Lets focus on what we DO know: Yorkshire CC are £17m in debt which they estimate will take 10 years to pay off news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket ... 571997.stm The Southstand is on it's last legs and has already had £250k 'wasted' just on keeping it open, so a replacement is urgently required. Leeds Council do not appear to be in the mood to loan the money, as demonstrated by the meeting last week, and also their refusal to loan cash to LUFC: www.thesquareball.net/leeds-unit ... n-request/ SOMETHING happened at or just before that meeting with the council last week. I don't believe redeveloping the North Stand is likely, as Yorkshire won't afford it and the Southstand is more urgent. I don't believe relocation is likely given the Carnegie stand investment. I also doubt any supermarket would gain planning permission on the current stadium site, nor would it be popular with fans. I'd assume if the club have found out they are able to keep the stand open for another year or two, with limited or little further investment then they've simply chosen this option. They can "save up" for another couple of years towards the redevelopment, whilst incurring no additional costs to keep the old South Stand. What interests me is why were Yorkshire Cricket at the meeting?! Surely if Leeds Rugby had gone to the council to ask for a loan for the Southstand, then Yorkshire Cricket would not have been there. Perhaps the council have indicated they are willing to fund/back/finance a new North Stand instead to strengthen any World Cup bidding (RL & RU) and Test Cricket bids?!

Lets focus on what we DO know: Yorkshire CC are £17m in debt which they estimate will take 10 years to pay off news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket ... 571997.stm The Southstand is on it's last legs and has already had £250k 'wasted' just on keeping it open, so a replacement is urgently required. Leeds Council do not appear to be in the mood to loan the money, as demonstrated by the meeting last week, and also their refusal to loan cash to LUFC: www.thesquareball.net/leeds-unit ... n-request/ SOMETHING happened at or just before that meeting with the council last week. I don't believe redeveloping the North Stand is likely, as Yorkshire won't afford it and the Southstand is more urgent. I don't believe relocation is likely given the Carnegie stand investment. I also doubt any supermarket would gain planning permission on the current stadium site, nor would it be popular with fans. I'd assume if the club have found out they are able to keep the stand open for another year or two, with limited or little further investment then they've simply chosen this option. They can "save up" for another couple of years towards the redevelopment, whilst incurring no additional costs to keep the old South Stand. What interests me is why were Yorkshire Cricket at the meeting?! Surely if Leeds Rugby had gone to the council to ask for a loan for the Southstand, then Yorkshire Cricket would not have been there. Perhaps the council have indicated they are willing to fund/back/finance a new North Stand instead to strengthen any World Cup bidding (RL & RU) and Test Cricket bids?!

I seem to recall that when Yorkshire purchased the cricket ground there was another significant payment due to us down the line. If it isn't paid we have the right to buy back IIRC.

Not sure how the timing with that fits?

They already paid that £3m I think...

This is the summary of the licence application released yesterday.

Doesn't seem to match the opinion that money that stopped the South Stand ... what are the "exciting plans to generate additional revenue over the Licensing period" and are they connected to this mystery?

How about this from the left field so to speak

The heavily indebted Cricket club announce they are going to bin off Headingly and move to a new lower cost location. This doesnt necessarily mean Leeds. It could be Sheffield for example, which in years gone by used to host Yorkshire matches at Bramhall lane. The sale of the valuable real estate would be used to pay off debts.

The now unneeded cricket side is then sold to a major supermarket chain for redevelopment. They then build a new supermarket and as part of the deal fund a brand new North stand for Leeds Rugby, and also provide funding for the new cricket stadium.
Yorkshire cricket therefore get a new stadium without the debt hanging over their heads and Leeds rugby get an upgraded stadium.

Now the obvious sticky wicket part of this is that Headingley cricket as had millions thrown at it in recent years. In addition Leeds council may not take too kindly to the cricket club flogging Headingley, and so may refuse permission for a retail development on the site. This could then end up going to public enquiry.

However the mere talk of the above, may suddenly start to concentrate minds wonderfully within the council with regard to requests to develop the existing sporting aspects of the Headingley site.
Hence a revised south stand development more in line with the original vision would probably get through the planning committee.

