Thetownend.com

After going to Colchester last night here are a few reasons why we should stay at the current county ground site...

- Out in the middle of nowhere.
- No sign posts to find the ground, we had to follow a shuttle bus
- You follow the shuttle bus, drive all the way to the stadium and then get told by a steward you need to turn around drive all the way around to the other side to park
- Car Park was like a lake
- No pub anywhere near by
- Took ages to get out of the car park
- They dont sell tickets on the gate so you need to queue up at the ticket office with the home fans.

This ground shows us why we should never get a ground out in the middle of nowhere. The ground was nice but the organisation was shocking.

Our stadium isn't that bad for a league two side to be honest. ;)

But we will be in League One next season ;)

I fully agree with you.  But this being Swindon, the football ground will eventually end up on the very outskirts of town and only accessible by car....along with the university, the cinemas and most of the shops.  Leaving the town centre as a rotten core.

I'm not feeling very cheery this morning.

Its a new stadium Gaz so will take a bit of time to 'settle in'. Readings stadium was the same. That was a nightmare when it first opened- the same as swansea's. If we want a brand new stadia it will have to be out of town.

Did they serve alcohol inside the ground?

It may be a new stadium, granted, however that doesn't jusify the lack of signs, the car park is not paved and is like a lake, I suppose a pub will be built near by eventually. There are 2 gates into the ground both could have been opened to allow the flow of traffic out.

They did sell beer. Think Carlsberg, Green King IPA and another one...£3.10 for the pleasure

Why do these grounds have these fucking ticket in the slot turnstiles?

Fans have to buy a ticket at a ticket office then two stewards have to check im putting it in right!

Just stick the old boy in the booth to take the money!

Reading's ground is still soulless shit.
I think we only want one stadium, not several stadia
Why does it have to be out of town? The Trust demonstrated years ago that a redeveloped CG is perfectly viable

I'm not sure I do want a brand new stadium, to be honest.  The County Ground is in a perfect location, and we would be insane ever to give it up.  It's near the centre of town, near the train station and within walking distance of many pubs.  It's not a priority right now but, when the time comes, spruce the existing ground up.  We would need a new Town End (probably with a second tier), do something with the Stratton Bank (houses permitting) and fill in the corners.  That would comfortably bring the ground up to scratch and give a capacity of 20,000+ (which, let's face it, we won't be needing any time soon).

The club belongs in the town, not in a field.

I agree with you on that.  Pretty pathetic really - its hardly rocket science to put the barcode under the little laser thing but then I guess if they don't police it you'll get people trying to sneak two in at a time with one ticket.

Seems like a waste of money when you pay for the expensive technology and then two stocky stewards in high vis jackets watching it anyway.

I'm not saying we need a new stadium (in that I mean a brand new gaff), but if we were going to go down that route I think out of town is the only option.

But the scanners do allow quick and accurate counting (for accounting purposes) and added  flexibility in that presumably you could do what Samdy (i think!) suggested and run 'buy 10 games unallocated seating' schemes and the like.

Oh, OK, I see. For a new build, yes, you're probably right. But I think we could achieve all we would get from a new build and more from redeveloping the CG properly

our car park is like a lake too!! ask my Uggs!

This was something else JFW........You would of needed Ugg Waders!

I'm tempted to photograph my shoes and car mats and bill them for the 1/2 inch of mud that will need to be cleaned off both, wouldn't get me anywhere i know, but thats how bad it was.

You needed a canoe (and not Hal Robson) to get across the carpark here..

I got there early enough to park on one on those road to nowhere roundabouts.

The club needs to be at the heart of the town. Not stuck on the outskirts.

Don't take this as an argument for leaving the CG, because I'm all in favour of staying, but most of Gazza'a arguments don't really stack up.

Just listing things that are currently wrong with the Colchester Ground and then pointing out that it's an out of town development doesn't make the case for a causal link you know.

Does the location stop them putting up some signs? Does it prevent them from surfacing the car park? Does it dictate the ticketing systems or the traffic flows? Does it hell. If they'd built this thing opposite Layer Road all those things would likely be the same. I've never been to Colchester, for all I know all those problems were present at the old ground.

As for the new stadia being souless bowls, well that can be the case if you go down the identikit Pride Park, Walkers Stadium, Riverside route; but the Reebok, the Galpharm, the City of Manchester Stadium and the Stadium of Light have shown that this is more a question of limited architectural vision than necessity. Anyway there are plenty of clubs that have redeveloped their original grounds on a piecemeal basis and ended up with much the same concrete bowl result, Birmingham and WBA for example. If we stayed on in the current location and replaced stands with stuff along the lines of the DR, what the hell do you think we'd end up with?

