So far our club only seems interested in ground options that signal the demise of Trinity as an independant Super League entity. It's yes for sharing with Cas or developing Belle Vue but no for Oakwell.

But does anyone know why Oakwell is not being pursued. Surely AG, being the astute businessman he is, must have a valid reason for not including it.

Are they being dictated to though? It certainly would explain why Oakwell has suddenly disappeared of the agenda after almost a year of it being Plan B.

This conversation is taking a tone reminiscent of the ones that happened under the previous regime, when the standard operating procedure was to treat us like mushrooms and hope that we continued to turn up.

In my view, Mr Glover needs to make a clear and unambiguous statement about his intentions, before the rumour mill goes into overdrive and the positive vibe that he's created at the club begins to be eroded. There's also some ground to be recovered in wider PR terms, in that the RL community now seems to accept as a given that WTW will be out of SL next season and Cas will stay in; that's got more to do with Richard Wright's spin than any concrete advantage, so we should be countering that with some PR messages of our own.

Does AG and his team not read this forum on a rgular basis,if so he needs to come out soon and make a statement regarding the ground issue as we seem to be going backwards in the PR stakes.Also I seem to remember just before or just after the club went into admin James Elston saying that a deal for Oakwell was nearly done but he couldn't say too much because the costs would rise if it went public before being finalised,is it now maybe the case that AG thinks it is not financially viable?Please AG let us all know what is happening ASAP?

Couldn't agree more. A simple statement telling whether Oakwell is a goer or not would be a start.

Don't agree. Dickie's statement from Cas is obviously because they are feeling a draft from Wakey coming up on the rails.They don't have the funds. Why play all our cards just yet? Keep them close to our chest.The best time to reveal them would be after all the franchise applications have been submitted.
Leave the club to the chaps that are running it for now and have some confidence in their methods.

Im bemused by the right that fans seem to think they have to be told about the inner working of the club. Further that the club should share information to halt the gossiping.

I have a plan - why don't you take responsibility for stopping the gossiping by oh... erm.. let me think ..... oh yes - stopping gossiping!!!

Respect that, until proven otherwise, the people running the club will make decisions about when is the right time to share what information they have. Further reflect on the possibility that making information public might not be in the clubs best interests.

Agree with this. I've no idea what's going on behind closed doors, but I hope and trust that something is. Somewhere to play next year was clearly the number one issue for anyone taking over the club. Publishing our intentions now would play into the hands of our competitors. I'm sure RW is convinced he only has to outbid one other club. The time for revealing full plans is when the applications are in.

It does seem strange that Oakwell has gone so quiet, and I did wonder whether the RFL, in their wisdom, have decided that a club should not play outside their catchment area for the new franchise period, or something similar. It would fit with their usual "make the rules up as you go along to suit the agenda", but who knows? AG will have sought clarification of the demands of the RFL's franchise bid.

Spot on, though Glover brought it on himself by posting here in the first place.

Before the conspiracies really are set ablaze, who exactly at the RFL says Oakwell is a bad thing? And why do we believe any rumours anyway?

(That said, I believe Oakwell would be unsustainable due to crowds dropping by not travelling and not being convinced that the numbers required in Barnsley would be attracted to watch.)

Wakey Express quote AG as saying Oakwell is not an option - plan B is a shared facility with another local team 'roughly the same distance from BV as NM is'

A useful way to appear to 'win' an argument, is to create the illusion that your opponent occupies an absolute position, that you can then debunk.

As most people will understand from my original post however, I'm not advocating that Mr Glover reveals all the innner workings of the club or is free and easy with business critical information, to the detriment of his future plans.

There is a middle way though, and that's what I'm suggesting would be useful; to keep the stakeholders engaged, to maintain the positive vibe and to show a confident front to the RL and wider community, we have to engage in good PR.

As the modfather himself once said - this is the modern world, and like it or not, in the modern world a business has to communicate with it's stakeholders. AG has, up to now, done a fantastic job in that regard - his most recent comments about sharing a ground and such have muddied that waters a bit though, and people are, understandably, asking questions.

The problem is that, at the moment, quotes attributed to our leaders are all negative regarding our Super League future. They are starting the gossip.
So we either have no Super League future or are lulling other strugglers into a false sense of security.

I would like to know what has changed then. Cost? Availability? RFL acceptance?

My guess is the other ground is Featherstone? If so i take it we've given up on a superleague licence this time around.

When SWAG first started Di showed me a load of plans that had been drawn up by various regimes through the years. Some were very impressive including the most recent that date around 2002/3.

Her argument was that including demolition cost, restricted access and a relatively small site the cost of improving BV would not paid for long term by the new stands.

She was of course making this assessment based on the fact that the club was not willing to write any monies off in the development. However an owner who was willing to lose some money could rebuild BV to a good standard, though the final capacity would be unlikely to exceeed 12,000 at best 14,000. The main planning concern would not be the buildings but the parking and transport issues. To guarantee permission the club would probably need to purchase or at least lease nearby land for parking, certainly if it went to 14k rather than 12k which is closer to the existing capacity.

My own preference has always been to redevelop BV which I think is in a fantastic position, a mile from town and two nearby train stations etc. It's failing is being hemmed in, especially on the west side of the ground. That said I still think it could be done if the RFL were to ever view the game realistically and reduce some of the utterly ludicrous requirements.