If you are a member of Discord, you might wish to give my post and question about Discord and Comms a like/reaction here, please? [Link] You can't respond, since it is in a closed channel only open to DTB members to reply to. Many thanks. :o)

You’ll notice I addressed you directly there, Nick, not hiding behind use of the third person…

Not sure anyone’s blaming DD, Nick. There can’t be many football clubs who’ve built a £33m stadium by committee with amateur enthusiasts working for free in their lunch break. We got what we paid for.

Yeah. Increased transparency on our finances feels like something to push for.

100% agree about the vision of greatness for the third floor and I have no understanding of why our packed football stadium is not making a great profit as the outlets couldn’t be any busier. The only answer can be that we didn’t do the right deals with the people who are contracted to run each part of the stadium and they are the ones who are making the money.

Nice to see that the flippant comments are back. The comparison between quotes from people who have stood up to be counted and actually done something (which I am quite sure has taken its toll) and our rugger bugger who can’t leave it alone speak volumes.

Understood Nick but if there was no plan to make anything of a third floor then scratch it off the plan surely? Doesn’t add capacity, doesn’t increase revenue and does increase build and ongoing maintenance costs.

The vast corporate area was sold as the gold plated income making saviour of fans owned, along with good sponsorship at the new venue.seems to have been a massive flop, people can shout covid but that was 4 years ago,and the grounds been nearly full to the brim

DD is 100% correct. Big building projects are calculated on a price per square meter, but none of them ever come in under budget. It just is not possible to account for every variation and every unforeseen problem under the ground. If you factored every eventuality into the per square meter cost it would be an unworkable amount and nothing would get built. I’m not convinced that building the third floor was the part of our ground that put us over the budget because as DD says it is integral to achieving our ultimate capacity. The problem is that we haven’t yet worked out how to make it recover some of the outlay. Anyone involved in a project of this size will tell you that the number of decisions that have to be made, very quickly, every day are almost mind bending and sometimes you can make the wrong call. It’s how you deal with the problems created that you are judged on.

It’s ffffffargin’ fixture day.

Fair dos, Trigs. That £10m debt has bought some amazing views of Summerstown tower blocks out of the office windows.

I feel fully gaslit thanks DD. How many designs would we have got for £10m of fans’ money?

The thing about large one-off building projects is that the cost tends to go up and up while detailed design work progresses. In an ideal world, the contingency you build in from the outset should be large enough to cope with that. But there are plenty of much more experienced sponsors of major projects (Wembley, White Hart Lane, HS2, etc etc) that have got that wrong. And £25k of design work wouldn't have got us very far. Anyway, I'm not best placed to answer questions about the very early design choices, and I'm off to bed. Goodnight folks.

Thanks nick. I’ll rest my weary head a little lighter tonight.

Thanks, DD, but surely someone was doing the sums? I read or heard that a quick decision was required and Erik made it. Whether we ultimately survive or not, may rest on it.

TF no pop at you, just being a bit cryptic as I wasn’t sure if DD was going to respond to your question. I am guessing that a lot of people who post in here, hadn’t realised how much incite DD has into how our beautiful home, became what it is.

*obviously that’s “no” revenue

Thanks DD. If we couldn’t afford the money for multiple designs did that end up with us having a £10m deficit for a stadium design that has left us with a £10m debt and an extra floor that generates bo revenue?

Aw, thanks Nick. I've only been in there once, but it was a computer server room that they decided wasn't needed for a computer server.

Trigger: I joined the board when the initial design work was well underway, albeit that the design process continued to progress through different levels of detail thereafter. Pete: I don't think it's right that the 3rd floor was Erik's call. The design brief given to the designers was for 20,000 (not quite sure how that was arrived at) and, given the relatively small footprint, I believe that necessitated 3 levels. I think it's worth bearing in mind that: (1) some of the decisions had to be made pretty quickly, given the pace to which Galliard et al were working; and (2) design work costs money - we wouldn't have been able to afford designs for multiple configurations.

Nick I’m sorry mate I don’t understand the meaning of that post but I am interested 😊

By the way TF I’m not suggesting that having the Dundonald room in our stadium is an undeserved recognition of a lot of unpaid hard work. Dundonald has certainly put a proper shift in over the years.

nick - Thanks for that. Not been inside the new ground, so not familiar with layout. DD - I read somewhere that the 3rd floor was solely Erik's call.

TF, do you have a room in Plough Lane named after you. No neither do I, but one of our posters does and it’s not on the third floor.

Were you on the board during the stadium design phase DD?