Out of town development has made sense for a lot of clubs economically. They've sold valuable parcels of land for housing, moved somewhere cheaper and invested the money in the development. They've removed themselves from areas in which they may be a nuisance to their neighbours, and they've created a captive audience for their match day catering operations, including their bars. That not only increases their revenue streams but gives them more control over the alcohol consumption of the supporters. You can see why it makes a lot of sense.

Personally I'm an old romantic and I like to see thousands of people walking down through town from the pubs on a Saturday afternoon towards the ground and streaming away home again afterwards, rather than all arriving in cars or on a shuttle bus. So I like the idea of keeping it where it is. But the economic reasons for moving elsewhere may be difficult to overcome, especially when the board would have to go through some lengthy negotiations with the LA, the cricket club and other neighbours to secure the land for any worthwhile development of the CG.

Yes but a F.C should be at the heart of the community as the Trust and the current board have said, Having it miles out of the sticks I actually thinks discourages fans to bother going as well. If its in town you can get to it easier. That was part of the point really. I know a good portion of our fans come from out of town so it wouldnt bother them say as the would come straight down the A419 (If built near GWH) .

Demolish the car park, Town End, Stratton Bank. Move the pitch 20-30 yards over the old Town End. Re-build both ends behind the goals and fill in the corners. Should give us a 25,000 capacity stadium at minimum outlay.

Personally I don't mind where the ground is, happy with us moving to a new one. But unless we get in to the Premiership I can't see us ever needing more than a 25k capacity so there is no need to move for capacity reasons. So the only reason I can see for a move is if it makes the club money through re-development, in which case go for it - as long as its the club that gets the money and not the owners.

But then the Arkells and DRS will be 20-30 yards out of sync with the pitch?

you've not thought this through have you?

No sure if everyone was blind last night, but the ground was signposted after you got off the A12 (although i missed that and couldn't turn back til near Clacton) And there was a decent map on their O/S which i obviously didn't take much notice of either.

Rotate the pitch 180 degrees. Swap the Arkells and Don Rogers stand over and the Town End and the Bank over.

I've spent a lot of time thinking it through (at games, as its normally more interesting than what is going on on the pitch) and it is definitely viable. I actually mentioned it some years ago at a board meeting and if I remember correctly one of the board said it was an option they'd considered. Bizarrely, they said they'd considered a complete re-build of the stadium on the same site and rotating the pitch 90 degrees which I reckon would be a dumb idea.

The out of sync thing would only affect the Stratton Bank end (as the stands would be extended at the Town End) and whilst I'm not a builder, I'm sure they could sort this out pretty easily by demolishing and re-building part of the main stands. Worst case is it just looks really stupid at the Stratton Bank end, but it would be a good talking point and I reckon we could live with it.

I'd probably start with just doing the Town End and leaving the Stratton Bank alone, which should take the capacity to 20,000+. When (or if) we need more capacity there would be options for the Stratton Bank, such as buying up the houses there and demolishing them to extend that end properly.

Maybe this would be a good time to rectify the original design faults, whereby the stands are facing the pitch!
The old ones are always the best.
 :D

It's not just capacity we need to consider though. The whole point of a redevopment is to have that potential for greater attendances, but also the additional income which can be provided through other facilities.

Our corporate facilities are lacking. Don't get me wrong, they've massively improved but they are still limited. Things like the lack of disabled access are very problematic. The club shop is tiny and the ticket office needs an overhaul too. Catering facilities are limited presently.

It's not just about match day though, improved conference facilities will attract additional income on days the ground isn't used for football. Leisure facilities could be operated e.g. a gym, there could be scope for hotels etc.

How many times have we filled our ground to capacity since the turn of the millennium? We don't need the capacity right now and we won't unless we become a decent Championship team in my opinion.

Couldn't all of that be achieved on the present site though?

There is a fair bit of space behind the DRS and the Town End which could be re-developed. Then there is the option of buying up land around the site - the cricket / football pitch, properties on County Road / Shrivenham road. Obviously this land could be expensive and there is the planning issue (especially with the pitches) but I'm sure these could be overcome.

Surely you'd make a lot more from commercial facilities at a town centre site such as the County Ground than you would from an out of town site, which would make the extra work / finances required worth the investment.

Was the coventry fa cup game this millenium?  That's the last time i can remember a sell out

Theres been a few i think.

Walsall in L2 when we got promoted.
Bristol city when Fallon scored "that" goal?

