Nothing Beats Match-Day

Signs Express Preston adds a bit of class and quality to the changing rooms at Preston North End…

Football, or Soccer for our readers overseas, is passionately followed by fans the world over and the biggest clubs in the ‘industry’ amount to businesses that are traded on stock exchanges and which are worth countless millions. Outside the rarefied air breathed by a relatively few British clubs though, the game, the ambition and the undiluted passion for the match is what dominates.

PNE, or Preston North End, is a club that’s doing business in the league just a layer beneath the Premiership. Look hard into the team’s DNA and you’ll find talent, commitment and passion that equals that which powers the Premiership’s clubs. PNE though has less to spend on players, promotion and on the infrastructure that support the team and welcomes its fans. 

The club’s executive recently decided it needed to up its game - not on the pitch, but behind the scenes in the changing rooms where the team prepares for battle and gets its tactics prescribed come Match Day. The existing fabric of the rooms had begun to tire and, by the club’s own admission, lacked a bit of the sparkle needed to get its men in the right, winning frame of mind.

A complete, ‘back-to-the-bricks’ reconstruction of the changing facility would have unacceptably exercised the budget available. The PNE management instead approached Matt Rutlidge and his team at Signs Express in Preston to explore options for some basic graphics to lift the mood. They actually got a little more than they bargained for with the money available. 

Though Signs Express Preston casts itself in the role of a signs and graphics producer, the company’s talents run deeper and much wider. Signs and applied graphics need sound surfaces to work and a major signage deployment can look as much like a complex construction project as a creative undertaking. In the event, Sign Express Preston was able to propose an affordable programme of renovations for the PNE changing rooms that provided both graphics and attention addressing the need for improving the surrounding infrastructure too.

The result is an absolute transformation that really elevates the status and quality of the players’ changing environment. The new space radiates a sense of the team’s colours and mission while acknowledging a legacy that traces to the 1800s. Every player is accorded his space and the room has a very business-like feel dominated by a couple of boards teaching tactics.

Metamark materials feature extensively. MG-F Floor Graphic material was used for the club’s badge that dominates the room’s floor like a rallying point. All eyes are on the tactics boards which are made from MetaGuard 206. Elsewhere, MD5 made the starting squad and it’s worth adding that MD5A and MetaGuard 700 feature pitch-side on the advertising hoarding at the ground too. Nothing  beats match-day they say and the team’s new facilities are witness to the fact.

It’s a very attractive job and all the more remarkable when its considered that it’s the work of one company, Signs Express Preston, and not a huge entourage of very expensive contractors, facility managers and shopfitters. 

Excellent work Signs Express Preston.