Never before has the term ‘shit or bust’ been more appropriate than with Bristol Rovers’ efforts to get the UWE Stadium built and more specifically flogging the Memorial Stadium to Sainsburys. The Bristol Post today reports that a High Court Judge will decide in May whether Rovers can hold the supermarket giants to a £30 million deal to buy the site. Sainsburys argue that planning conditions were not met by a cut-off date last year, and so they were entitled to terminate the deal which was to buy the Memorial Stadium. Well, this seems very straightforward to me. There either was a cut off date or there wasn’t. On the basis of what the paper says, the judge will be able to decide in about two minutes.
We now learn from the Post that ‘there have been complications over plans for a shared car park used by the University during the week, and the stadium on match days.’ It doesn’t add what these complications are but would it be too far out to speculate that the UWE is fed up waiting and if Rovers don’t deliver soon, they will look to other partners to get them their car park? And the UWE stadium site will disappear at a stroke.
It’s all speculation, which is what you get when the football club does its business on a ‘need to know’ basis or rather ‘you don’t need to know’ basis. For God knows how long we have been fed the line that everything is progressing well and it’s just a matter of dotting the ‘i’s and crossing the ‘t’s. No indications that Sainsburys wanted to pull out ages ago. I know there are things that can’t be put in the public arena for the usual catch-all ‘legal reasons’ but I do wonder if the ever passionate Rovers fans, who always support their team in bad times and in worse, are treated like mushrooms, fed shit and kept in the dark.
The stadium is everything to Rovers’ future now. Without it and what’s left? Yet another plan at yet another location yet to be determined or a couple of new stands at the Memorial Stadium? This legal action malarkey can’t be cheap because Sainsburys have plainly hired the best legal minds that money can buy. I can’t imagine Rovers will do anything less. In the summer, during my final dealings with the club, we were told that the agreement with Sainsburys was ‘cast iron’. Sainsburys were committed in the eyes of the law to buy the land to buy a supermarket they no longer want to build and haven’t wanted to build for a very long time.
An outright win for the Rovers and, you assume, they get the money and the builders move in at the UWE stadium. Lose and the club is lumbered with a large legal bill, a crumbling old stadium and significant debts. It’s shit or bust all right. Nick Higgs and the rest of the board had better be sure they win because the entire future of the club rests on it.
