I really hope we win the challenge cup this year and tell Bradfiord council that any victory celebrations will not include any servant or official of the council including the lord mayor. I hate this council with a passion and why we are not prgainsing a mass protest outside City hall for the way they have wrecked this city along with the hopes and aspirations of true bradfordians they I dont know. Can someone publicly name and shame those responsible for this debacle and those who have lined there pockets at our expense.

I would think a hefty contribution for Wigan's ground came from the sale of Central Park and Springfield Park. Robin Park Arena, the athletics track next to the DW stadium, also got a big chunk of Sport England cash which isn't available nowadays (it wasn't for LSV), because of the 2012 Olympics amongst other things.

As for Leigh, the sale of Hilton Park for housing development, the Holden Road athletics ground for more housing and the old Leigh East ground (the two, I think, owned by Wigan Council) for a retail development, plus retail development adjacent to LSV (originally small scale, but this has since seen an application for a Morrisons store). As of this year, only the housing on the athletics ground has come to fruition.

Well this news has really put me in a bad mood for the day. I'll follow my team pretty much anywhere we play but I fear VP would only see the crowds dwindle even further unfortunately. I fear for our long term future I'm afraid.

Bitter blow for the club, Hood IRRC said that we did have some back up plans if OSV failed. I wonder what they may be, I assume they must have involved staying at Odsal given the agreement with the Council. I think we should forget the pie in the sky dreams of a Sporting Village and try and find a way to gradually upgrade Odsal in phases. Easier said than done, I know.

OSV will never happen, the council can't even build our city centre.

At least if we moved to VP we would have a decent modern stadium and best of all a roof on all four sides of the stadium

No way will I go to Valley Parade. I'd rather we play in the lower leagues than go to that dump. I suspect many more feel the same!
What about getting a fund going to build our own ground including Bradford Park Avenue?
I also suggest we drop the Bradford from our name. The "BULLS" is just fine by me!

I've always assumed that the "penalty" for leaving Odsal was simply a devise to ensure that if we move out of Odsal we will be forced to return the land to the Council in lieu of the repayments? Essentially a means of ensuring that the Council isnt significantly worse off than they would have been if we'd moved out permanently in 2000?

I dont know that much about the less expensive options, but do any of them meet the Bulls' needs whilst also providing something that is politically acceptable for the Council? It always seemed to me that the Council is stuck between a rock and a hard place. They needed the grandiose scheme to work in order to provide a wider public benefit, in order to argue that the benefit to the Bulls were incidental rather than being the sole purpose of the scheme.

actually radio leeds had an interview with someone from the college at teatime. she explicitly said the college was never going to be putting any actual funds into the scheme. They were only planning on leasing some of the space created as part of the scheme. bit of sensationalist reporting from t&a their.

They also had an interview with guy from council who said scheme is still being pushed on with. what this means is the 18000 all seater with the bowl filled in is definitely off the agenda. It'll probably mean best case we get a roof and extra seating built within the existing structure ( which is a, cheaper and b, all we ever asked for in first place) or worst case a move to VP.

Guess we'll know more in next week or so when club and council have had a chance to meet and decide how thy're going to proceed.

OK, ground plus land say £15m minimum (guessing...can dig around some more).

If you could somehow persuade say 5,000 Bulls fans to chip in...that's £3,000 per head.

Anyone care to suggest the odds on that happening?

I'd be more than happy to do that.

What is wrong with simply putting a roof over the popular side at Odsal? It's not that bad a stadium that you desperately need to move, surely?

that seems like logical option and probably what we should have been doing all along. plus has added advantage we could probable close off a section at a time and still play at odsal thus not having to pay out rent to another stadium and maximising our income.

The chairman of Bradford Park Avenue wanted to build a purpose built stadium with a view to leading his team into the fourth tier of the football league. Surely it would be good option to discuss ways forward with him to build a decent stadium for the use of both clubs. We have a supporter base of around 15k and an average attendance of around 10k. Surely a couple of quid on match day entrance, an increase in season tickets, various fund raising activities and other sourcing of funds including some sort of deal with the council which will see them contribute. Lottery cash, European union money etc etc.
I dont know th ins and out of securing funding but there must be someone that does and we dont have long. The recession will give us more time regarding the super league franchise but all avenues must be explored.
We need to save our club and we need to move fast!

