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Parsloes 1928 nearly

Wimbledon Stadium: Some Important News

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And an astonishing U-turn in comments from William Hill chief executive Ralph Topping in the space of 7 days !!

 

Last Saturday, I posted his quotes from the Racing Post in this thread in which he was unsure whether William Hill could commit to this year's £200,000 first prize again because of the wider agenda for his company of savings needed to be made including shop closures.

 

Now he's quoted (by the same reporter Jim Cremin), as saying: "We were delighted with the reaction to our £200,000 Derby, with a Wimbledon record entry, and one of the most competitive events ever."

 

Cremin (always quick to crawl up to people if it keeps him on the gravy train), even has the nerve to write that this news is "making a nonsense of talk that the company appetite for sponsorship was waning" ... well, it was Cremin quoting Topping a week earlier that was the biggest aspect of such talk in the first place !!

 

What's caused the U-turn ? ... going into last Saturday's final both the favourite and second-favourite were heavily-backed Irish challengers only for 16-to-1 outsider Salad Dodger (a 500-to-1 no-hoper at the start of the competition) to claim one of the Derby's all-time shock victories having been a totally average A3 runner at Romford as recently as Janaury (that's the 3rd-highest of Romford's 8 grades of local runners with any serious Derby contender usually well-established in its own track's top grade) ... Salad Dodger had actually been a beaten-favourite twice last November at Romford in A6 races !!

 

Still wondering why William Hill suddenly feel they can afford to bump up their Derby sponsorship ?

 

= = = = = = = = =

 

Anyway, the whole story about the boosted Derby prize fund that "racers and royals" has already linked is understandably the Racing Post's main greyhound article today but there's not even a hint of anything on the front greyhound page about the Wimbledon Stadium planning report.

 

Instead, tucked a couple of pages inside (and not yet on the RP website), there's the following ...

 

 

 

 

"All to play for" at Wimbledon by Jonathan Kay ...

 

Planning inspector Robert Yuile has done the expected and announced that both the Paschal Taggart proposal for the redevelopment of Wimbledon as a greyhound venue and the competing AFC/Galliard Homes football stadium scheme are suitable to enter the planning process.

 

Yuile held a public meeting into the Merton Council's Sites & Policies Plan in January and ruled the Plough Lane site can be developed for "sporting intensification" with enabling housing.

 

Diane McLean, of the We Want Wimbledon campaign group, said: "The inspector's report has brought no surprises for the greyhound fraternity. We knew it would be a hard battle to get greyhound retention language into the document given the council's support of AFC and Galliard's proposals. However, the inspector did point out that the Mayor's favoured option was the retention of a greyhound stadium but that if this was not viable then other stadia uses will be considered.

 

"What any promotor who puts in a planning application needs to focus on is the local residents and the effect any large stadium with the resultant significant extra footfall will have on their lives.

 

"We, Paschal and I, have been working with the residents for the past year and continue to do so to ensure that any application we make will meet with their approval and also with the approval of environment and transport agencies as well as the London and Merton plan."

 

Quoted by the Wimbledon Guardian, Merton Council leader Stephen Alambritis said: "We are pleased the inspector has gone with us for the greyhound stadium - it is right for sporting intensification. Planning permission will be given for flats, the number of them is to be decided. It is all to play for, for any sport."

 

 

 

If that sort of downbeat response to the inspector's report is the best that either the Racing Post or We Want Wimbledon can manage, no wonder AFC Wimbledon are getting their interpretation of the report across more enthusiastically to the general public.

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Well if its greyhounds or football, who cares, there's no speedway there is there

Edited by jimmy jimmy

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Well if its greyhounds or football, who cares, there's no speedway there is there

Greyhounds = Possible Speedway.

 

Football = Absolutely NO chance of Speedway.

 

So that is why we should care.

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Thanks to Arthur Cross for his very detailed and insightful reports.

 

Fingers crossed for Mr Taggart.

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Has anybody involved in speedway been in touch with Mr Taggart?

 

The last Wimbledon speedway promotion who I believe keep a close eye on developments or the BSPA?

 

Surely Mr Taggarts bid would be strengthened by the inclusion of the resurrection of a famous team who represented the Borough?

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Surely Mr Taggarts bid would be strengthened by the inclusion of the resurrection of a famous team who represented the Borough?

The big problem for speedway (from the noisy engines angle) is that even Paschal Taggart's plan involves around 400-to-450 flats being built on part of the Wimbledon Stadium site to help fund his revamping of the greyhound track as a repeat of the apartments he included to help fund his revamp of Dublin's premier dog track at Shelbourne Park a decade ago.

 

Hence speedway has never been a high priority in his Wimbledon plans regardless of any enquiries that might have come from either the BSPA or past promotions of the Dons ... it would take speedway to prove its revenue-stream would be worth sacrificing most or all of those flats to get it any further up the priority-list and that's pretty much impossible.

 

I haven't seen speedway mentioned at all in the past few months even when other non-greyhound activities have been mentioned like making sure the number of existing squash courts and the fitness club are part of this overall revamp.

 

But at least the Taggart project clearly keeps the sporting floorspace on the site in an oval shape that would be big enough to allow any possible future permanent installation of a speedway or stock-car track if noise regulations were to change in motorsport's favour.

 

The rival Galliard & AFC Wimbledon plan involves 650 flats on the site with the room for those extra flats created by having a much smaller rectangular sporting floorspace that would only be big enough for a football pitch with all the stands close into the touchlines and goal-lines.

 

That would leave the costly temporary installation of any motorsport track as the only option if the football stadium's built and, even then, the proximity of the seats to the pitch compared to somewhere like Cardiff-Millennium or Copenhagen-Parken would result in much smaller lap-lengths than at either of those SGP-venues, probably restricting the lap-length beneath the minimum allowed for FIM-events.

 

With the exception of the few Conference League years in the early-2000's and any challenge-match revivals either side of that, there hasn't been a Wimbledon speedway team competing week-in week-out for over 20 years so the distinguished earlier history of speedway's Dons means little to younger generations in that area.

 

But since Wimbledon FC left their ground at the other end of Plough Lane in the summer of 1991, there's always been either Wimbledon FC playing a few miles away at Selhurst Park or AFC Wimbledon building up again from non-league levels once the Football League controversially allowed the Selhurst-based team to switch to becoming the MK Dons at Milton Keynes so the concept of a Wimbledon-named football team has far more recent continuity than speedway can muster.

 

And there's also some desire within Merton Council to bring AFC Wimbledon back into the borough as a way of righting the shoddy way that council treated Wimbledon FC's efforts to find a new site in the borough in the early/mid-1980's when it was clear that football team's results were outgrowing its home ground even before the regulations after the Bradford fire and Hillsborough crush totally ruled out any worthwhile revamp of football's Plough Lane.

Edited by arthur cross

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Thanks for the update. Pascal Taggart's bid may well be the preferred option, given the support of the local residents association.

 

Here's hoping anyway.

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The greyhound woman comes over as very bigoted against football,which isn't going to help her campaign I feel.If she was more reasonable with her points it might come over better to the general public

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