MERRIOTT Youth Football Club will be allowed to play on the village recreation ground next month, easing fears over the future of junior soccer in the area.

Club secretary Monica Hayden said the latest meeting between representatives of the club and the parish council was the most positive meeting the two sides had ever had and follows a number of wrangles during last season.

The club will play its first games of the season at Maiden Beech in Crewkerne on September 4 and at Merriott on September 5.

Mrs Hayden said: "I'm very optimistic about the whole situation now. The parish council has said it will let us play our opening Sunday games. This comes as quite a big relief for us as there was always worry as to whether we could or not.

"At the meeting, we had the chance to put our points across and make suggestions for the future of football in the village and the council representatives seemed to think our ideas were fair.

"But we will have to wait until the next parish council meeting on Monday for them to be formalised."

Football in Merriott has been the subject of controversy over the past year. In February the parish council turned down £230,000 of external funding, which scuppered plans for a new sports pavilion.

In July the club was told it could no longer store equipment in the groundsman's shed it had used for years, for health and safety reasons.

Parish council chairman Paul Maxwell, who helped arrange the recent meeting between the two sides, said the authority had no intention to evict the club from the Rec and wanted to reach a compromise.

Mrs Hayden said: "We will need to wait and see what happens at the meeting now.

"We were not asking for the moon, we just wanted to be treated the same as we had for all the years we've been on the recreation ground."