Col U Play Down Ground Share
By Aston
May 24 2008
Colchester United have played down the chances of them starting their home campaign at Portman Road rather then their Cuckoo Farm ground.
Col U's new ground will be built in time for the new season but it may not have time to have gained its safety certificate before the League Cup first round where Colchester could be drawn away from home with no option to change the venue to the away teams ground so they are lining up a move to Portman Road for one game, but only as a last resort.
Col U Stadium Operations Manager Keith Turner: "That really is a last resort, but we don't want to go down that path if it's at all avoidable, there are a lot of people working extremely hard behind the scenes to ensure we do start the season at the new stadium, and it would be wrong to focus on the negative side of.
"The truth of the matter is I am very confident that everything will be ready, we might have small areas of the West Stand that may not be quite finished when the turnstiles open for the fans but those things will be finished fairly quickly.
"Hopefully we'll have an understanding public, and I'm sure they will be because once they get in and sample the views from the stands of the new stadium, as well as the facilities that are there, they'll see it really is fantastic compared to what people have put up with at Layer Road - it's in an entirely different league.
"It's going to go to the wire because we have to have a couple of ramp-up events before we're actually granted a licence to have our full capacity at the ground," he explained.
"So we'll probably have an open day and we'll quickly follow that with a friendly game or an alternative game of football where we could maybe get to half capacity before the season starts."
Source: The Telegraph
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