Relocation - the issues

By Simon Ashberry The club shop at Tattershall Road may be a little ramshackle but we like it. In fact, Boston Town fans like most things about the ground that's been our home for all but one of our 42 years. So it's not nice when you're told you have to move to a new stadium on the other side of town and have no choice in the matter. That was the situation we found ourselves in when we learnt the bombshell that the ground was being sold for housing without our knowledge to help fund a new home for our arch rivals Boston United. Sure, The Poachers are to get a new ground of our own in Wyberton as part of the double relocation but there are many football fans in Boston who feel unhappy about the way everything has been handled. There could be commercial advantages for Town to be located on the other side of Boston but now we learn that major opposition is brewing among residents in Wyberton. Do we really want to go where we're not wanted? And uneasiness among Pilgrims fans about the whole affair is is such that many of them are now openly hostile to their own club. At one point, they vented their anger on Ken Fox's independent Boston United website only to find it shut down by the club's then chairman Jon Sotnick. They have formed their own supporters' trust to make sure their voice is heard. And some are even threatening to switch allegiance to Boston Town in protest. Whatever the outcome, we should all remember that it was a similarly turbulent series of events that led to the birth of Boston Town - then Boston FC - in the first place. Then, as now, Boston Town exists to safeguard the future of football in Boston. November, 2006