The K's In Point

Re: Ground update

By SDG (SDG (Ks))27/9/2024 18:18Fri Sep 27 18:18:00 2024In response to Ground update

Views: 1279

Let's be crystal clear here. The Hawker Centre has been an open secret among Ks fans for over a year. The fans obediently kept it off the internet to give the board a chance but this day was always coming. The only surprise is that it never even got as far as a public announcement that it was planned.

There will be a focus on how we handled relations with the YMCA and rightly so - protracted negotiations that came to nothing, no attempt to bring the fans or community with us, a women's team statement on Monday unnecessarily criticising the site and now a main club statement that has totally burned any bridges.

But there's a bigger picture here that this is yet another stadium plan that had zero chance of success.

The Hawker Centre is not only Metropolitan Open Land, it's also in a riverside conservation area. To think we could plonk a step 3 stadium there without immense public opposition was always for the birds. Floodlights by a tranquil bit of the river. The noise of non-league football right outside people's houses until 10 at night. Parking and traffic chaos in residential streets.

This would never have survived first contact with the public. Residents would have gone ballistic, local Facebook groups would have been blowing up, politicians would have been falling over themselves to oppose it. Richmond Council would surely have come out against it given the impact it would have had the other side of the river. It would have been dead within days just as Lovelace was.

We don't exactly what the RBK said to the club but I'm honestly surprised they didn't warn the club off more strongly. I can only assume they just don't have a full picture of what step 3 football involves - I remember Ando giving it the 'not the San Siro' chat in one of his interviews. If they did they would surely have said no from the off.

And of course all this comes before we even talk about the money and the idea we could have done this project for only half a million or whatever we have left after years of wasting the AFC money to protect the playing budget.

It's been said a million times but the board need to stop wasting time and money on schemes that get more and more unrealistic with every new one. The only two possibilities are the same two they've been for years now - the university or the athletics stadium. KBH have known this for years but were dismissed.

It's now almost ten years since we announced we were leaving KM, in which time we haven't even cleared the first hurdle for finding a ground. Hopefully this time the board will finally learn some lessons from what's gone so badly wrong over the last decade.