New Stand

The club can now confirm that the funding for our new stand for visiting fans has now been secured. £40,000 has been secured in grants and a further sum approaching the same amount will be funded by Blyth Construction. The club itself will then fund the gap to ensure the stand will be in place by mid September. The stand will seat 519 seats and will have a 30 year minimum lifespan, although it should last considerably longer than this. It will be constructed in such a way to allow it to be moved to elsewhere in the ground should an alternative project be implemented on the East side of the ground. This could allow it to be moved to the Railway End at some point in the future.
The coming season will see the club use this stand exclusively for visiting fans with more of our games being segregated. We understand that this will change the way the ground has traditionally been used with fans no longer being able to move around the ground at will, but to meet the requirements of our safety certificate and to effectively manage the crowd we feel that this will be necessary in many more games in the future. We hope that you will agree that this will be a small price to pay to see further improvements in the ground and to see us move forward with our long term plans.
This development will see us more than double our seated capacity and will allow the existing stand to be used for home fans only. We will be considering how to best use this over the coming season, with the possibility of a family area being created or various other options. The club will welcome any ideas or suggestions fans may have on this opportunity which will be created.
This development will therefore be achieved without the club having to increase our debt profile and again should strengthen the club over the long term. We believe that this is a very positive step to again improve the ground in a sustainable and positive manner.
We anticipate the next stage of facility improvement will take place next summer in line with our 5 year plan to improve the ground which began last July. Planning for this is already taking place and as always further announcements will be given through the web site.
The club would also point out that although speculation will always take place in the media and press only when any story is confirmed on our web site should it be assumed to be correct. We hope you understand that commercial interests will often dictate that not until contracts are concluded will the club comment formally on many issues.

Mike Mulraney