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St. James Park - Championship Ground

JCWhoosh

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Jul 7, 2020
Messages
541
I have to say that I think the idea of championship football is a bit of a pipe dream. Football is a broken business that seems to operate outside all the usual conventions of business however, despite this, there doesn't look like there's any liklihood of that changing, so it's difficult to see how we could ever sustain life in the championship.

In my lifetime and indeed the club's, only once have we managed to survive longer than 3 years in the third teir, and doing that now is harder financially than its ever been, so a target of achieving that should be our main focus.

I have to admit that in purely football terms I'm not really that ambitious, football for me has always been about the experience, and I'm not sure that has changed much whatever league we've been in. My ambition for our club is centred far more in becoming as professional and well set up in terms of facilities and structures, and the progress towards that over the last few years has been nothing short of incredible and will go a long way towards giving us the best shot at establishing a sustained L1 position. By becoming an established L1 side, I mean that we are in a position where it is most likely that we are unlikely to drop down a league an generally a top half team and were we to drop down would be one of the favourites to go straight back up again. But where were are more like to be challenging near the top of L1.

As I said, football for me is about the experience and full stadiums play big part of that and I'm aware that the product on the pitch plays a huge part in achieving that. For me the standard in L1 is generally good and provides good entertainment. So were we able to maintain our position over several seasons, I don't think it's unreasonable for us to be able to regularly bring in home crowds of around, 8000, which isnt currently realistic in terms of capacity, so I feel we will need to do something about this.

It doesn't appear that a new stadium is really a realistic possibility, so I think we would need to look at ways to increase capacity at SJP by a couple of thousand. I feel there are possibilities for this by utilising the whole footprint of the away end and building higher, plus looking at ways of filling in the 3 corners that don't have railway issues. However there are enormous obstacles to achieving this, and aside from the nightmares involved with agreeing planning consent, would be vastly expensive and well beyond achievable at present. The ground would no doubt look very bitty as a result, personally I don't mind this, I've never been overly wedded to uniformity, but it would produce the kind of polished bowl type stadium that appears to be in favour generally. If we were able to overcome the many challenges involed make any of the changes I mentioned, it would obviously have to be done in several stages no doubt over many years though, so I think quick progress towards the goals is simply not going to happen.

So for the moment I think we need to get our feet back on the ground, forget about the championship, and concentrate on establishing ourselves on the first of these goals, which is being a stable L1 side, something we have never previously achieved.
Good Post. About as long as my university dissertation 😏
 

denzel

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The Travel Tavern
Knowing this chap as I do, he wouldn’t be bothered enough to go through that sort of rigmarole, not many would I suggest.
His choice of course, but it isn't much effort to send an email if it means the club can benefit from a few extra quid.
 

STURTZ

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Je suis Larry
His choice of course, but it isn't much effort to send an email if it means the club can benefit from a few extra quid.
If this is an option why isn't it advertised? I would happily give my ticket back to the club on the rare occasions that I don't attend.
 

iscalad

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Aug 22, 2007
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Far away across the field
His choice of course, but it isn't much effort to send an email if it means the club can benefit from a few extra quid.
Yep, or a quick phone call. I've done it myself.
 

Hants_red

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May 27, 2007
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League 1
His choice of course, but it isn't much effort to send an email if it means the club can benefit from a few extra quid.
I've just handed Mike a couple of tickets for February games I can't get to. Easy peasy!
 

tavyred

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Aug 23, 2004
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And as for the rest of your post, yes it is acknowledged that we are selling out most games at the moment, but the city's population hasn't changed much since this time last year, when we getting 4000, or even earlier this season, when there was plenty of space at games.
I think a more useful comparison is not last season and a league lower, but with our last inaugural season at LG1 level and we’re currently averaging approximately 1K more in attendances.
It’s that increase which is causing the club to not be able to service the home punters desire for tickets.
 

gilbertshoot

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Jun 25, 2013
Messages
556
You are on the right track there...
Apparently they train every day
 

cannockred

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Sep 23, 2007
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Looking forward....
I wonder how York City found the £44m to move to the LNER stadium recently? 😉
I believe that the stadium was funded by the city council and is all the home for the rugby
League team, the knights.

Please see attached link https://yorkmix.com/york-city-sell-bootham-crescent-for-7m-heres-what-will-happen-to-the-site-and-the-money/
 

tavyred

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I believe that the stadium was funded by the city council and is all the home for the rugby
League team, the knights.

Please see attached link https://yorkmix.com/york-city-sell-bootham-crescent-for-7m-heres-what-will-happen-to-the-site-and-the-money/
Indeed.
A move facilitated by a number factors and not just by a club funding the move solely by themselves, a situation which some posters seem not to want to contemplate.
 

Pete Martin (CTID)

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Here and there
Indeed.
A move facilitated by a number factors and not just by a club funding the move solely by themselves, a situation which some posters seem not to want to contemplate.
The LNER stadium has a capacity of 8,500 - so, unless it can be expanded (at more cost), York City and the Knights are stuck with that. If it were not for the latest OTT ground capacity guidance/rules, I believe the capacity of SJP would be roughly on a par with the LNER.

Bootham Crescent was owned by the club. The £7 million received from Persimmon Homes allowed £2 million to be paid towards the LNER, hardly a big contribution to what is a undoubtedly a fairly expensive project, the rest, largely to service debt, including to the Chairman. I suspect, other than the diehard supporters, most people will not regard York City as a serious proposition whilst they are languishing at 14th in the National League. Sad, but that's how it is.

Bootham Crescent was a run down ground. Lots of history, like SJP. The difference is that SJP is looking better than it ever has in its history, even though we don't own it.

The Drivers Jonas study suggested that SJP could potentially be expanded to around 10,000 capacity. I can't remember quite how, but do seem to remember that was in the final report.

I would submit that it would be far, far better to contemplate that if needs be.
 
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