Thetownend.com

Very good article on the advertiser website by Barry Leighton on how the council completely fucked the club over regarding the shaw tip stadium proposal and a few other things as well.no wonder we are still in a dilapidated old stadium while other clubs have moved to new stadiums or redeveloped their grounds with the help of forward thinking councils.

Before this thread gets much older, I'd change the title (so people know what it's about).  Small point of order.

Link?

http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/10837997.The_Robins_are_not_welcome_in_the_forest/

Cheers.

Yep - even our own council hate us

Pity those 2 bellends complained in 94 or we would have has a decent bank stand, would probably only get chance of outside cash again if we were in the prem

Much as I have resented the Council's shoddy treatment of the Club over the years - bizarre, when you consider that there is no other institution in Swindon that comes anywhere close to being able to attract crowds of 8,000 or 9,000 25 times a year - I'm glad they were so two faced back in 2004 when Shaw Tip was up for discussion.  It was a terrible location in one of the quietest, most inaccessible corners of Swindon.  Just look at the problems Oxford are having now, having themselves relocated to a similarly inaccessible spot.  Top of the league and now attracting sub-5,000 crowds.

We dodged a bullet with Shaw Tip.  The main prize - a properly redeveloped County Ground - is still up for grabs.  Just wish someone would get on with it.

The flip side of course is Reading who were going nowhere fast for a hundred years untill they re located.
But yes i do agree that a revamped CG will benefit all i reckon.

The point I was making is that there are good relocations and bad relocations.  Reading's was, in the main, a good one; while Oxford's was most certainly bad.  Oxford are still paying the price for their botched relocation to an inappropriate and inaccessible site - and if you need proof of this, just take a look at the reams of commentary on their own message boards about poor atmosphere and poor crowds...both of which have been exacerbated recently by the closure of the only decent pub in the vicinity due to lack of custom.

That's what happens when you relocate to the arse end of nowhere, and that's what we nearly made the mistake of doing in 2004 with Shaw Tip.  I'm glad to this day that we did not.

THis has been done a 100 times, but the SB stand was nothing to do with the residents, but becasue the club couldn't afford it.

Ardiles, there are a lot worse sites than Shaw Tip, which would have been a decent enough location. The proper arse end was Blagrove.

I remember people complaining about the extra traffic - a few years later they build multiple car garages and an industrial estate. Even the driving test place is there!

Fucking NIMBY's

Shaw Tip was an awful location Reg. Single.carriageway roads all around there and ths traffic is bad enough in rush hour there. Imagine it on a matchday? At least with the front garden you could see how the access would have worked. Right next to junction 16 for away fans and for fans travelling from outside of Swindon or indeed from the other side of Town. New roads would have been built too.

We really need to redevelop the CG in my opinion though. Keep the tradition and good location. The trouble is though the club doesnt have the cash and i doubt it ever will unless a rich benefactor wants to pay for it themselves.

Blagrove isn't great, I'll agree, in that it's still fairly remote from the town centre.  But the road links are there at least (I'm thinking via Great Western Way all the way round rather than Wootton Bassett Road).  And I also did wonder whether it would have been possible to build a halt style station on the Great Western mainline to serve as a stadium shuttle on match days and a Park & Ride facility for traffic coming in off at Junction 16.  Probably pie in the sky though, I'll admit.

Shaw Tip really bothered me though.  The routes in to town (and the motorway) would have been via the hideously congested Mead Way.  But it was the complete absence of any matchday infrastructure that fans at the County Ground take for granted that bothered me most.  Where are the pubs, the chip shops, the bookmakers, the train station?  In most cases, about 3 miles away in town or even further away in Old Town.  I suppose Shaw Ridge would have been just about walkable, but that's about it.

Woodlands Edge would have been the closest pub. But that would be shite. Anyone ever been to the arrow at Yeovil? Souless local suberb boozer as the matchday pub which is exactly what the WE would have been like.

