THE opening of the National Football Museum at Preston North End has gone into extra time - after the National Lottery moved the goalposts.

Bosses at the club boasted the museum - to host the prestigious FIFA collection and PNE's own extensive archives - was to open in the new Tom Finney stand in May.

But a massive £5M Lottery bid - expected to be approved last January - has not even been vetted and the club will have to wait another four months for a decision.

The Citizen can also reveal that the National Lottery Heritage Fund has been swamped with so many applications, a question mark now hangs over the larger - and more expensive - projects.

PNE chairman Bryan Gray said: "Under the old rules, the Heritage Fund used to approve schemes on an ad-hoc basis. Now, all projects will be considered together in November.

"It means the museum will not open this year. But we're still working very hard on the project. The delay means we have been able to plan a bigger and better museum than we originally envisaged, and staff are working full-time building up the collection."

But the huge numbers of people applying for Lottery cash means PNE's bid isn't a formality. Lydia Davies of the Heritage Lottery Fund said applications were outstripping its £300M budget.

She said: "There have been so many bids for museums, we've had to defer large projects over £1M. We'll look at them altogether in November. We have to strike a balance between the regions and between similar projects." Mr Gray conceded it was becoming more difficult to get Lottery grants: "It's important we get the application right and the town gets the museum."

THE National Football Museum was launched in a blaze of publicity last year, claiming it would be open before England hosted the Euro '96 championships. It has the backing of FIFA, the Football Association and the Premier League and would have "the eyes of the footballing world turning to Deepdale - one of the game's most historic locations".

Plans for the museum include a cinema, art gallery and a Hall of Fame. Its centre-piece will be the Soccer Nostalgia Collection - the largest collection of shirts, international caps, medals and footballs in the world.

But, instead of being on display, more than 1,000 items of memorabilia are gathering dust in a Preston warehouse. And despite the delay - and question mark - over Lottery cash, it has not stopped the PNE souvenir shop selling National Football Museum mugs!

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