when falmer is done what pub will you use pre match?

[nobody's dupe]

No prob's there ATF. He can whack-on an enormous extension, & concrete the pond so he can stick a load of tables on it. He could even do a BBQ (when the weather suits) 'n' all. The locals can come out & party with us. Perfick!

There's no chance that he would want the pond to be cemented over. He's looking forward to the next time it freezes over, because on Sunday the ex-Brighton Tigers fan was skating on Falmer Pond with a puck and ice hokey stick.

 

[Mellor 3 Ward 4]

Yes he probably does still have the mentioned newspaper cutting on display. It will be alongside the notices that declare:
Unruly children will be captured and sold as slaves.
Credit cards can only be accepted if the cardholder is seventy-five years old and accompanied by both parents.

If you managed to lighten up you might recognise some intended humour instead of boasting of your disgraceful wanton criminal damage. It's guys like you who give football fans a bad name.

Sorry but that's just plain Bollocks.

The landlord at The Swan was always one of the most outspoken opponents of the Community Stadium at Falmer.

His other "witty dittys" as above may be intended as humour, (we've never heard any of those ones before have we, yawn,) but his opposition to our new ground was certainly less than funny.

He may well have been prodded into action by those on FPC, but I for one will NEVER give him any of my hard earned cash.

Our only hope is that he retires in the next two years and an Albion friendly landlord takes over.

 

[Robbie G]

As someone who knows the uni pretty well these days, I would LOVE to know where these decent bars are!

Indeed i was thinking that. Not bad for students, but couldn't imagine swarms of football fans wanting to go there and, also, fitting in there!

 

[ATFC Seagull]

Mr Lovechild, I think it's taken as read that the stadium bars will be avoided if they are shit.

One of the problems the club has to address (and I think they are trying to - or rather they're not going to be allowed not to), is that the area around Brighton Station has plenty of decent pubs to choose from (Battle of Trafalgar, Evening Star, The Albert, The Nelson, Caxton, the Welly, the Eddy, and pushing it a bit further, the Basketmakers), and has to entice people from there up to the ground.

I would happily spend my money at Falmer Stadium if it were the right kind of bar or pub at the ground, especially as it goes towards helping the club. However, for me, any pissy Carlsberg/Tetley corporate bar would mean I stay in the City Centre until it's time to leave for kick-off.

I don't see this as a problem that the club need to address. Surely most clubs up and down the country don't have the majority of their fans drinking on their premises - they drink in nearby pubs. Wouldn't hurt to have the extra income, but surely not something they will bank on?

 

[Taybha]

ide rather set my bollox alight than go to that shyte hole again as previous threads explain, fooking cajun dingbat

 

[nobody's dupe]

Sorry but that's just plain Bollocks.

The landlord at The Swan was always one of the most outspoken opponents of the Community Stadium at Falmer.

His other "witty dittys" as above may be intended as humour, (we've never heard any of those ones before have we, yawn,) but his opposition to our new ground was certainly less than funny.

He may well have been prodded into action by those on FPC, but I for one will NEVER give him any of my hard earned cash.

Our only hope is that he retires in the next two years and an Albion friendly landlord takes over.

Is there nothing that you wouldnt want in your 'back yard?' I know there are lots of things I wouldn't want near me.

How surprising that the Falmer residents didn't want a football stadium in their back yard. How dare they use their democratic right to organise and petition to try and stop it. On the other hand its totally acceptable for us to fight in its favour because we want a football stadium no matter where they build it.

But that is now history. We have won and the owner of The Swan and Falmer residents have lost. It's time for both parties to look to the future, not the past.

 

[Buzzer]

Nobody's Dupe...with all due respect, it's going to take me a bloody long time to forgive or forget what those bastards on FPC and their supporters have done to us. They've spread lies, half-truths and smeared us football fans with enough bullshit (metaphorically) to fill a dozen virgin downlands.

Deliberate delays based on spurious claims with no other purpose than to see our club go under before we could get our stadium means that I'm not exactly brimming with magnanimity. Bollocks to them. They ain't getting my money.

 

[nobody's dupe]

You just wallow in your malice Buzzer and die a miserable sod.