Cant think of the others

Against Brighton in the play-offs.

i didn't think we managed to sell out for walsall

Yes, I wasn't making that specific point one way or another, it just seems a focus of certain posts to increase capacity, when that should be the least of our concerns.

I'd agree, unless we get back to the Championship and stay there when our capacity could be an issue. At present, even if we had 100% capacity at every game we'd only have the 15th highest attendance in the Championship. There are a lot of big and decent teams in the Championship now, who would bring a lot more fans of their own as well as attracting more home support.

The first bit I don't think stacks up when you consider the experience of other clubs. Just about every club that's relocated into a new ground has seen attendances increase. The example that always comes to mind is the comparison between P.Vale and Stoke. For years they were about on a par kicking around the middle two divisions, Vale if anything doing slightly better. Vale piecemeal redeveloped their existing ground and Stoke built new. Stokes attendances jumped and they've built from there. Vale have sunk.

But all you're saying really is that you feel the same way as me. The difference is I can admit it's an emotional thing. I just feel the club belongs in it's traditional home in the heart of its community, even if there are strong arguments in favour of moving.

Everything you posted at the start of the thread is irrelevant to the argument. What you really meant was: "I got lost on the way there 'cause I missed the sign and didn't print the map of the website, got soaking wet in the rubbish car park and we played shit and lost. Bugger! Oh and I don't like the feel of those out of town grounds anyway."

Everything you posted at the start of the thread is irrelevant to the argument. What you really meant was: "I got lost on the way there 'cause I missed the sign and didn't print the map of the website, got soaking wet in the rubbish car park and we played shit and lost. Bugger! Oh and I don't like the feel of those out of town grounds anyway."

Expertly summed up for most of us last night i think.

I was caught out as i 'prepared' by taking the address and postcode of the ground only for my recently updated TomTom not to recognise anything....
Went the long way...i did see some brown signs but not as i neared the industrial estate.

I don't care new or old, I just want us to own it etc.

Our board listens to the fans problems anyway, so it would never be as bad as Colchester.

I agree totally. Seeing COl U out in the sticks, there wasn't really any soul to it if that makes sense it was detached from the community. On another note I Cant be fucked to change buses 10 times and leave get to the gorund with no pub near by! :)

 The Port Vale/Stoke analogy is a poor one....as Port Vale were one of the pioneers of moving to a new ground....traditionally they were Burslem Port Vale...but quite early in their history moved to Hanley, so dropped the Burslem prefix....in 1950 they moved to Vale Park which was planned to have a capacity of 70,000....in 1960 Vale got 50,000 for an FA Cup game.

 Stoke had always been the bigger and better supported club, but if anything their crowds dropped after going to the Brittania.

One reason to stay at the current site is to exploit this mythical second concourse in the Don Rogers Stand that we have all heard so much about. :)

Lumps, Port Vale have had crap support for 20 years! Look back to the mid 90's when they used to hold their own in Div 1 and they still only got 5,500 average (and think of all them away fans they used to get!!!??).

Stoke's attendances actually dropped after they moved. In his book Lou Macari thinks the new stadium put the club back 10 years because 1) the club couldnt afford it 2) attendances decreased and 3) he thought the Victoria grounds hostile atmosphere was worth an extra few points every season. 

I honestly honestly think that the mid 90's to mid 00's out of town ground expansion will now become less and less common. Football's authorities have set themselves on a path of eradicating old style grounds, but the more clubs that move, the more people will mourn the loss of the atmospheric old grounds. Weve already lost Maine Road and Highbury. When/if Anfield goes I think fans really will start to wake up and question it all.

Gazza thanks for the review. To be honest Im not sure Il ever get round to going to that new ground, or Doncasters either, I just cant be fucked. Layer road was little shit pit, but still an exciting place to watch football!!

As Ardiles says, I think commercial considerations will also come into play. Internet shopping is here to stay, so brown field sites might well start to come available in Town centres. Plus are we ever likely to see the surpluses in cash available from people like St Modwen again? St Modwen/Bryant and all them are really suffering at the moment, some even going bust!

Just keep hammering it home that we dont want to be plonked on a motorway junction! Heres to another 120 years of football at the County Ground!!!

Spencer I fucking love you x x x

That's not necessarily a good thing

The Britannia move put Stoke back 10 years?  10 seasons after they moved they got promoted to the Premiership. Presumably Lou would have had them in the Champions League by now if they'd stayed at the Vic?

 

No he thought they could have been top flight 10 years ago.