Peter Hood said Plan B, C and D were all in place ready for this. I hope that remains the case.

I don't understand how millions are found for renovation everywhere but Bradford.

£2 average increase on 10,000 bodies per regular home game (means more like £3 regular price increase cos of concessions etc (13) would add £221k net of VAT p.a - assuming attendances were unchanged. A definite help, but a fraction of what would be needed. About enough though to pay for a top-flight international player - to put it in perspective.

An extra 2,000 bodies a week through the turnstiles would add about £200k p.a net of incremental variable costs.

We are still only scratching the surface of the problem. There ARE ways of funding a scheme, but they invariably involve a large retail/commercial component (look at every new stadium that has not been funded by selling a council-owned telco?) Funnily enough, such a scheme for Odsal was knocked back cos of being "out of town" - even though the retail partner Tesco was then allowed to build a huge store a similar distance from the city centre up Great Horton Road, Asda now on Cemetery Road, the Matalan store on Morrisons' site on Mayo Avenue, and worst of all the massive Tesco redevelopment on Canal Road which will do even more wonders for the scandal of a city centre. But I'm sure what happened to the previous Odsal scheme was fair and reasonable, and had nothing to do with trying to coerce Bulls to leave Odsal and enable the council to bale out BCFC by the back door.

Without a major retail or educational partner, and/or a huge dollop of public money, and/or a big cheque for selling your owned ground, you won't get any new stadium built.

Maybe one reason is cos Bradford is a non-labour council in the times of a labour government?

And, scarily, you can envisage the scenario of labour regaining this council at the same time as they lose the country, so we STILL end up with a government not friendly to the city.

1.) VP is not a dump, it's a decent stadium albeit one that is not in the greatest or most convenient spot.
2.) I suspect that many people do feel the same as you in an ideal world, but push comes to shove I equally suspect that most would make the journey.
3.) Would you really rather watch a pure franchise than I club affiliated with Bradford? I wouldn't and [iI[/i suspect that you would be in the minority.

For my part, if it's to be VP, and assuming that we can afford it, then better that we find out now than next year. I'm in favour of anything that provides stability and a Super League licence.

point I think your missing is that our franchise isnt at risk this round of franchising. we havent had a warning re: the stadium as 5 other clubs have had, and more importantly we achieved a b grad last time round and can only drop one franchise grade each round of franchising. only c grade clubs can be considered to drop out. so we could drop to a c grade this round and be in danger in 2015. we can afford to wait another year while we go through the options but we will need to make a final decision in about a year.

To raise funds why not sell the naming rights to the club, like get the word Bradford out of the title, it works in Asia for football teams, and Harlequins were known as the NEC Harlequins for a while, maybe we could sell the naming rights to the club and ground in exchange for the sponsor funding the stadium development

No doubt the Stans and Leeds United fans feel exactly the same way, as for most, I think they'll be able to stomach watching the team move a couple of miles away for the sake of Superleague Rugby.

Possible tiny ray of sunshine - stay at Odsal, more seats and a roof and keep some standing. Maybe down the line we'll be able to market the standing experience, something increasingly few sports teams can offer.

That would of course involve something occuring at Odsal with council support, and their record just got that bit worse today.

Didn't Bradford miss out on getting a Development Corporation in the 1980s because they didn't have a Labour council, but Labour strongholds at the time like Sheffield, Leeds and Teesside all benefited from the Tories. (If you can call Meadowhall and Teesside Park benefitting!).

I think Bradford has just had damn bad luck, the Council can't be to blame for everything.

Fair enough - I hadn't realised that was the case. (Seems a painfully convoluted system to me though.)

Regardless, I'm not sure that was the thrust of the post that I was responding to. That seemed to be VP over my dead body and the only point that I was making was that that seems a bit daft to me.

Sadly, I fear you are dreaming if you think any sponsor would pay anything remotely resembling that sort of money for a (now) mid-ranking SL team. Where would they get the payback?

Although like many others will have, I anticipated something like this after the meeting was delayed (rescheduled, canceled, whichever one you like), the news is still devastating. We need to act fast really, 2011 isn't all that long away and we need something solid in place by then.


Watching the Bulls at VP isn't the same, but if it secures our future in the top-flight then so be it.