get more people involved in the football club it would be lovely to play at least Conference National League football, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t do that if we get the right infrastructure.

“But it’s more important to get the infrastructure there so that we can maintain things, as opposed to going up one year and completely belly flopping the following year.”