Following the opening of the county's first all seated stand just last December in time for Ballinamallard's Co-operative Insurance Cup quarter-final first leg tie against Portadown it has been something of an anti-climax at Ferney Park with those seats hardly having been occupied given only a handful of games played there since.

Postponements of home fixtures caused by the harsh winter weather, combined with away draws in the Irish Cup and Intermediate Cup, have meant a lean three months since the full house against Portadown, with the first game of 2010 finally played only a fortnight ago against Loughgall.

Whilst the break has created a backlog of Championship fixtures which will have to be completed over the course of nearly every Tuesday night and Saturday during the next six weeks, it has enabled the club to install a new floodlights system, the funding for which had been approved following a hurried application to Sport NI earlier in the season. The club was ready to start in January but the cold snap left the ground around the pitch too hard for installation work to begin until the thaw finally began last month.

Club Manager Whitey Anderson who played a key role in managing the lights project said this week, "We are delighted to be the first club in Fermanagh to bring floodlit competitive football to the county and we are all looking forward with anticipation to Tuesday night. It is appropriate that our first game under the new lights will be against Armagh City who hosted us for a season and a half whilst we upgraded Ferney Park to a Championship standard facility, including of course our 200 seater stand."

"Armagh City were due to be our first opponents in front of the new stand in December but the fixture was postponed when we qualified to play Portadown in the Cup. Instead Armagh, with their new Brazilian influence, will now be the first to play us at Ferney under floodlights."

It may have been a stop start season on the pitch for Ballinamallard, but off the pitch within the space of a few months the club has become one of the highest standard intermediate grounds in the country with first the new stand and now the floodlights to add to the changing room block which was built in 2006.

Floodlights are not an essential criteria for Championship football, but when the opportunity arose to apply for funding the club knew it was too good an opportunity to miss to add some critical infrastructure to Ferney Park, indeed to County Fermanagh. Having planning permission already in place helped Ballinamallard's case as Sport NI was looking for projects that could spend quickly.

"The floodlights are IFA Premiership standard" confirmed Ballinamallard Chairman Desi Quinn. "In addition to facilitating midweek games for the first team and also the Reserves in the Fermanagh & Western Division 1, they will open up options for all the teams based at Ballinamallard including the Fermanagh Mallards ladies team and all the youth teams. They will enhance training provision and ensure that competitive games which suffer weather postponements on Saturdays can be re-scheduled for midweek nights."

"We will also be providing a venue now within the county as an alternative host for some of the annual youth and senior cup finals which to date have had to be played at venues in Tyrone where the nearest floodlit pitches are. And who knows, we may now be able to persuade the IFA to bring schoolboy and youth international games to Ferney Park."

Kick-off for the Championship 1 fixture between Ballinamallard United and Armagh City at Ferney Park on Tuesday night is 7.45pm.