I can't be arsed to argue, but there are more ways of getting to a game than driving. Also as Swindon's infrastructure increasingly creaks and groans under incipient autogeddion...the planners are going to have to notice this.

Already noticed and ignored.

Shaw Tip is easily accessible from Rodbourne by foot and bike...where there is a fine array of facilities.

Shaw Forest is coming along nicely,even the bits where stuff wouldn't grow is now green.Its better than a crappy football ground anyway 8)

I love you Jamie  :hug:

I'm undecided on the Shaw Tip issue; Diamandis and his board of phoney directors wanted it to happen (remember the shitty little pink and green cardboard mock up they had made up, thinking that their cunning plan to fund it / line their own pockets / pay Seton and his chinless wanker of a son back by building thousands of houses on the cricket pitch?) so I'm glad it got canned.

On the other hand, I'd have loved it if Talk Talk and his urine-drinking band of Nimby yogurt-knitters had had it stuck to them by the planners. Community forest my fucking arse. The place is teeming with imported wildlife, unemployed mongs and doggers.

Hopefully everyone will see sense in the end, and the County Ground will be redeveloped and named after Nigel Eavis and the Trust will be successful in persuading the self-interested cunts in Euclid Street to protect the place from get-rich-quick businessmen - past, present and future.

Interesting article - was just a young teen when the Shaw Tip site came up for discussion so nice to understand things a bit more now. Didn't realise the club had applied to build a new stand back in 94 on the stratton bank. Would like to think our ground would be redeveloped, but can't see it happening for some time!

There is a chip shop, Chinese, Indian, Bookies, large pub and The redeveloped Chinese Experience within a 5 minute walk from where the Shaw site was planned for, and not forgetting a magnificent kebab van even closer. I remember the nimbys of Shaw, Sparcells and Peatmoor marching down Mead Way on a day we took 3000 to QPR. Councillor Nick Martin promised to lay down in front of the bulldozers if Swindon Town were given permission to build at Shaw Tip, although he never seemed to raise any objections or concerns with Fiat, Vauxhall and Nissan filling the place out with endless car showrooms. I feel Mr Martin and his other Shaw and Nine Elms Councillors didn't fancy the STFC problem on their very greasy hands, simply as there was nothing in it for them.

Granted, it probably wasn't the best location, simply down to transport links

That really was an opportunity wasted

Nick Martin is a cunt of the highest order but then he's a tory and it comes with the territory.

Shaw Tip was wrong purely for the fact that old landfill site is rank, all sorts of horrible leachate pours out of there on a daily basis and it's best left to be managed correctly rather than having anything built on it. The land is worthless and as such a public open space is best for it.

The ground should be built by Coate just to piss PaulD off.

Community Forest, WTF is that, a fancy name for a regular Forest? As soon as you see terms like "environmentalist" and "friends of the earth" you know there is a reasonable chance the people involved are complete loons.

Shaw Tip, havent a clue where that is but im against any form of relocation.  Redevelopment of CG or nothing for me, location is absolutely perfect.

Ha ha very funny Sippo. You can build what you like at Coate now, it's fucked. We're about to get the 900-house housing estate the council promised wouldn't be built without the university it was supposed to be the enabling development for. And what happened? No university, still get the shit housing estate that will end up half-built like the Northern Development, the Front Garden etc.

It's highly pertinent to this thread though because the same councillor "brokered" both deals. Cllr Mike Bawden, does a lot of "brokering", and strangely the supposed beneficiaries rarely do well out of it, although he always seems to come up smelling of roses.

No matter, because on this, it was a stupid idea, the wrong location and although the club did get shafted by Bawden et al, they were stupid and naive to just take his word on it and do no research whatever before going public. Jumped the gun due to overexcitement at the sound of ringing cash tills. Good job it didn't go ahead though or, as others have said, we'd now have our very own Kassam.

