Notts sport set for bright future

By Robin Chipperfield BBC Radio Nottingham

Forest's preference is for a new stadium in Clifton

It is shaping up to be a significant summer of sport in Nottinghamshire.

The county has hosted the women's FA Cup final for the second successive year, another Trent Bridge Test Match, and also the final Nottingham Open tennis tournament.

In addition, Trent Bridge has won the right to stage a large number of games in next summer's Twenty20 World Cup, and there are plans for a new 50,000 stadium for Nottingham Forest on the outskirts of the city.

Meanwhile, the announcement that Donington Park (on the Nottinghamshire/Leicestershire border) is to host Formula One's British Grand Prix from 2010 will also have a major beneficial effect on the economy of the city and its suburbs.

We can reveal that the main sporting organisations in Nottingham are working, together with the council, to bring other major sporting events to the city in the future.

If there's a major event to go somewhere in the country, probably outside of London, I want to feel that Nottingham can put its hat in the ring Forest chief executive Mark Arthur

It is believed that these could be events such as World Cup football matches, Guinness Premiership rugby finals and Uefa Cup finals.

"If there's a major event to go somewhere in the country, probably outside of London, I want to feel that Nottingham can put its hat in the ring in the future. And at the moment, it can't," commented Nottingham Forest chief executive Mark Arthur.

Forest publicly revealed last summer that they had plans to build a new stadium in Clifton to enable them to increase their own capacity and also to host World Cup matches in 2018, assuming the FA are successful in bringing the tournament to England.

"Not a lot has moved forward since we announced that we were looking at the possibility of going to Clifton," added Arthur.

"We were asked at that time to look at other sites, and we've been doing that.

Nottingham City Council's director of sport, leisure and parks, Hugh White revealed: "We're working with all of our sports clubs to realise their long-term potential. I don't think our clubs have settled on a particular site, and neither have we.

"We're planning for the long-term future. We've got to get this right."

There has been some speculation that Notts County would also have to move grounds, because of the city's Eastside and Waterside developments.

"You can never say never but for the foreseeable future, we will be playing football at Meadow Lane," Notts chairman John Armstrong-Holmes revealed.

As if to underline the growing unity between the city's sporting organisations, the chief executive of the National Ice Centre and chairman of Nottingham Rugby Ltd, Geoff Huckstep, supports Forest's bid to re-develop.

"It's absolutely vital that Nottingham has a stadium that can be part of the FA's bid to host the 2018 World Cup.

"The question that I would be asking my peers and the councillors would be 'What can we do to help Forest achieve that goal?'"

Nottinghamshire's Trent Bridge ground has recently been selected as one of the three venues (together with Lord's and The Oval) to host World Cup Twenty20 matches next summer.

Chief Executive Derek Brewer said: "It's important to remember that Nottingham is not competing with Derby or Leicester as is often thought.

"We're competing with the likes of Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and Southampton.

"And it's a very competitive environment, whether in cricket or any other sport.

"There's huge economic benefit to the region (by having major events). We believe the World Twenty20 will be worth many millions of pounds next year when it comes here," Brewer added.

"It's a major coup for the club, and also for the city."

Hugh White can see the benefits of top-class sport to Nottingham: "The 2003 Trent Bridge Test Match between South Africa and England produced �1.4m benefit to the city and the conurbation. And that was five years ago.

I'm convinced that Premiership rugby will come to Nottingham Nottingham Rugby Ltd chairman Geoff Huckstep

"We know that economic return has an impact back into the city."

Geoff Huckstep has also revealed that he can see a future for the Green and Whites in the Guinness Premiership.

"There's a major opportunity looming for Nottingham Rugby Club, because Leeds - who got relegated from the Premiership last season - have not got the financial resources that the likes of Northampton Saints have," he said.

"I'm convinced that it [Premiership rugby] will come to Nottingham."

But one of the city's major sporting venues has had its future thrown into doubt in recent years. The National Water Sports Centre at Holme Pierrepont failed to attract Olympic events in London 2012.

But Hugh White was not overly concerned: "Undoubtedly, it has a future.

"But we need to have a very clear vision and then provide a partnership approach to funding and supporting it."

Of course, it is easy to find the right words to say to appease your own clientele or electorate. But these men will be judged on what is delivered to Nottinghamshire in the coming years.

If we sit here in twenty years time, with Nottingham having hosted some of the great World Cup football matches, with Trent Bridge hosting another gripping Ashes contest, with Notts County back in the top flight of English football, with Nottingham playing in the Premiership final (ideally in the city), then we will probably owe these men a great debt.

Lofty ambitions for sure, but what is it they say about shooting for the moon?

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