Quote GUBRATS="GUBRATS"Can you explain further ? , for those of us less knowledgable , I assume that Odsal was costing the council ?'"
I blame:
1) Stephen Byers
2) Peter Hood
3) Whoever it was at Wembley who decided Speedway must go.
The reason for number 3 is it changed the relationship between the club and the stadium. The 1985 World Speedway Final happened at Odsal. Odsal as it is remembered by the olds, and me when I was but a young un, is a different place to anything we've seen since then. The stand on what is now the uncovered popular side was knocked down. That terracing was built. The dressing rooms underneath were built. The stand opposite was built. The pits end, before it was the Coral Stand, was turned into proper garages rather than just the hill with a road up it that it used to be.
There was a deal signed at this time. I don't recall the specifics of it, but it was to reflect the changed ownership, etc, and amounted to the old rent scheme. Basically the council saddled themselves with the maintenance and running costs of the place in exchange for owning it and the club just paid rent. (I'll be honest, "ownership" isn't the way to say that. It isn't what it was. But I don't actually know what it was.)
Various schemes popped up to develop the place further, as was seemingly always the plan, but nothing ever came of them. The "Wembley of the North" nonsense didn't start at this point, it's much older than that, but it did rekindle around this time.
By the time the late 90s came around supermarkets were buying up town centre sites. I think in RL Wigan were first? But obviously there were others. With Bradford it was Tesco. There were plans, there was money, there was everything in place for it to happen. There was certainly a desire with the council - even then funding top ups from central government were being curtailed. Planning permission was no problem whatsoever. We even moved out for two years.
What there also was from central government though was a moratorium on "out of town" shopping centres. Ken Morrison, the Morrisons man, objected. And there's a direct line between that objection and it not happening. A lot of Bulls fans blame him. I don't. That was a raw commercial choice from someone legally obliged to act in the best of interests of his shareholders. The choice from Byers to pretend it was a detriment to the city is where a large chunk of my blame lies. More than half? Dunno. Close though. Cos this place that was far outside Bradford and a threat to its commercial activity if people went there was at that time the beneficiary of an inner city development grant from the same sodding government. It was also a supermarket. The kind of place where you buy food to eat and other essentials of living that people need. So you might want as a supermarket properties purchaser want somewhere where people actually live. And this out of town place is heavily populated, and for miles further out of town still until you are actually out of town. And beyond, cos then it's Cleckheaton.
And also ... this city centre they were protecting. Two years later they knocked it down. A little over a year ago they finished building the thing that would replace it. Most of the time in between it was a massive gaping hole. So that worked nicely.
So it didn't happen, and now they have to go back to Odsal. There was a choice at this point, fwiw. Back to Odsal or stay at Valley Parade. As I recall they sounded out the fans. Not a formal vote or anything but some market research. Crowds were clearly down on what they had been a couple of years before. We'd been away from home for two years. We all felt homesick. I know I did. We went back.
But the deal with the council had to change. It wasn't over and finished with yet but it was coming to a close and something had to change. A lot of money had been spent to to get to this stage, and there had been several years expectation of not having council tax money be spent on this. The new deal had to reflect this situation. So the remainder was just paid off in cash outright to deal with the ongoing costs of the place, and then you make your own arrangements. I think it was not quite five million quid all told. A big lump of that went on the Coral Stand with the idea that it be used to raise funds. The rest went on maintaining a winning team to get enough people in to use it and spend money.
So we now how both of those went. Hood's to blame for most of that. But tbh, from the vantage point of today, cards were marked the day we moved back. Probably before.
Harris barely rates a mention for me, expensive though it was. It would have happened anyway.