As we argued at the time, and subsequently, by far the best location for the club is right where it is now. At the County Ground, just off the edge of the town centre, excellent transport links and facilities, if redeveloped right can act as a gateway to the town centre and the Club and the community can both benefit each other. The way it's supposed to be.

CG first.
Pauld's garden second  :)

My garden shed,
is bigger than this
My garden shed
is bigger than this
:)

Nearly ten years ago. Jeez, how time flies.

Hmmm. Not quite Mr Davies. At the time of the furore, TrustSTFC were very much in favour of Shaw. I remember the Trust meeting where I upset Mark Devlin and the vote on supporting the move to Shaw was carried.

Your comments after the council motion blocking the development:

http://archive.swindonlink.com/news2004/07/forest_victory_wave.html (http://archive.swindonlink.com/news2004/07/forest_victory_wave.html)"

Quite right about the two faced council wankers though:

And so that did lead onto thoughts of redeveloping the CG:

...and then the work started on firming that up and hilariously here is PD featured in a Tory blog:

http://www.oldtownandlawnintouch.com/news/216/ (http://www.oldtownandlawnintouch.com/news/216/)

 :D

At least spell my bloody name right, Heywood :)

Sorry Paolo

Thanks, Alain

I feel this ios going to be an issue that just going to go on and on and on. I bet we still be in the same old piss stained town end with weeds in the stratton bank, The rust in the arkells the only think holding up in 20 years time.

Still, at leade we have trees behind the DRS to make it look a bit nice

Oh, I was waiting for Alan to turn up...

(http://i.imgur.com/iJIW89B.gif)

 :toocool:


Indeed, Mayor Martin is a tool. http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/10722928.Mayor_is_accused_of__mongol_sex_remark/ (http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/10722928.Mayor_is_accused_of__mongol_sex_remark/)

However, the car showrooms are not actually on the forest are they? The land they are built on was always allocated as business/industrial. So I can't see any problem with that.

Council are all probably Reading or Oxford fans.

This, a million times.

One of the gratifying things about the relocation/redevelopment debate (despite the complete lack of actual progress to date) has been the consensus that has taken hold among the fans about the benefits of staying on the current site.  If I remember correctly, it hasn't always been that way...but maybe we've all now seen enough Colchesters, Shrewsburys (Shrewsburies?) and Oxford to appreciate what we already have in terms of the location.  I agree with Paul D.  The site cannot be bettered, in my view.

Sooner or later, we are going to be forced to do something because, as you say, there are parts of the County Ground that have already reached the end of their useful economic lives.  You can only go on sweating a decrepit asset for so long before it starts to fall apart completely, and we can't be far off that point now.  I still think of the Don Rogers as the 'new' stand, and even that is going to be 20 years old next summer.  Something is going to give soon.  It has to.

Can't shake the feeling that a redeveloped ground is just another missed opportunity to add to the list that sailed out of the window when Black walked away. At least until the club changes hands again. Did we need a new ground to become a sustainable Championship club? Absolutely. Do we need one to continue ticking over at our current level? I don't know.

I think that there are going to be works necessary soon regardless of which level we're playing at.  Take the Town End, for example.  Let's say, for the sake or argument, that the concrete there starts to deteriorate to a point where safety becomes an issue...simply by virtue of its age.  At that point, the Club will need to decide whether

(a) to replace like for like; or
(b) to do something more ambitious in terms of redevelopment.

The second option would win every time, because of the additional revenue streams that a more modern set up would enable.  So I think the Club's hand is going to be forced sooner or later.

'Do we need one to continue ticking over at our current level? I don't know.'

You stand still you only get left behind, as what has already happened in ref to us and Reading, 20 years ago we went up into the premier league the same time as Newcastle and West Ham! West Brom was below us, and Reading, Swansea and Hull were nowhere near.

The point is, we carry on not making progress with the ground, either in development or a relocation, our current level wont be where we are now

If the TE is condemned, then we will just use the sides.  It's that simple.

