I understand your concerns but our stewards have improved now. Its not just the bulls fans they were treating badly, they were treating city fans badly, they were bad heavy handed stewards under bad management. However i would certainly prefer a new community stadium outside the city .

I'd prefer to watch RL at Odsal but it isn't realistic in the long run, without millions of pounds appearing from nowhere.



Why give up a modern stadium, to simply build another? As I said above where do you think the £30m + needed to build a new stadium somewhere is going to come from. As a Bradfordian I'd be furious if the council wasted my money on such a project and I support both teams, I can only imagine the reaction of most of the council tax-payers in the district, it isn't going to happen.


If 2,000 supporters won't go to VP then I question whether they can call themselves supporters, the facts are if the club stay at Odsal in it's current form there won't be a club for much longer, if some people prefer that than having to sit down to watch their rugby then so be it.

bradford city dont have a stadium to give up. They dont own it anymore they are in same situation as us. They lease it. A new community stadium could have provision for standing areas which is biggest problem bulls fans have with vp apart from location. Also a new stadium is something both clubs would have an equal stake in which would go a long way to eliminating the them and us attitude that currently prevales.

As for funding it, if council put in funds raised by selling off odsal plus richard dunn plus extra grants available through football side of things then i'd imagine we would be pretty much there. Council will have to put some money in but they've got to do something about richard dunn anyway and if they are prepared to spend 24million on a park outside city hall that no one in the city wants then they should be prepared to fund this as well.

It will be a sad day if it came to the point where we had to move in to VP. I am not overly sentimental and could cope with leaving Odsal but a move to VP could well have a similar result to staying at Odsal without it being redeveloped. I think.. in fact I am sure the support would drop quite significantly.. can we afford that either?

I pray there will be solution to our ground problem.. but after so many years of trying.. it is hard to see it coming off. Hell.. I think I'd rather watch the Bulls at the Galpharm before going to VP!!

City can't agree to move into a stadium with standing areas, if they did they'd be saying they'd be happy to stay in the bottom two divisions forever, that isn't going to happen.

It would be a lot cheaper and easier for the council to buy Valley Parade than to have to find the sort of funding required to build a new stadium, despite what Dan155 and a few kids on the City official board might think there is no chance whatsoever that the core support at Valley Parade will give that stadium up for some soulless plastic development on some out of town site after what happened in 1985, it's something that you can't really hope to explain to someone who doesn't have to live with it, the attachment of people to Odsal is nothing compared to the attachment long standing City fans have to VP. Like it or not there is a modern stadium there and available for use, it is the only realistic option to keep top flight RL in the city.

Wigan fans didn't like the JJB at first, but they've come flocking back in recent seasons, like I say if people won't support a club because they have to sit down then they are not worth having as supporters anyway.

I am sure the hull fans were in a similar position to us , what we need is a new ground developed with facilities for both clubs , the council have some of the receipts from the sale of the airport to invest, along with revenues from the sale of Richard Dunn and odsal along with grants from the FA and any potential olympic lottery funding which could provide a multi purpose facility.

However time scales are vital to securing a franchise for us so a decision needs to reached soon , this has proven illusive so far and I am not confident that we will be able to get a solid case soon for a number of reasons.

City may have use of a ground ATM but for how long. As Bradford redevelops itself the land on which VP is built becomes a valuable asset for its owners , much more than a football club in the lower levels of the football league can generate in rent.

So a merger at VP would still only be a short to medium term solution to the problems facing both sporting clubs.

Well thats my 2 pennys cast into the discussion.

I can foresee thisas a scenario. Bulls move to VP prior to NEW shared stadium being built. Odsal sold off to provide much needed capital. MOney then diverted to city park and Broadway development. Bulls stay at VP.

I bumped into a certain Mr Sutcliffe last night in Jacobs Well - asked a polite question - as minister for sport and a local mp why won't you back odsals redevelopment? His answer was basically no comment!! What a complete and utter @@@@@r he is!

The only language he will respond to is the ballot box if he thought his majority was threatened by people in favour of the redevelopment then he would listen . Not many turkeys vote for xmas

But I genuinely do think you need to at the very least TRY and explain it because it makes no sense to the rest of us. Why would you actively want to stay where your fellow fans burned to death? I can't fathom where the logic is in that.

What I will never ever ever do is to make light of the collective grief that is still felt by all at City but to stay at VP for that reason seems nothing short of macabre. I've made the analogy before but if your son or daughter died in a housefire, would your first priority be to repaint it and move back in or to move the hell out as fast as you can?

I understand what your saying but i do share a lot of feelings with Asim here as well, what has happened at VP gives it an almost supernatural history, its not like a house fire where someone died hanging up their clothes or doing their washing, people have died literally supporting their team, died doing something that they loved. When people have lost their lives doing something so poignant on such a wonderful day that turned into a nightmare the ground becomes almost sacred itself. Ive never taken moving away from VP lightly, but i believe it could be done under certain circumstances. It sounds a bit daft but think of 11/11, nobody thinks 'wow what a depressing day, full of war and bloodshed, we might as well forget about it', people cling onto these things, and likewise people cling onto VP, its a memorial to what happened.

Here we go again......

For what its worth, for VP to be a realistic alternative for me personally would take some convincing, baring in mind that I attended every game we had there and I dont live in Bradford anymore so the extra travelling into the city was/is a right pain, but that would not stop me, what could make the whole thing too depressing in the long term is feeling like unwanted tennents.

We could end up feeling like we didnt have a "home" ground, Im taking about making VP half owned by the Bulls, changing the seats to have our colours as well, with Bulls written in the colour scheme like at Odsal - stuff like that. Little things that I suspect could make a big differnce to feeling like we belonged. But why would City need to agree to that?

And as a (relatively unimportant) aside, does anyone know if the RFL will have a problem with the dimensions of VP not being very close to the prefered maximum in their rules? I know they didnt before, (and I know that Odsal isnt perfect), but that was only temporary, would thier thinking be different on a permanent basis? They list maximum dimensions as prefered but no minimum in the laws.

Ideal = 100m plus two minimum 6m in-goals x 68m
VP = 103 x 64

If we moved to valley parade i do think a lot of away support would dwindle after what happened last time. The club did everything they could, but the stewards were out of order one time as i was sat with the saints fans.

Personally i didn't like it at Valley Parade, it isn't the same - around odsal you can walk around and you can mix and you don't have to be in the same stand, or be near someone to see them etc. You have the tent too - and the rugby at odsal is about having your different foods etc and i would guess the new stadium would have facilities for that - you haven't a chance of that at Valley Parade. I'd watch Bradford - i always will but i wouldn't be happy. And Sutcliffe has lost a fair few votes within my area and i'm sure more.

I'm sure he'd be happy to back a realistic and affordable proposal, ie not the current one.

I was sat next to Gerry in the FC on Friday afternoon. We had a laugh about him bopping to the Who's 'Wont Get Fooled Again'. I left politics out of it, even though there were lots of questions I would have liked to have asked him, but I thought give the bloke a rest; I'd have been pi ssed off if he had started grilling me about my job. We shook hands when I left & wished each other merry xmas. I'm surprised he was still standing by night time. He probably said no comment as it is an almost impossible situation & cannot afford to be ruled by his heart. And I have never voted for him