Excuse my ignorance, but does this mean that despite the application being in for 4 weeks or so as the fee has not been received it has not been looked at and therefore we are still maybe 12-13 weeks away from a decision !!!

I thought the Westerman money was being used for the detailed app ?

Think some answers are required.

I do appreciate that the £2m from Wakefield district Council can only go to a trust but i fail to see why everyone keeps going on about this as such a major stumbling block to accesing finance.

I can assure you now that when the cash is required i.e. at the point in time contracts are signed etc both Cas and Wakey will be able to draw on these funds.

Setting up a Trust , charitable of not, is very simple and much like setting up a company can be done in a matter of days (less if its a relatively standard set of articles - we can allways copy Wakey's if need be as they are publically available information after all). The reason why you would not set one up is due to the professional fees required to audit such a trust year on year plus the administration documents required each year. If its not required yet why set it up? £2-5K a year to audit a dormant trust is cash we dont have to blow away.

I still cant see why the RFL keep insisting on this new stadia when the British game is quite frankly light years away from being competitive with the NRL.

People will invariably hark back to the WCC and how Leeds beat the best the world has - well yes they did but let us remind ourselves when the game was played - 4 weeks before the NRL season began and 4 weeks after ours started. In essence it was a per season friendly for the aussies. Nothing more.

Surely the money being spent by cas, wakey, salford, Hull KR etc would be better spent actually on developing a crop of young players for the future. £200k goes to pay 15 youngsters and a coach that could if developed properly go on in ten years time to be competitive at a world cup and inturn develope or game internationally. If that were applied accross the whole of SL then we may actually move forward.

However spending £200k on planning applications and architechts fees is not enhancing our game at all. In fact would suggest it actually detracts from our game and makes it look like a regional sport. It cant loog good on sky to see a nice new stadium with 3/4 of the seats empty.

If you compare this to Australia the comparasions are stark. Take Manly for example. NRL winners constantly produce outstanding world class players and play in a stadium that has three sides of which two were built in the 1970's and have a grass knowl on 1 side and part of a second. This knowl is the family stand and is packed on a sunny day because for many fans is the best atmosphere. The same i beleive is the case for Cronulla (could be wrong). The point however is that Australia has said screw stadia - great if you can - but its about the players who take to the park each weekend. Maybe its about time we actually took a note from the NRL which makes sense and can be applied to the British game to make it work.

I agree with you about the simple 'build it and they will come' and I think this also appears to be where Salford went and are going wrong. I also think that Salford don't have the same relevance or importance, as a club, to their surrounding communities as Castleford & Wakefield do to theirs. I think Warrington would be a better comparison to both clubs than Salford, and look what a successful move to a new stadium did for their attendances when they were in a similar position in the table to Cas & Wakie!

I also think that good intelligent marketing makes a huge difference and I think Wakie have been simply outstanding at this since Glover took over and I think under Ferres & Fozzard, Cas are borrowing ideas with pride and appear to be stepping up in this area already. I think Wakefield attracting well over 8000 a game at Belle Vue bodes well for a move, hopefully in 2015, and I think Cas have the potential to step up attendances at WR and that averages of around the magic 10,000 are achievable to both clubs in new stadia. The hard bit, for everyone, is paying for one!

Announcement next week per Steve Ferres email to ST holders.

I think you might be missing my point a little. Yes, setting up a trust company is no big deal at all but actually creating a vehicle with which WMDC and other funders are happy with is different and much harder!

The point I was making is that under RW the plan for GH was to move, debt free, into a new stadium solely owned by the club as a private limited company! Like I said, if you can afford to do this then the benefits are obvious and I think that was what RW wanted to do, if possible, and not have to be beholding to other funding, including WMDC, because they can't just give it to a private for-profit business and they will also demand something for their money! WMDC and others would demand a clear and transparent indefinite community benefit and that is the bit that I think will be hard to organise when in reality, you just want the £2m to add to the build fund. I am not sure how this would work, given that WMDC, can't take share in Cas Tigers either? Maybe an agreement for indefinite free use of the facilities for WMDC approved groups and a charge of £2m on the ground, if it was ever to be sold, meaning it would be similar to a directors loan secured on the ground owned by Cas?

The Community Trust model that is been used for Newmarket is better for external funders because they are giving the money to a trust who will own & run the stadium and community sports facilities for and on behalf of the community. Spirit of 1873 Ltd are just a paying tenant who although they are a for-profit business, will be paying the largest part of the annual running costs of the stadium and facilities but that is all. They won't see a penny of the money used to build the stadium and therefore Spirit of 1873 don't see any direct (and direct is the key word) financial benefit from WMDC money or any other governmental/charitable funding.

Of course Wakefield have no other choices because they don't have the current asset level of Cas Tigers but equally unless Cas can the whole thing funded then the only way to ever build GH, might be to go down a similar route of seeking funding.

Lets see what Steve Ferres has to say now.