 

[Buzzer]

And the merriest of times to you too. Why is it malicious not to want to drink where I'm not welcome?

 

[The Large One]

I don't see this as a problem that the club need to address. Surely most clubs up and down the country don't have the majority of their fans drinking on their premises - they drink in nearby pubs. Wouldn't hurt to have the extra income, but surely not something they will bank on?

Possibly, but the Albion fans have NEVER had any facilities (aside from within hospitality) with which to buy a beer within their own stadium, therefore no culture exists among Brighton fans to do so now. This is something the club must address if it wants that extra revenue.

I agree, I don't think the club will be banking on it, because most fans up and down the country do drink in nearby pubs, but there may be many reasons for that state of affairs, one of which (though probably not the main reason) is crapness of facilities at the ground.

I'm hoping Brighton can break that sanitised corporate trend because I would like the option of being able to drink at the ground as well as in my local.

Like you say - wouldn't hurt, would it?

 

[Mellor 3 Ward 4]

Is there nothing that you wouldnt want in your 'back yard?' I know there are lots of things I wouldn't want near me.

How surprising that the Falmer residents didn't want a football stadium in their back yard. How dare they use their democratic right to organise and petition to try and stop it. On the other hand its totally acceptable for us to fight in its favour because we want a football stadium no matter where they build it.

But that is now history. We have won and the owner of The Swan and Falmer residents have lost. It's time for both parties to look to the future, not the past.

Of course they had the right to fight their corner.

However some of the things he said, and FPC said about our Club and us as Fans were quite unbelievable. The lies, the misinformation - you seem to have forgotten that without some of the untruths that were told we would already be at Falmer by now.

As for moving on, I see that FPC are still objecting to the changes in the Stadium design. No doubt the landlord at The Swan has written in to object to those too.

Sorry, but the bloke is an ARSE.

 

[Man of Harveys]

You just wallow in your malice Buzzer and die a miserable sod.

Weird response. Those people tried to kill my and Buzzer's football club for purely selfish and totally unreasonable reasons, using highly dubious lies to do so. Forgive me if some of us struggle to forgive them for trying to do so; we're obviously bad, wicked and bitter people to a man. f*** them.

 

[nobody's dupe]

Enlighten me. What were the lies that they told?

 

[Horton's halftime iceberg]

Enlighten me. What were the lies that they told?

Hotel Falmer for one

 

[Storer68]

What's wrong with watching the Albion sober?

eeeez not pozzible

 

[Lady Whistledown]

I think the best thing to say is that the bloke's entitled to his opinion on Falmer, as are we all. I have no intention of saying anything offensive about him at this point, as to my mind, it's all over now.

Equally, however, I shall be exercising my right never to give him so much as a penny of my money, and I'm sure I won't be alone in that. He doesn't want the Albion there, fair enough, but that being the case he has no right to profit from the club's impending presence either.

 

[Sweeney Todd]

The Caxton Arms, as ever.

Is the landlord of The Swan still insisting that no football fans will be allowed in his pub before matches?

 

[Storer68]

Enlighten me. What were the lies that they told?

these for a start

Residents against Falmer
Here, Falmer Parish councillors, Eric Huxham, Tom Carr, Melanie Cutress, John Burt and Doris Williams explain why they believe the site will not work.

Although Brighton and Hove Albion persist in saying Falmer is the only site for their proposed 25,000-seat stadium, not all site-development problems are being revealed.

Falmer Parish Council chairman Eric Huxham Falmer Parish Council has spent a long time researching the site and has talked to many of the key players who will have influence on its feasibility.

Despite Albion's claims, it will not be possible to develop Falmer. There is no partnership with the universities and transport and environmental problems are insurmountable.

This is why two years have elapsed with no sign of a planning application.

For a start, the eight-acre site at Falmer is too small. Already, Brighton University has turned down a scheme to knock down three university buildings to allow more room. No modern stadium built in recent years has been on a site of less than 12.5 acres. The current site at Withdean is 14.6 acres and the brownfield Brighton station site is 13 acres.

With such a small site, there is no room for any commercial development to help fund the stadium. Consequently, the club says a stadium at Falmer would have to be used seven days a week to pay its way via hospitality and conference events.

