WAKEFIELD TRINITY’s brilliant Super League stadium progress continues, with the new East Stand looking almost the part.
Whilst progress on the field has been slow, the same cannot be said of the progress off it with the club still on target to reach the August planned date for the East Stand to be in use.
To bring the Super League club into line with minimum standards, work has gone up quickly and impressively ahead of what will be a crucial number of years for all 36 professional clubs under the new guidance from IMG.
Chairman John Minards had previously told League Express that without the redeveloped stand, Wakefield may not have been a Super League team: “I just don’t think we would have been allowed in Super League because Super League had minimum standards.
“We were failing in terms of the stadium and we fell short of it. We were operating under an annual dispensation from the RFL adn that can’t go on forever.
“It hadn’t been withdrawn but our view is you can’t run your business on the basis of an annual exemption. You have to take it seriously.”
Minards had also explained that the plans for redevelopment were in place before IMG came onto the scene:
“We were intent on doing this before IMG came on this scene,” Minards continued.
“When I first got involved with the club back in 2018, I said priority number one is the ground – we knew we had to do something.
“50 years of me watching this club and it wasn’t fit for purpose in the 1970s, but there have been lots of false dawns.
“Whenever I posted anything about the stadium, the first reply was “I’ll believe it when i see it” and I would have said that as well, but now we are seeing it.
“We wouldn’t be in Super League now. We were on notice and we took that seriously. There was no point if not, we wouldn’t be here today.”