I don't think it is that simple though.  I'm still not completely sure of the present Board's ambitions for the Club, but the scenario you outline is consistent with wanting to run the Club down - and I can't really think why it would be in their interests to do that.  I do think that redevelopment will take place, but I also accept that it will probably take place over an extended period in piecemeal fashion, stand by stand.  As it happens, the Town End could well be first in line for replacement given the clear benefits that could arise from it.

Rotate the ground 90 degrees, build a main stand where the TE is. Then the arkells, replace with an away end stand, then put a new side stand in front of the bank, then reduce the DRS width from the bank to become the home end stand.

I see no signs of a long term strategy....it's simple insofar as if the TE was condemned then the current capacity could be happily housed in the 2 remaining stands.  The Arkells and DRS have plenty of useful shelf life.

To be fair, neither do I.  Lots of unknowns.  I get the feeling that they're finding their feet this year.  I still think that the ground issue is going to force their hand at some point, and then we'll get an idea as to whether they are going to invest or not.

Bloody hell 4D you've gone from needing to ask which hand you should use to wipe your arse with to designing a brand new County Ground in the last 6 months. Your shrink will be well pleased with your progress. :-)

Thats going to be a very short pitch

Atm, it looks more like a short term battle for ownership of the club is the main business on the agenda. Fuck nose where that will take us.

If the question is "How could we make redeveloping the County Ground as expensive as possible?" then that's a good answer :)

They'd better not forget the moat, trebuchets and lasers

Brighton didn't give up....

I believe it when I'm sat in it.....

Redevelop the CG for me....

5 a side?

It's called vision  :)

We pinch a bit of the cricket ground and move away from the houses by the bank.

Paul, it is still about demolishing and rebuilding, so it won't be more expensive  ;)

Retaining the orientation means the CG can be redeveloped stand by stand. A 90 degree rotation would surely mean a complete redevelopment in one hit, which would be a major short-term expense and surely require a temporary move away from the town for at least part of a season. The only change of footprint I can imagine would be a slight shift towards the car park, which could allow for a larger Town End and possibly reduce any issues that a new Stratton Bank might seemingly incur on Shrivy Road residents.

The TE could be ripped down and a new main stand built in it's place, just run it up to the back of the north stand (we have no corners). Then the north stand and so on. Have a look at an aerial pic.
Pitch stays the same until the bank is done, hopefully over a summer break.

Also rotating the ground would impinge (sp?) onto the cricket ground which we would have to find a) a new home for and b) pay for it. The council to their credit refused the old old lot permission to do this, because a) they had no funds and would pay for it by building dozens of houses on the green space.

The only way to make a redevlopment properly feasable is by sacrificing the car park, move the stadium towards the CGH a bit more to clear for development of Stratton bank, and build the relative revenue streams in a redevoped main stand/town end.

Cricket pitch could go to mannington park  :)

Leave it as it is and do it stand by stand. When it eventually gets done,if it gets done,if there is still a club etc,etc......

As long as we make a better job than Carlisle did...

Seems that Nick Martin's time is up.

Adver: Motion of No Confidence as Mayor Offers to Resign following Allegations (http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/10849993.Motion_of_no_confidence_as_mayor_offers_to_resign_following_allegations/?ref=var_0)

Not necessarily, if Bluh and Perkins could survive Tricky Rikki's wi-fi involvement, then Martin can survive this.

Whatever happened to the wifi project anyway? I noticed that as you drive up the hill into Highworth from Lechlade that every other lamppost has a big access point mounted on it. Are they doing anything?

http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/10387650.Wi_fi_boss_was_paid___12k_a_month____but_who_agreed_to_it_/

Rikki at his finest....if only we could get a chairman like this at STFC again.  ;)

Is the land around Supermarine ground big enough for a 22,000 seater stadium. Share with them. ;)

12000 would be plenty big enough ala the New York stadium

It would be until we got promoted or drew someone decent in the Cup.

ok something the size of the keepmoat them ( 15300 )

though doubt we could fill a 12000  even if promoted, well maybe first couple of games

22k is far to big for us unfortunately

Something like Loftus Road (18k) would be OK.