They also see about 56 other large-scale events per year, including pop concerts for 35,000 fans, to help finance it. This puts the stadium on a totally different footing to Withdean, which, on average, is only used every other Saturday during the football season.

A stadium at Falmer would be generating traffic and transport problems seven days a week and the transport infrastructure has to be able to cope with crowds of 25,000 to 35,000.

So how would people travel to an out-of-town stadium? If Brighton and Hove Albion want an out-of-town stadium for 25,000 people for football matches and other big events, then there has to be effective transport.

Throughout the country, football clubs are situated in built-up areas where they can be accessed by a variety of means of transport. Most people elect to drive and then park in purpose-built stadium car parks or streets around the stadiums. This will not be possible at Falmer.

As the site is so small, there is no room for a stadium car park. Both universities have refused permission for their car parks to be used and so has Southern Water.

Where would all the cars park? In their own site assessment, the club say that parking is needed for 5,200 cars. So where will all the cars go? When people like to arrive near kick-off time and leave at the final whistle, the car is the main means of transport.

No waiting around or queuing. No having to change buses or trains to get across Brighton. The car remains the first choice of transport for independence, cost and speed.

But if there is no car parking then public transport will have to cope with crowds of 25,000 people. This is fantasy!

Much has been made about Falmer having a railway station to enable people to use trains to access a stadium but nothing has been said about its problems. Falmer station is small and can only take four-carriage trains, about 400 people. The football club cannot afford to expand the station so instead they have suggested a train-shuttle service. With signalling restrictions, the most frequent service would be every ten minutes.

To take just 6,000 fans from Brighton station to Falmer would take two-and-a-half hours. At the end of a match, fans would be penned up for two-and-a-half hours, waiting for trains.

Who wants to wait? How would the crowds be held and contained? There would be the problem of segregating 'away' fans. How could tiny Falmer station possibly handle all this?

What about park and ride or the local bus services? How would they cope with thousands of football fans? It would take 60 double-decker buses to drive 6,000 fans from Brighton to Falmer.

Where would these extra buses be conjured up from? With no stadium car parks, where will they safely unload and pick up? How long would it take to load and unload so many people? Will people be bothered to wait?

The A27 at Falmer is already the busiest stretch of the Brighton bypass with 30,000 vehicles a day. The B2123 to Woodingdean and Rottingdean is also struggling with the volume of traffic and this road is the only access road to the proposed stadium site.

This road could not cope with the extra traffic a football stadium would bring. The knock-on effect of traffic on Woodingdean and Rottingdean would be horrendous.

The issues at Falmer are not comparable with Withdean, which handles an average crowd of 7,000 once every two weeks.

If the club want a 25,000-seat stadium they will have to be able to handle crowds of this size, crowds for the extra 56 big events and the extra traffic for daily conference and hospitality events.

At Withdean, the football club have exhorted fans to be on their best behaviour and use public transport. But more and more people park outside the exclusion zone and walk to the stadium in a few minutes.

With no streets around Falmer and no stadium car park, this would be impossible. The railway station and bus services could not possibly cope with 25,000 people.

The whole set-up appears to be a disaster in the making. Could this be Brighton and Hove Albion's Millennium Dome disaster?

A project of this size carries a high financial risk. It remains to be seen whether the club can raise the money to construct the stadium. It cost Bolton Wanderers £31 million to build their Reebok Stadium by 1997.

Running a 25,000-seat stadium carries even more risk. Reading FC in the second division are losing between £2 and £3 million a year and their stadium is designed for seven days a week, mixed events use.

Moreover, Falmer is a greenfield site, which lies in the South Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). There are conservation areas immediately on two sides - Stanmer and Falmer village.

Environmental damage, including atmosphere, visual impact, and noise and light pollution would be severe.

Football fans seem very dismissive of these facts but they need to realise that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to commercially develop land within the AONB.

Football stadiums built in recent years have been on brownfield sites because national planning policy is opposed to building stadiums on greenfield sites.

There is great danger in nibbling away at downland as it will set a precedent for future development.

Brighton and Hove Council cannot on the one hand choose to protect the AONB and favour the South Downs becoming a National Park and then allow a football stadium to be built at Falmer, which is part of the AONB.

Its policies must be consistent.