Great news IF true, having issues believing anything at the moment.
Also does it have to be in Coventry
If Stephen Vaughan is involved, he's been quoted as saying that this ideal solution is to play at the CBSA
I just can't see that as even realistic. Lower attendance, from Home and Away fans, would make it totally uneconomic. Seats at Championship games go for half or a third of what they do in the Premiership. An over 60 concession season ticket typically costs less than £15 per game. After ticket company costs, a good gate will not bring in much more than £40k-£50k. I doubt you can rent the CBSA for that, plus you surrender all food and drink sales to the CBSA owners.
I completely agree. I don't see how it's at all possible (unless he knows who is planning on buying the CBS).
All I was saying is that he's said that ideally they'll be playing the if a club did exist, which suggests that he's planning on staying in the conventry area
I understand that, but Coventry itself is a non-starter. It has what it needs in terms of rugby.
Wasps would need to find a soccer ground that has plenty of room, a pitch currently unconstrained by stands on at least three sides, and which would benefit from investment.
Wasps will not find a stadium that will have us at a price we can afford.
We cannot share with another rugby club.
It has to already have planning consent for use as a sports ground.
It has to be big enough for expansion.
Needs to be close enough to fast transport to London (to gain visits from the vast number of Wasps fans in London), but cheap enough that can be afforded.
It needs to be somewhere a championship/premiership club is not, but with access to schools who play rugby.
Looking at logistics alone you begin to see the problem. It was the same problem Wasps faced when having to leave High Wycombe, but they aimed too high (because of the Premiership need for a big stadium), and, like Icarus, they plunged to their death.
Wasps had the same problem trying to find a training ground, but resolved that just in time to see the team venture fail. So, now that training ground anchors any decision.
They need a ground on the transport corridor that is the Chiltern railway line and the M40 from London towards Henley in Arden. So, start circling the stations on the Chiltern line, but, for cost of land reasons, start north of Oxford. Now find M40 junctions that are close to those railway stations. Well, the railway stations to choose from are Banbury, Leamington, Warwick and Warwick Parkway. But, if you factor in the need for a local coach or walk to a ground, and a motorway junction and/or major road. You are left with Warwick Parkway and J15 of the M40, about 15 minutes drive from the EPIC centre in Henley.
The EPIC centre is not a practical medium term game day solution, but I guess at a push would do for a while.
Anyway, all I am doing is applying dispassionate logistics/distribution and financial logic to a problem, cutting through and ignoring the impractical rhetoric coming from Stephen Vaughan.
Wherever Wasps end up, it would have to be with the agreement of an existing sports club/ground.
As most of you will guess, I know my suggested area very well, having lived there for many years (decades).
There is only one site I can think of, but I have no idea who owns it, whether those two organisations that use it own it or rent it, and whether they would be open to an approach. It is Budbroke to the West of Warwick, maybe a hundred yards from new houses being built in Hampton on the Hill (which itself has Warwick Parkway to the North East and the M40 to the South).
Not a lot of choices. The women's team has already gone back down south, but what about the netball team? I guess they will end up at Warwick Uni.
Whatever, it will still need someone with money, and we will not bounce back to the Premiership. We have lost our team and coaches (not that I much lament the latter, despite how tough it will be for them and their families). I have no problem with Wasps not being in the Premiership, now or for the next few years. I think the Premiership is a broken model. there are not sufficient uber rich people around to keep it afloat.
Always a Wasp
