After DJ first mentioned the Sporting Village concept, at a fans’ forum, he intimated to a few of us afterwards that the BM land would be part of the whole scheme (ie, housing) which would suggest DRFC are also involved with the scheme. However, haven’t heard this point mentioned since.Ghost_Of_1883 wrote:If the two major obstacles can be overcome (1. Primacy of tenure, and 2. 4G pitch) then moving back to the Arena makes sense especially if we get a better commercial deal than we have currently.Kalu wrote: ↑Tue Aug 13, 2019 10:10 amI get where you are coming from, and actually agree with you RE the council. But i'm optimistic that could change.Ghost_Of_1883 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 13, 2019 10:06 amThe council love Mowden and have never done fuck all for DFC. I expect that to continue for ever more.
By the way, I'd rather play at the Arena than BM - lesser of two evils - so no anti-moving to the Arena agenda here.
I do just feel that we would be cutting our nose off to spite our face not getting involved. My opinion entirely of course.
We should not have to worry so much about getting the ground graded for the next levels etc - though I would throw a little caution and find out how much it will cost us to get it re-graded by the FA, don't want any nasty expensive shocks.
Moving back to the Arena on the premise of building our own ground to get the move through for me is a no no. Building our own ground there is just airy fairy, pie in the sky, dreamland stuff that realistically is 99% near impossible. Think of the costs, it cost FCUM £6 million to build their ground and it just about gets category A. We aren't going to get it done cheaper and to be honest I would not trust anyone in charge of ground development not to fuck it up. You only have to look at the main stand at BM, £300,000+ for that joke of an erection. Shildon paid 85k for their 200 seat PROPER stand - as opposed to 150k that we paid for each 294 seated stand - and all it is, is a shallow deck of temporary seating made permanent with a canopy that doesn't even fit properly. There are tonnes of companies out there building and erecting bespoke stands, and that's the best we could come up with! Putting aside the fact that we'd be bound to come up with a crap ground that would no doubt need bits redoing later, where would the money come from?
Downsides to moving back to the Arena is the reality of 1.500 people rattling around in it. Also, how much money would we have to pay off DRFC to leave Blackwell? How much funding would we have to pay back that we received for BM?
But the rugby club chairman did say prior to our move into BM that we both *need* each other. Either way, something has to give if the rugby club can’t survive on their own.
It will be a big decision for DFCSG members to make when the time comes - we need full advice as to the pros and cons
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