There’s loads and loads of parking. We’ve got 3 bus routes that go past the stadium and railway station right opposite the ground, what else do we need?
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I think better transport links to outlying areas of Walsall, like Pheasey/Streetly etc, would help massively. If I didn’t have a car, it would be a real issue for me to get to the games (especially midweek). Maybe more dedicated bus services from these areas on matchdays?
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I don’t notice the stanchions in the pallet-track stand. if I did I’d go and sit in the poundland stand, simple really.
Sorry folks but the idea that stanchions are the reason for our poor gates is not right in my view. At the turn of the century we had the best players ever playing for us and our home support was about 6,000. That figure should be our short term aim in my view. If we get into Division 1 and are successful we might get that.
I accept that football is more popular than 20 years ago and we have missed out but to catch up is going to take some doing. We need at least 2 years of success to reach the 6,000 figure. It is football success that will bring folk in not the state of the ground.
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Talk of Stantion removal is silly really.
I can’t recall the cost for taking out the main stand ones in the early 2000 but no way should paying budget be diverted so people don’t have to sit behind a Stantion
Don’t care about away fans
Kids in the Fammily stand don’t pay enough attention
Steel and structural work isn’t cheap you’d be talking 6 figures easily to be doing this sort of work
It will take a massive punt from the owners to get us up to 9-10k attendances. It will also take a leap of faith from the Walsall public that we could become an established Championship side.
I couldn’t give a shit, personally, as I’m happy with supporting a lower league club, but it’s a massive ask on Trivela to take us to anything like Championship levels of attendance.
As others have said, Walsall is a poor town, with a big percentage of an ethnic mix that isn’t really interested in lower league football.
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Probably missed it, but how many home fans did we get in the three championship seasons? I just don’t see how we’re going to get above 6 to 7k home fans even as a midtable championship club.
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Stanchions we’re more acceptable 25 years ago than they are now.
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Way more than that in my opinion
Removing them is not a simple process, they’d need to significantly, structurally change the stand…
Thank Mr Bonser and Mr Whalley for their limited thinking…
They don’t and they didn’t when they were removed from the main stand.
I don’t think so…I was appalled when I saw the new ground but I would not want the club to spend money removing them because if we want success we need good players and money should be spent there in my view.
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Eh?
They were removed as part of the complete rebuild/development of the stand…. Without that they couldn’t have been simply removed…
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No we simply did not have the money . I would have preferred a smaller ground with room for expansion than what we got. We were unfortunate with the timing because we missed out on monies available from the government following the Taylor Report We tried to get get it retrospectively but the government and the football authorities refused to help.
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You might be right but when GMI construction were contracted to develop the ground, they were working to a fairly tight budget (hence the design that was used was the one that was created as a standard sports ground footprint) - I’m not sure about the impact on funding and the Taylor report process but fundamentally this is why Bescot Stadium and the Scunthorpe ground were almost identical in construction (cost…)
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It is…if you remember the Taylor report came after the approval of the work. I cannot remember how far after now but as far as the government were concerned it was no deal.
Is that right? I thought there was a bit of a furore over the fact Scunthorpes ground cost £2.5m and Bescot cost £4.5m when, as you say, they were pretty identical in design.
Don’t forget Andy the club spent an additional £850,000 on the Supporters Club (now the Locker) as part of the contract. Our ground was built after Scunthorpes so there would also have been some inflation.
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The club seemed to have revised the bit on the website which discussed the move to the Bescot in detail. There’s still a bit on it, but I’m sure there was a far more detailed explanation on there a couple of years ago.
Perhaps they want to put it behind them.
There was 100% an issue because the designs were identical yet the actual/final construction costs were different - many felt that someone was on the take…. Say no more….
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