Stadium for Cornwall will happen – Durkin
CORNISH Pirates chairman Paul Durkin has reassured fans that plans for a proposed Stadium for Cornwall – and the dream of Premiership rugby – are still very much alive.
The long-running project looked “dead in the water” in June when Cornwall Council, who had pledged £3 million to match a similar amount of Government funding originally promised by former PM David Cameron – but never delivered – withdrew support for the stadium from its budget.
But Durkin says: “It is very much alive and will It was a bit of a shock to be told that we weren’t going to get public finance but when I became chairman six years ago that was not the plan all along – it was only a couple of years later that we decided to apply for public money.”
The stadium in Truro would be home for the Pirates and Truro City football club, who are currently based in Plymouth after their old ground was sold for development.
But when the Council pulled out long-term partners Truro and Penwith College, who were also to have facilities at the site, also withdrew.
But Pirates are determined not to give up on their dream. “We are actively pursuing investworks
ment opportunities,” Durkin revealed. “We are looking for new investors and that’s not just within Cornwall, that’s spreading it right round the world as well.
“What we have to do and what we are planning to do is that we will start off with a smaller stadium than we would have wished and we hope the groundhappen. will start at the end of next month or October.
“That’s the plan at the minute and we believe we have enough funding to get that stadium up and running within 15 months.
“The idea is that parallel with that we will be pursuing those investors and will be able to move to a full
stadium in stages to the size and capacity required for both Truro City and the Cornish Pirates to get promotions when they are ready to do that.”
Durkin added: “The interesting thing as to what size the stadium needs to be for Premiership rugby is that it is definitely under consideration again at the RFU.
“At the present time it is 10,001 for the capacity but there are moves now to get that reduced to 5,000 which will make it a lot easier and make it a lot quicker for Premiership rugby if we were to have a stadium to accommodate that.
“So we will take our time, we will something up and running within 18 months and then we will build accordingly.
“The idea we had of a big stadium – that planning permission is in place going forward. It hasn’t changed and so, whatever we build, will be in a way that we can build further from that.
“I can assure you that the stadium is not dead. We are moving forward and we are moving forward as fast as we possibly can. There’s a lot of work to be done and we’ll keep on going.”