Battle for the Valley

paulsturgess

Just read this for the 2nd time (first was about 15 years ago when i was only about 10) cover to cover in the space of about 4 days. I would advise it to anyone on here; it's a good way to make yourself feel much more positive about the situation we are in now.

The book ends before we are back at the Valley, with the intention at that point still to reopen the East Terrace with "all-weather seating" when we finally returned; there's even a picture of seating in situ on the terrace. Why did this fall through by the time we actually returned?

Off_it

In a word - cash.

Plus, outdoor seating isn't the greatest idea really, is it?

paulsturgess

No obviously agreed, but it's not the worst either (we had it at Gills last year), and moving back to a ground with only 8,300 capacity wasn't ideal was it, and I'm sure there were plenty who would've sacrificed sitting in the open air if it had meant they'd got a ticket for the first game back.

Plus with respect to cash, the pic in the book showed they'd already gone so far as installing the seats and I wouldn't have thought the costs of getting it open would have been that high to outweight the cash of being able to flog an extra 2k tickets. But I'm sure I'm wrong! Just wondered...

LenGlover

I believe that there were health and safety problems regarding the safety of the East Terrace at the time and Greenwich Council (?) or other body would not permit its use until remedial works were carried out which happened prior to the construction of the East Stand.

Airman Brown is the expert though and my memory could be playing tricks.

paulsturgess

Yeh well I'm aware that was an issue and it says as much in the book; it's just the picture that's confusing me, would've thought the Club wouldn't have gone so far as installing the temp seats without getting that sorted.... but then there were a lot of mistakes along the way so I guess not