Something we would full occasionally and would not be too dead on atmosphere with lower attendances. I'd spend a bit on acoustics to help maintain good atmosphere regardless of crowd size.

That's pretty much the size of the County Ground (after Jed squeezed the new seats in for the Chelsea game).  If we have no more ambition than wanting to fill the existing capacity, I'd be very disappointed.


Completely disagree with that.  Sorry for keep using the example of Reading, but if Madejski had the same attitude they would be in a very different place today to the one they're in.


Maybe.  But 20,000 would not be.

IF we were to build a completely new stadium to get the " Reading effect " it would need to be done in one go so wouldnt be on current site
Piecemeal stand replacement wouldnt see a massive increase in attendances IMHO

Nor would building a completely new stadium. Look at Darlington, Pox, to name but two, who both thought "If you build it, they will come". Well, no, they won't necessarily. It's not just what you build, a nice new stadium won't bring in crowds by itself. It's what you offer along side it. The new build should facilitate new revenue streams that don't just rely on "More people will come because it's shiny" and additional facilities that also attract people in, and along side that you have to be prepared to invest after the new build to keep growing the club and the overall offer. That's what Madjeski understood, that's it a symbiotic ongoing long-term investment, not just "sling up a new ground and watch the money roll in". That's why Reading got it right and Oxford, and more so Darlington, got it very badly wrong.

The good thing about the madjeski stadium is that he built a retail park adjoining so gets the rent from that aswell. Very clever idea. It was built at the right time with the 'out of town' retail parks.

If this idea was put in place at junction 16, it would be ideal for people coming from the south.

Personally I dont think a new stadium would massively increase attendances
May help if promoted to drag a few new ones in but its keeping them

Thats why I said a 12000 all seater would be plenty for this level and maybe even the championship
2000 away fans 10k home fans, simples

No point rattling around in a massive bowl with no atmosphere when we inevitably up back in lge 1/2

As you say Madjeski built it at the right time. If this was done now, with the tide turning against out of town retail, we'd manage to catch the worst time to do it. Forget about Madjeski, that out of town soulless thing they have at Colchester is the model you'd be looking at. The County Ground is fine where it is, the location is not the problem, it needs using properly.

Interestingly, the Slave Traders do seem to be leading the way in at least one aspect on stadium development even if they are hilariously in our shadow on the pitch:
http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2013/nov/30/bristol-city-safe-standing-british-football-grounds

Everywhere has noticed a drop off in atmosphere since all seaters introduced so looking at safe standing
Germany uses it massively ( CL rules state must be all seater or am sure they would have gone back to terracing behind goals completely )
Be interesting to see if shitty get permission as I know a few championship and prem teams have lobbied for it and even commited to installing if given chance to trial it
Having the rugby element may go in shittys favour

What the anti-standing brigade seem to ignore is the fact that ZERO people die as a direct result of safe standing every year (probably).

FAO Ardiles.

http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/10890766.Nick_Martin_survives_vote__continues_as_mayor_of_Swindon/

Good to see that he voted for himself to remain in office...

Still no need to worry that Martin will put another spoke in the STFC wheel, as Power has clearly stated he has no interest in new ground/CG redevelopment.

Ha!  Democracy in action.

On the redevelopment point, I don't think Lee Power will have a choice if he's intending to be around for the 5+ years he talked about and the ground starts falling apart in front of his eyes.  As a club, we're starting to stand out as being one of a very few who have failed to invest for a long period in stadium infrastructure.  To think that we can carry on doing that indefinitely is extremely naive.

A bit like the town itself

All too true, sadly.

But at least Nick's still there to sort it out.