A late substitution by Chris Brown proved a resounding success with staff and pupils from Corpus Christi Catholic Sports College as they received 50 tickets for the PNE v Stoke City match courtesy of Errigal Developments.

Robert Nickson from Errigal Developments was due to visit the school with Wayne Henderson as part of their sponsorship package of the PNE shot stopper, however, due to a last minute hitch, Chris stepped in to the breech to visit the school to meet the pupils and hand over the tickets.

Errigal Developments selected Corpus Christi to receive the tickets as director Owen McLaughlin was a former pupil at the school and as a successful local businessman he has worked closely with the management team at the school to develop it into a specialist sports and technology college.

Upon arrival at the school, Chris and Robert were given a tour of the facilities. The school is unique in the Preston area in that with the support of Enterprise plc they have been able to acquire funding of £7 million to enhance the college facilities.

Their new facilities include a fitness suite and dance studio. The sports hall itself is a four badminton sized area with four netted cricket lanes and is able to cater for basketball, netball, gymnastics, indoor hockey and five-a-side football. There are technology rooms which are spacious and superbly equipped and in addition, there are two ICT suites which students can access throughout the day to support their studies.



The College also has a full size all weather pitch which is laid to the highest specifications, and the planned floodlights mean that coaching can take place into the evening. In addition, the grass pitches and netball courts provide superb facilities for a wide variety of team games and individual sports.

After the guided tour, Chris was introduced to a group of year seven PE pupils who grilled him with some tough questions about his career and time at Preston North End so far. There was just time for Chris to sign a few autographs for the pupils before they took to the all weather pitch to demonstrate their footballing abilities.

Many thanks to all the staff and pupils at Corpus Christi Catholic Sports College for their warm welcome and hospitality and to Robert Nickson from Errigal Developments for their continued support of Preston North End through their sponsorship of Wayne Henderson.