Regardless of who is legally obliged to carry out maintenance etc we will, once again, hear sod all from the Council about this. They get a completely free ride. They have been given a half stake in the ground and we've never heard a peep out of them. I have no clue whether they give a single, solitary f**k about BFC because all we get from them is a wall of silence and indifference.
They haven't been given it.And without their input at the time we wouldn't be playing football at Oakwell now. Some people have short memories.
Well they have 50% control then. However you want to put it Helen they just radiate disinterest. Maybe that's not the case but we don't know because we never hear from them.
I find it bizzare that areas at the back of the ground and stand itself can be closed for safety reasons, but the debris cant drop onto the pitch??. Game should be called off, risk to fans but not players, are we playing wearing hard hats???
I think they are definitely a silent partner as it were Personally I don't have a problem with that, the clubs owners should be dealing with these matters surely as it is them that are running the club. Unless of course they have told the council repairs need doing and that it is down to the council to finance them? Which we haven't been told is the case?
I suspect, like most Northern Labour Councils they're being starved of Government money. According to the Government's definition of need Richmond (North Yorkshire) is in a worse situation than Barnsley.
Richmond (North Yorkshire) represented in parliament by Mr R Sunak (Conservative) you mean? Levelling up. Completed it mate…
I understand they're short of money. It doesn't cost anything to be seen to be engaged in the situation though. The deafening silence from them year after year suggests they don't give a damn.
There seems to be almost a weekly debate on here about who bears what responsibility for upkeep and repairs. Opinions are given based on what is the norm in other cases but never on this specific one. All we ever get from the club is that discussions are ongoing and total silence from the Council. It's about time both parties got together and issued a joint statement on their vision for the future of the ground. The ground and club are part of the fabric of the town. You wouldn't know it given what we hear from them.
I think this is the dispute that appears to be nearing a conclusion (given Khaled's recent interview and positive soundbites). On the West Stand, I honestly don't know the details, but I think we could add temporary measures to open it f we ever needed to, but not at 24 hours notice.
Because every avenue was explored first before the decision was made to close the stand. This involved sitting in meetings with the council, SYP and our own safety officers until late afternoon. Immediately was when they discovered the issue less than 24 hours ago during the standard stadium checks before a game. Could it be fixed in time? Could everyone with a ticket be accommodated and moved? Would the plans get EFL approval? SYP approval? How would it effect away fans travelling up? Etc. Etc. Trying to host an event for 10,000 people is more difficult than people sometimes give credit for. In my mind at least.
What worries me is that Khaled said about a year ago that the issues with the council were nearing conclusion, and yet it still hasn't been resolved. The lease still has about 5/6 years left to run iirc, so there's plenty of time to get it resolved, but I do wonder if we'll have more instances like this, and the West closure on the meantime. Regarding the far end of the West Stand, I wouldn't expect them to sort it with 24h notice, I just wondered whether that's the only issue, and whether some sort of contingency could be put in place.
If the capacity is really 23k then we can assume most weeks in living memory we have 10k spare seats per game, I don't think we need more then 20k.
He's said several times recently there's positive news on the horizon. I'd imagine there will be something before the end of the season. I think he's been working with the council to get Oakwell to be a big part of the councils Town planning vision for the future. There's probably a lot of work invovled in this when you think about what it entails. There will be 3rd party involvement to come up with a plan that ticks the boxes for what both sides want from a new lease agreement that's likely to last for many years. Both parties need to get this right and think about how they improve the ground/ transport links / Oakwell's place in the overall plan for Barnsley/ repair needs etc etc.). It's not a simple conversation and will have been months and months in the planning and don't forget Khaled's had to rebuild relationships in the wake of Conway's heavy handed approach.
I think that 20k would be ideal, but I'm not sure that leaving a stadium which is 3/4 perfectly good if maintained properly in order to move to a very slightly smaller one would be a sensible course of action. New stadia are expensive, generally lacking in character and atmosphere, often well out of town, and still require maintenance and upkeep. A properly maintained Oakwell with a new West Stand consisting of a large safe standing section would be superb. Or even better, make the Ponty into a safe standing area. The atmosphere would go through the roof.
The flip side to your argument we have had many seasons in the not too distant past where we average 13000 home supporters with bigger games getting in excess of 15000 home fans in. In the Championship the smallest Stadium we would really want is 20K and a bit bigger wouldn't hurt so you are seriously suggesting we need to move to a smaller stadium which is around 90% of the current stadium capacity. The phrase Sledge hammer and nut springs to mind