I was at the ground on Wednesday evening. Some training was going on so the floodlights were on. Have to say they were massively improved and flooded the ground with light. The last time I saw them on a couple of years ago you would have generated more light by striking a swan vesta, so that was great to see.
The pitch is still too small but at least meets minimum requirements now.
The biggest downside is the red shale surrounding the pitch. It’s just a mess. It sprays all over the seats and terracing. However, Startrax need it for their races and without their support we’d still be in Dewsbury so I guess we’ll just have to put with it.
Away fans will complain about it, and they have every right to, but at least they will only experience it once a year (twice if they attend a friendly), we’ve got it every other week.

Yes I agree with this about the red shale, the last home league our seats were covered in the red dust and I mentioned this when I renewed our season tickets so we have moved a row back and gone into the next block nearer to the middle. If it's still the same the only thing to do is take a cloth like Granville in Open all Hours.

The seating in the main stand was a mess on my last visit with the lad, it didn’t make me want to rush back I’ll be honest. Would rather visit Dewsbury than Odsal from a family perspective.

If it was the game that I went to, I was in the Southbank and Nigel Wood was doing his nut in as Startrac are supposed to clean up the seats in the stand and corporate balcony, I also overheard another conversation (not Nige) that Startrac hadn't factored in that the cleaning would be so expensive or quite as extensive.

How true this is I don't know, but at the prices they are charging i'd be shocked if they are running at a loss

Since the 00s the Council has had an agenda of wanting us at VP. The sticking point has been that BCFC don't want us, or at least not unless we pay a huge rent and fit around their fixtures.

There's never been any serious intention to do Odsal up since bloody Stephen Byers called in the development with Tesco on 2001/2. Had that gone through I bet we'd be in a totally different situation.

Any sort of development of Odsal now is fantasy. You'd be better starting with a fresh site, and that won't happen without significant private contribution.

Although it's interesting to see a major construction company are now sponsoring the main stand....#grabstinfoilhat

So maybe we'll get a new stand then? Hopefully on the other side, it would make a big difference if the whole ground were covered, seats or no seats. Not holding my breath. of course.

The direction of travel seems to be a new build over the road on the Richard Dunne site and Startrax gets to redevelop Odsal for stock cars without having to compromise for rugby. Where the cash comes from is another matter

That's always been my preference too. I don't know if zoning comes into it, but a brownfield site with leisure use, directly over the road from our historical home sounds pretty perfect. What size though? 10k but scalable? Would we invite BPA and if we did would they want to come, and could they untap FA money?

Lots of moving parts to that solution and all require a massive injection of cash.

I’m still waiting on that massive euromillions win at which point we can look at sorting out the stadia.

On a serious note, it would need a huge amount of cash which no interested party would have and then ones that do werent interested in our pomp so you’d think it would be a harder sell now.

Although, and no disrespect to salford intended, but I always thought Marwan could have had everything he wanted had he rocked up at Bradford instead but that’s just another classic Bradford near miss I guess.

Anything other than a purpose built stadium over the road would just be papering over the cracks if we tried gradually upgrading the current site. I don’t think you can fully appreciate the scale of the place until you’re at the bottom of the bowl. Whilst the place holds many happy memories, it isn’t fit for purpose and is an absolute nightmare from a construction point of view.

I’d love to believe something could happen, but we’ve been let down so many times it is difficult to believe.

Depressing thread. Plainly there is no quick or easy resolution. One small piece of encouraging news is that Startrax are looking into using different shale, which will hopefully reduce the spraying of red dust.

There’s no obvious solution with financial investment that’s for sure, which makes me doff my cap to messrs Wood and co for taking the challenge on.

Having been at a season ticket donation event last night I was entertained by him and am happy with how the clubs been run so far.

Now for more progress on and off the field