(Read the book)

Reasons not to leave the CG:

It feels like home;

I know where it is;

When giving directions to travelling away fans, the look on their face when you say "if you come to a roundabout made up of five mini roundabouts all working in conjunction, you've made it" is priceless;

If you know where to go, you can park for free, legally, 5 mins from the ground, stay until the end and not get stuck in traffic on the way out;

Away fans getting soaked on the Stratton Bank is, lets face it, one of the funniest things in football;

It's called the County Ground.  This is a proper name.  I do not want to play at the Honda Bowl, the WH Smiths arena, or the Anchor Butter ground.  This would bring shame upon me.

The Anchor Butter Bowl might work though?

Or dish!

I'm not aware of any football grounds using the word Dish to summise their status though.

You knob.

What a wanchor

I just know any new ground built in a field 5 miles from the centre of town will be a bitter disappointment.  We'd have to call it the 'I Can't Believe it's Not Better' Stadium.

I have my coat.

They think it's all Clover....

Olivio it out.

We could only fill a stadium like that if we signed players like Nicola Bertolli.

But we'd probably still end up getting creamed every week.

Especially if we still have a keeper with butter fingers

Brezovan, Smith........ ;)

Frank 'The Mad Axeman' Mitchell is buried under the Stratton Bank.

Good!

Just not true. While it's worked well for some, it's been a disaster for others - the "if you build it, they will come" mantra while widely hawked about does not hold. It's worked for some, but only where they've put the work in to also make the football more attractive, make the new stadium a community hub etc. Just building a new ground, then sitting back and waiting for the crowds to show up doesn't work - the classic case in point is Darlington who've been completely FUBARed by their 25000 seater white elephant or our friends up the A420 where the carrot of a new ground was used to nigh on asset strip them. Quite legally, I should add.

Darlington is a piss poor example and you know it. A club that's been 4th division for virtually it's entire history, with support around the 4500 mark, taken over by a crook who conned everyone into thinking they were about to sign Gazza and Tino Asprilla, built a massively oversized tribute to his ego in a 25,000 seated stadium and then took the club into administration and fucked off before being knicked with £500,000 in the boot of his car, and sent down for 3 years for tax evasion. It's a bit of a special case isn't it?

Oxford were just plain legally gutted by Kassam. They were on their upperrs and he sensed an opportunity. It's not the new ground that screws them it's the club don't own it or any of the other revenue streams that it creates. If Kassm had actually wanted to run a footabll club it could have done wonders for them.

Deloittes study suggests generally positive outcomes but its clear that initial additional revenue has to be invested on the pitch to bring a bit of success in order to sustain growth. And the study is a bit limited and slanted towards the Prem.

http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/press_release/0,1014,sid%253D2834%2526cid%253D167402,00.html

I'm still fairly convinced that the majority of clubs do get an attendance boost from redevelopment, and definately get a revenue boost from e commercial opportunities. I'm just hoping we don't have to go down that road.

Generally yes, but I was just saying it's not necessarily the case that new ground automatically leads to improved crowds. You have to do the other stuff as well. I wouldn't argue that new/redeveloped grounds don't usually help in improving gates, I was more arguing against the simplistic assumption made by some fans and virtually all the media pundits that a new ground somehow guarantees improved gates by itself

I think we're on the same page then. It's def not some sort of panacea, and my instinct is that is the additional commercial opportunities, corporate facilities, conference facilities and the like that make the difference to the way the things stack up financially rather than simply the increased gates.

I'd hope that when the club looks to think this stuff through they undertake a decent option appraisal process that does a detailed cost/benefit analysis of each option.

We need 1 new stand for good corporate facilities. We dont need to rip up the whole place and move to a field.

New football grounds are a long term investment. They should be judged over decades, not a couple of seasons. I dont know if youve noticed, but the whole 'debt is good' mantra that many businesses have run on for the last 10 years is no longer viable.

New grounds could yet come back to cripple some clubs. Some it was needed, but what about Coventry? Perfectly good ground they had there already? Same as there is nothing wrong with the CG. Some were relics, like the Manor, but not all.

Nothing wrong with the Don Rogers stand. The rest of the ground needs to be rebuilt if we're ever going to compete above League 1.

As regards competing in the league above, lets just see what happens in the next 5 years? Its going to catch up with quite a few clubs in the Championship.

There are a few interesting posts from Reading fans talking about their ground and the experience of supporting Reading since the move from Elm Park in the thread below.  Go to the bottom of the page and start reading from the post by Dan-87.

