2018: A Space Oddity

But stop waving your Robin Hood posters around for one second; there is going to be an exceptionally high price to pay for all of this. The last time England hosted a World Cup, the eight venues chosen didn’t have to do a thing to their stadia. In Euro 96, the only thing that was required of Nottingham was the building of a new stand at the City Ground. This time around, FIFA are going to want a stadium big enough to host a group stage match. Pride Park in Derby and the Walkers Stadium are big and modern enough to fit the bill, with a tweak here and there; the City Ground and Meadow Lane, on the other hand, aren’t.

And therein lies the problem.

We’ve been here before, of course; ever since the early 90s - when Brian Clough himself mooted the idea - the spectre of a Forest/County groundshare has loomed large. Forest can’t expand the City Ground – the Council own a strip of land that backs onto the Trent, as well as the freehold. Notts could expand Meadow Lane, in theory - but, bar the usual platitudes about  building the stadium up to in order to accommodate County’s forthcoming Champions League run, they don’t feature in the plans for Nottingham 2018.

Both grounds are perfectly adequate for their purposes. Forest couldn’t pack out the City Ground on a regular basis even when they were champions of Europe, and County would have to quadruple their average attendance before worrying about expansion. When you throw in Trent Bridge, Nottingham has one of the biggest concentrations of sports venues in the country - all a stone’s throw away from a railway station, something that other cities would kill for.

The way things stand at the moment, all that infrastructure, all that convenience – all that heritage, damn it - would be ripped up for a new stadium in Gamston that both clubs would struggle to fill on a regular basis. Go and ask the average Forest or Notts fan how they feel about that. Then ask them to stop swearing so much and shouting so loud. When you consider that this stadium could be hosting as little as two games at England ’18, there’s a distinct risk that the Gamston Enormobowl could prove to be a very costly pasty-faced pachyderm.

The solution is obvious; the new owners of Notts County put their money where their mouth is and agree to finally drag Meadow Lane into the 21st Century, with provisions to temporarily expand the stadium further for 2018. It’ll fit perfectly into the city’s admirable plan to make us a Green, sustainable World Cup venue, give the Maggies a real boost over Forest, save the city millions of pounds, and not shag everything over.

Otherwise, Nottingham 2018 risks benefitting everyone for a month at the long-term expense of the very people who actually go to watch football in Notts.