Nick
Administrator
Simon Jordan knows fuck all about the situation, it gets shown every time he goes into the slightest of details.
Doug King Takeover (21 Viewers)
- Thread starter jackdg
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Simon Jordan knows fuck all about the situation, it gets shown every time he goes into the slightest of details.
Sky Blue Pete
Well-Known Member
Yeah. First team games will be ok though that’s why we are selling tickets. I feel for the club I really do. What a continuing mess we have. All because we couldn’t afford the last £28m of the original spend and then sisu not forking out a few million. Unbelievable
Speedie's Head
Well-Known Member
The problem I think was not getting promoted. The stadium was a massive (and maybe foolish) undertaking for a championship club although Richardson was quoted as saying that the Tesco money should have covered it. Why did we ever leave HR for a stadium with a couple of 1000 extra capacity having spent so much on it?
Sick Boy
Super Moderator
A couple of 1000? HR was only around 23k - at the time no one was complaining either. I wish we were still there but it get romanticised as some magical place with an amazing atmosphere when the reality was quite different.
hill83
Well-Known Member
Can you ask him what I’m having for breakfast please mate.
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
We weren’t a Championship club really. The plans were in progress while we were in the Prem. Us not going back up as expected was definitely the problem though.
HR was at capacity and wasn’t really fit for a Premier League club and nearly 10k is a significant bump in capacity and gave the city an exhibition and concert space it was missing. If we’d have been in the Prem the last 15 years we’d be moaning it was sold out every week let’s be honest.
SkyblueDad
Well-Known Member
Why ? Well for a start a few people were a bit wealthier at the end of the project than they were at the beginning.
HR capacity was just over 23000, the Richo just under 33000, so £130million was spent to potentially increase our stadium capacity by about 9000. Which we have never filled have we had 30k+ yet ? and rarely had more than the HR 23000 maximum.
Speedie's Head
Well-Known Member
Didn't we have a cup match once? The trend started with the americans building new baseball stadiums after Camden Yards in Baltimore, for example. In the US though it is customary for the City to pay for the stadium to attract a team to play there. If only CCC had the vision...
D
Deleted member 5849
Guest
I was. Should listen to me rather than piggy
Kingokings204
Well-Known Member
i believe that’s true. Fine at least till May
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
Some public money (and far too much) goes into US stadia, but they are often privately owned and ridiculously expensive (some in the billions of dollars) I’m not sure they’re who we should be looking to!
Sick Boy
Super Moderator
Nothing new there then.
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
It was a shit tip. Ages to get in and out, no chance of parking, half the football happened behind a pillar and quiet as a graveyard most games.
I’m convinced the people who romanticise HR spent all their time in the west terrace, which was great if you were in there but pretty much inaudible the rest of the ground.
Bad Boy
Well-Known Member
I don't agree, HR was a little frayed and was in need of redevelopment admittedly but to say it wasn't fit for a Premier League club simply isn't true, furthermore it was rarely a sell out unless the big boys were in town.
There was scope to redevelop, the club would have been better served by looking at purchasing the housing around the stadium with a view to demolishing the properties and expanding the grandstands, just as numerous football clubs have done.
Alas other people had madcap ideas which have resulted in where we are now.
Speedie's Head
Well-Known Member
The point is the City builds the stadium. I'm not saying Coventry needs or needed something on the same scale.
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
There was no ability to expand HR. The local infrastructure couldn’t handle it and permission would never have been granted.
D
Deleted member 5849
Guest
Indeed. tbf with CCFC, to be distrustful of everything makes you right 85% of the time!Nothing new there then.
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
But the city did build the Ricoh?
Speedie's Head
Well-Known Member
and flogged it to rogues and bankrupts
chiefdave
Well-Known Member
I did some work a few years back with the chap who was in charge of maintenance at HR and he said behind the scenes it was a complete mess and an accident waiting to happen. They were constantly doing bodge repairs to electrics to keep things running. He reckoned in todays H&S environment at least two of the stands would have been shut and condemned and that's if games were allowed to take place at all.
