Scarborough will continue to have a football club, Athletic chairman Trevor Bull promises - I just don't know how yet

The fan-run phoenix club will assess its options this week after learning they may not have a pitch to play on next season, seven days before work on relaying it for 2025-26 had been due to start.

Scaborough Athletic were formed by the Seadog Trust in the summer of 2007 following the liquidation of the 146-year-old former Football League club Scarborough FC and the closing of the Athletic Ground at the end of the previous season.

The new club joined the football pyramid in the North Counties East League and with no suitable home in the town, groundshared with Bridlington Town, 19 miles away.

But it was the move back to the town and the council-built and owned Scarborough Sports Village 10 years later that was the making of the club, winning promotion from Northern Premier League Division One up two divisions to Conference North in 2022.

Under the management of locally-born former York City, Middlesbrough and Manchester United player Jonathan Greening, Scarborough have reached the first round of the FA Cup two years running, attracting nationwide publicity in the process, including hosting an episode of Football Focus.

The Sports Village's synthetic 3G playing surface had been due to be relaid this summer, with work starting after the Easter Monday game against Darlington, the final home match of the campaign.

"The pitch was borderline when it had the FIFA test last summer and they decided they would do some repair work to get just one more year's life out of it, with a view to replacing it this summer," explained Bull.

"We learnt on Monday of last week (April 24) that the pitch needed more work than expected and we might miss the first few home games of next season. We thought we could ask the league to schedule our first few games away from home, that wouldn't be a problem.

"Twenty-four hours later we were told it wasn't going to be ready and they didn't know when work was going to start.

"It took us totally by surprise.

"At this moment in time we're looking at all our options. We've had offers of support from lots of different areas and we're just working through them this week to try and find out what route we want to go down."

It has since emerged there are underlying problems complicating the work, with councillor Rich Maw revealing on social media he had been told repairs could take 44 weeks to complete and cost £3m.

"If it was just resurfacing the pitch, no problem," said Bull. "The money was in place, the contractors could do it, everything was in place.

"But they did some testing of the subsoil underneath the pitch in January and discovered some problems with subsidence etc. They did some more tests, put some cameras down, etc, and found collapsed drains and all that sort of thing so they're going to have to do quite a large piece of excavation work to put that right before they can relay the pitch so it's gone from just having to put a new pitch down to having to dig the whole lot up and start again."

Farsley Celtic have been relegated from Conference North this season after having to play home matches in Buxton this season amid problems laying a new grass pitch. Scarborough will also find it difficult if forced out of the town again.

"We were playing two divisions down the pyramid in Bridlington so that ground isn't up to National League standards," said Bull. "There aren't any grounds locally that are up to National League standard, that's part of the problem."

All levels of the pyramid have their own ground requirements and North Yorkshire's only other stadium up to the standards of the National League, which runs the Conference Premier, North and South, is the Community Stadium home of York City, which also hosts York City Knights rugby league club and Leeds United, Sheffield United and Hull City's under-21 teams.

"I'm not sure we could afford to play there because the costs are quite enormous," said Bull.

"The whole structure of the club and our whole business plan is based around being in that stadium. We make most of our revenue through matchdays.

"If we go elsewhere there's all the advertising we don't get, all the hospitality we don't get, the bar we don't get, the season tickets, it just goes on and on... That's the bit we're trying to work out."

Bull has been heartened by the response to the news, with Scarborough drawing their second-biggest home crowd of the season – 2,115 – for the dead rubber against Darlington.

"The pleasing thing for me was the great turnout on Easter Monday and the great support we had in the ground," he said. "I get the sense the town's behind us, and the local businesses are behind us. Alison Hume, our relatively new MP, came down to the Darlington game and was really pleased to see what we're doing not just on matchdays but in the community. She's going away to challenge North Yorkshire Council to get it right for us.

"The National League have been really helpful. I've got a Teams meeting on Tuesday afternoon to put them more in the picture on what we're trying to do. They're very supportive but they will need to know what's happening before the league's constituted at the beginning of June.

"The number of messages I've had from literally all over the world has been incredible. There's so many people who love our football club and we've got 1,500 owners emotionally involved with us, our supporters in the ground, local businesses, it's incredible the amount of goodwill there is.

"If we all stick together we will find a solution.

"I feel as positive as I can do. There'll be setbacks along the way but we just have to deal with them when we come to them.

"Whatever happens, in some shape or form we will continue to have a football club.

"We've got a lot to sort out but I'm reasonably confident we'll get through this, I just don't know what route we're going to take."