If cricket and rugby fans both got behind any new developments and put intense pressure on their local councillors then this can have a marked affect on whether developments get approved or not. Look for example at the difference between the Bulls redevelopment of Odsal and St.Helens brand new stadium. Both involved edge of town retail aspects to fund the work. Saints fans got together formed the SBS and pressured Mp's councillors and local businesses to back the new Saints stadium.
The Bulls fans sat back and did nothing.
Bulls are still in a crumbling undeveloped Odsal. Saints are about to move into a new stadium.

Oink Flap.

Bollox.

We formed a supporters' association, primarily as a means of helping to resolve the Odsal development problems, and tried to do what we could. I should bloody well know, since I was one of the founding threesome and the only one who stuck with it till the end, as well as being a founder of our current Supporters' Trust.

The situation in Bradford was very different to the one you faced. You had a club that owned its own stadium. In a RL town. We were in a council-owned stadium, in a much bigger local authority, which had a failing premier league soccer club on its patch as well as another professional RL club. There was (and is ) no way that Bulls fans together could make anything like the impact an equivalent number could do in your town. Bulls support is concentrated in the relatively small southern apex of the local authority. The whole middle of the area is predominantly disinterested Asian, and the north of the city predominantly soccer. The great swathes to the north beyond that extend as far away from Odsal as Wigan is from your ground, and what rugby interest there is there is more union than league.

It was also our misfortune that our stadium plans coincided with Bradford City going bust, and the council trying to bale out City without it being obvious, by sacrificing the Bulls' stadium and seeking to engineer us moving to Valley Parade permanently as a very junior partner. Our plan, like yours and Wire's and Wigan's, involved a big Tesco development. However, OUR plan got called in and Tescos mysteriously pulled out as a result. The fact that they got permission for TWO big out of town developments shortly afterwards, one only about three miles round the ring road and one just outside the city "centre", was doubtless purely coincidental. Oh, and the Odsal plan was called in because it included a non-food element in the Tesco. Yet, shortly afterwards, a big new Matalan was opened just a few hundred yards away on the Morrisons (one of the main objectors) site. You people had nothing like these politics and vested interests to contend with!

We'd get precisely nowhere lobbying anyone nowdays. Any hint of favourable treatment for the Bulls causes apoplexy amongst the Bradford City fans, let alone from Keighley. We have no ground to sell to provide core equity for a new development. We have no rich backer to put his own money in and underwrite the club's trading. We live in a large diverse local authority where the large majority of voters either could not give a stuff about the Bulls or are actively hostile. We have a club a substantial part of whose support lives just over the borders in neighbouring local authorities - remember you can walk to the border in a few minutes from Odsal. Did you have any of these challenges? Those of us who have tried to make a difference before realise there is fekk all we can do, which makes it all the more depressing.

There are plenty of people to blame for where we are now. But don't blame the supporters. We still turned out to support our team in greater numbers than yours over most of SL and including last year. And we tried to make a difference. But we faced odds much too great.

Leeds fans - apologies for using your forum space, but that comment could not go unchallenged.

Purely in the interests of accuracy Leeds is a much bigger local authority than Bradford in terms of population & covers a bigger geographical area being second only to Doncaster amongst English metropolitan district councils.
Other than that Adeybull your post may be totally accurate.

Don't understand your point.

Chair Maker is a Saints fan, making a point about Saints fans supposed action vs Bulls fans supposed inaction regarding stadia in St Helens and Bradord. Nothing whatsoever to do with Leeds in anything I posted.

Sorry, I beg your pardon though it does make it even more bizarre then that you chose to post your response on a Leeds site, I do note, however, that you did apologise for that fact in your post.
My excuse is that I'm still in a state of shock over Yorkshire actually winning a championship game at Headingley.

PS most of my early cricket watching was done at Park Avenue, ah happy days.
Bl**dy freezing though.

No worries mate. I'd normally not have interrupted the normal flow on here, but his comment DID hit a nerve and over something I'm qualified to comment on so I felt I had to say something. I could hardly not post my response on a Leeds site though given that was where he had posted his comments?

Must admit I'd be pretty peed off to see Yorkshire cricket leave Headingley or indeed the West Riding. And 1981 still takes a lot of beating.