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
The city still owns it.
Don't look look too closely at the Arena !
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
It just wasn’t a goer really. That’s why the club was helped to find a new ground (same as the rugby club, ice hockey and basketball teams - though the crusaders turned the SkyDome down).
chiefdave
Well-Known Member
from what the chap I worked with told me this was very much the issue. several schemes were suggested, none even got as far as plans being formally drawn up as they were met with a very firm 'not a chance' even at the stage of initial discussions
some of them were at bit bonkers and you started to wonder if building a new stadium was a cheaper option than some of the things suggested! One involved building over Swan Lane and having a tunnel for traffic underneath a new stand, another involved shifting the stadium a few metres, building out into Thackall Street which would then have been closed to traffic and no longer a road
think its safe to say they didn't just suddenly decide to move one day, other things were considered over the preceding years
Sick Boy
Super Moderator
If we’d have had stayed in the PL it would have been a great decision, especially if it had been the original version of it.
Unfortunately we got relegated before the big money rolled into the PL and the collapse of ITV Digital made it all the more worse.
Unfortunately we got relegated before the big money rolled into the PL and the collapse of ITV Digital made it all the more worse.
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Bad Boy
Well-Known Member
HR was what is was, you can't compare it with what we're used to visit now.
Parking issues and getting in and out persist to this day at the gasworks ground and as for atmosphere it's only in the last couple of seasons have we woken up and started to make some noise. Watch and listen to footage of games of any clubs from way back and there wasn't the same singing and chanting as you get now, that's a fact, we've moved on in so many ways.
In my 50 or so years I stood and sat in all parts of HR and never once did I delude myself thinking it was a footballing cathedral and anything other than what it was. It was becoming outdated, it was shabby, there were issues with the old girl, but Highfield Road was ours.
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
No the Ricoh is significantly more accessible than HR for anything other than walking from town. I get it: jumpers for goal posts, hmm? bovril, rattles? Marvellous.
But as a club with Premier League ambitions just not fit for purpose. How the club came to give away their stake in a stadium has been done to death, but I never once sat in HR thinking “yeah the atmosphere is shit, my knees are by my chin, and I can’t see half the game, but at least the club own the freehold” TBH.
Briles
Well-Known Member
It's a psychological phenomena called rosey retrospection. The same reason retired players from the 90s are deemed better than current ones.
SkyblueDad
Well-Known Member
The club owned loads of land around HR that estate where the Mercer’s was was owned by the club, but that and the HR site was money in the pockets for some.
Offhegoes
Well-Known Member
We probably only needed to increase the capacity by 5K-6K, and we'd have a perfect 28K-29K stadium. I am sure it could of been done. Instead Richardson decided to sell Highfield Road. He would of been better offering Gary Mac a contract earlier, and resisted the bids for Robbie Keane after one season, and given Strachan some money to buy a decent couple of Centre Backs and we'd of never of gone down.
hinckley cov
Well-Known Member
I’m sure the club tried to build a new stand on the side, it involved pushing the road back a bit , but the council turned planning permission down.
SkyblueDad
Well-Known Member
There was a plan to turn HR round so the Sky Blue stand & Main Stands would have been behind the goals and four new stands would have been built Thackhall Street would have been shorter, I’m sure it was nearly a goer but there was money to be made shifting to where it is now. The council at the time probably all dead now wanting a the old gas works modernising etc. We had all the bunkum of a retracting pitch, being the new national stadium, a potential gold mine for ccfc all pie in the sky crap. The Ricoh and all that’s happened since almost finished the club we are now hopefully at the end of what’s been a long dark tunnel, basically caused by the HR move fiasco.
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
It couldn’t. As Dave says there were loads of plans looked at and the ground needed a ton of work. It’s not like the club never looked at expanding HR.
Adding another 5k people to the local infrastructure alone would have been difficult.
IIRC Keane was always due to go after one season and that’s how we got him at all. Lots of mistakes and bad luck lead to where we are from lots of people, up to and including Joy. I think looking for a silver bullet is a wild goose chase TBH.