Reading fans' view of the Madejski (http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=506677&page=6)

I don't think I've heard a better argument for not going down the out-of-town stadium route.

Also interesting is the less than enthusiastic view on getting into the premier league.

Yep, it's kind of a view I agree with too. I'd love to see us work our way up there and to get the coverage from TV etc, but all the crap that comes with it such as an influx of overrated foreign prima donnas and plastic supporters makes it seem much less attractive

Look at Southampton now. The new stadium is an lead weight around their neck.

They were able to get to safety so many seasons at the Dell. Its a matter of opinion but that extra intensity and atmosphere of playing somewhere like the Dell helped get them over the line.

'Nothing wrong with the Don Rogers stand. The rest of the ground needs to be rebuilt if we're ever going to compete above League 1' - in your opinion. The team gets you places, not new seats. What about all the bollocks written about Fratton park before Pompey got in the Premiership?

There is only 1 benefit to be gained from us having a new ground, and that is the potential financial gains from the facilities that would be included in it. I don't see how it could improve atmosphere or anything like that.

It would be silly to want major redevelopment or a move for the sake of it. In fairness, redevelopment isn't numero one on the list nowadays when once it seemed essential for our future.

I wonder how many more would turn up if we had a new stadium? Seems a weird reason to watch football. We would need a few consistantly good seasons before we could ever spend money on stadia.

Playing in the Premier League with a capacity of 16k lost Southampton a fortune over the years. They never had any choice, redeveloping The Dell just wasn't an option so they had to move. Plus their new ground isn't much further away from the town centre than the old one.

Exactly. People who don't want to sit in the DRS now surely won't be drawn in by a new stadium?

St Marys is in a great location for the fans.

As for the rest of it, where is your proof? The Dell never landed them £25 million in debt? They owned it. They might have been too big for the Dell, but the couldnt afford St Marys. Would they be in Administration today without the £30 million they spent on St Marys? No.

They would still be in the same position, possibly worse if they had stayed at The Dell. The cause of their problems was relegation from the Premier League, their failure to reduce expenditure to match their lower level of income and gambling on getting promotion. Whilst they were in the Premier League the extra income from the bigger stadium would have more than covered the repayments on it.

Southampton are in a mess because of mismanagement of the highest order.

The stadium comes into it but when they were in the Premiership is was mostly full.

They lost Le Tissier, the Cup Final, Gordon Strachan, then didn't given Paul Sturrock adequate time and replaced him with Steve Wigley.

They've spent a decade poaching kids from across the Westcountry for their academy and only started taking major advantage of it after they couldn't afford to bring in players from afar. By then it was too late and any money they make from the likes of Surman, McGoldrick et al will go to debts that won't come close to covering them.

Then pretty much everything since relegation has been operated poorly.

The Saints won't go under but they have alot to do.

Me and you are just going to have to agree to disagree.

What it comes down to is that debt is real and you should buy things you cant afford. Like new stadiums. Im sure those chinless wonders in suits were telling old rupert he couldnt go wrong, and the new ground would have them in the Champions League in no time. To be fair they did well for a couple of seasons.

But debt is real, and it can come back to ruin you.

Why were they so desperate for promotion? Couldnt have been that £30m lurking in the background for a stadium they hadnt paid for?

If you do the sums you'll see that St Mary's has already paid for itself - the money from extra ticket sales alone more than surpasses the cost of the stadium (and the interest on the loan). So its not the cost of St Mary's that caused the problem, its them pissing away all the money.

A new stadium is essential for progression, but it has to be done right. It's no good being the next Southampton, Darlington, Oxford or, to some extent Bradford or Huddersfield.

But would the like of Swansea, Reading and, though I hate to say it, the MK fucking Dons have progressed without the new facilities? In my opinion no.

I'm not sure what the new stadium will have done for MK. They have played one season in a half-finished stadium with crowds which are average at best - I don't think it's contributed at all. That's not to say it won't in the future, especially if they go up (I really hope they don't!)

I don't think the finances have directly helped them yet, but no stadium and Winklewankerman wouldn't have bothered. That's all I meant.

Their average crowd is 10K this season. 2.5k higher than ours, must help. And if god forbid they go up they have the capacity to take more shit head plastic wankers.

And Reading have had the lower league Abramovich in John Majeski.

Fitton has said he's not prepared to do that for us.

Right, so if we were left with a £30M debt, or had to sign away ownership a-la-Oxford I'd say we shouldn't do it. I would say that would fall into the 'not being done right' category.

The negotiations with the council will largely decide whether we relocate. Unless there is no plan to redevelop in the long term.