Famous Sheffield club where The Full Monty was filmed set for new lease of life as boxing club and social hub

Shiregreen Working Men’s Club is where the finale of the hit 1997 movie, in which Gaz and co reveal all, was shot before a live audience.

The beloved venue on Shiregreen Lane has fallen into disrepair since closing for good in 2018, with fire and vandalism causing extensive damage.

Now there are plans to reopen it as a boxing gym and cafe, which will also host community events for people of all ages.

Robert Riley, who runs Riley’s Boxing and Fitness Centre, on Richmond Park Road, Handsworth, has taken over the building and hopes to reopen it to the public as early as next spring.

“It’s going to be a community hub again, with the boxing gym, a coffee shop and hopefully little events at the weekend for people of all ages,” he told The Star.

“We want to make it accessible to everyone, with something for the young’uns and the adults.

“Since it closed it’s been broken into and there have been a couple of fires. It needs a lot of work doing to it, but I want to bring it back to what it was and bring back that community spirit.”

Robert told how he had wanted to move in previously when his gym was evicted from its old venue in Page Hall in 2023 but the owner ‘had other plans’ back then.

When the owner approached him recently to ask if he was still interested, he said, he leapt at the chance.

He plans to keep the existing gym in Handsworth running alongside the new venue, he explained.

He said the new boxing gym at Shiregreen will be open six days a week, while on Sundays he plans to run trips for local youngsters to places they might otherwise struggle to afford to visit.

There will also be events for the whole community at the weekend,.

Robert told The Star he and his wife had financed the new venue and once they had get back their initial investment they hope to plough any profits back into the community, but he said they don’t want to be dependent on grants to keep it going.

He explained how efforts to restore the venue have already begun and he is working with his son, Richard Riley; Gary Longmoor, a Sheffield police sergeant; and Amer Khan, a firefighter and former boxer, among others.

He plans to hold a series of car boot sales in the car park, alongside other fundraising events, to help generate the money needed to restore the premises. He has also appealed to local businesses to donate any materials or labour.

If all goes well, he hopes to open in March 2025.

The venue will be called Riley’s Boxing and Fitness Centre - home of The Full Monty, he added.

After The Full Monty became a worldwide hit, fans from around the world visited the building to see it for themselves and take photos.

Following the club’s closure, an application to bulldoze the property to make way for flats was rejected by Sheffield City Council in 2020, after more than 1,000 people signed a petition.

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The venue, where only the interior was used in The Full Monty film, was closed when the Disney+ TV reboot was made and it did not feature in the series.

Anyone who believes they can help with the venue’s restoration is asked to contact Robert Riley on 0780 0518 043, or to email [email protected].