PICTURES of Connah’s Quay Nomads at Colliers Park has again raised questions from some Wrexham fans of why can’t the Reds can’t return to their old training ground.

Colliers Park in Gresford used to be Wrexham’s training base before Glyndwr University took it over and now it’s a top Football Association of Wales facility.

For more than 10 years, The Reds have used various facilities which included the Lex XI ground at Stansty, Carden Park and the old council playing fields at the Nine Acre site in Rhosnesni.

The club are now looking to utilise another site in the town at the old Groves School and have called a Special General Meeting on Saturday to discuss those plans.

It prompted fans to ask questions ahead the meeting and the club revealed those in their latest weekly update.

In responding to the question ‘Why is this option better than Colliers?’ a club statement read: “This question assumes that Colliers is available to us as an option. It isn’t.

“We have held conversations with the owners and we have managed to secure some capacity at night for our youngsters and our ladies teams. We are grateful to our friends at the FAW for their help with this.

“However the site is in use during the daytime and our access would be limited. We are not the only club in North Wales, or Wrexham. Whenever the FAW needed it for one of its teams we would be forced to make alternate arrangements.

“Furthermore it would come at an annual cost which we would not have to find at the Groves. Any of those issues could be applied to alternate sites around the town. Our friends at the Council are basically gifting us the land and our costs are limited to preparing pitches.

“Any alternate site would still require us to spend that money or pay rent or be prepared to find an alternate site when our landlords needed to use the facilities.

“We used to own Colliers but it was taken away from us.

“Finding a new site has been a long and exhausting task. The damage caused to our club did not disappear when it was bought. We live with that legacy today.”

Here’s some more of the questions that were put to the club’s board.

How will the investment be funded? ​If the scheme was voted through we are 18 months away from being able to start any work. Funds would need to be set aside from income to make the initial changes to the site needed as well as fundraising with the support of the owners (you the members).

Regardless of the site location this approach would be the same. Our strategy would be to create pitches only in any phase one to minimise cost unless there is some other windfall for the club in that time period. Ultimately Wrexham AFC requires somewhere to train and therefore this is a normal part of any football club i.e. funding training facilities.

Has the money already been provided for? No.

Why? It has taken us a little while to get to this point as you can see from the presentation talks started in 2018/19 season.

The financial fortunes of the club have changed in the period since then with a poor season in 2019/20 compounded by losing 25 per cent of our home fixtures and C-19 wiping out all income for a period of five months and counting.

We spend as we go along. Remember the club will still face these costs on any new development plus the cost of securing the site and related costs. This option, thanks to the support of our partners, is the best value option for your club.

Has cost inflation and contingency indexation been added to cost estimate to take it to likely date of start on site? The presentation element calls out that the figures shown are the quotes provided by potential suppliers and are a point in time.

We are realistic that to begin with we are likely to only be in a position to create pitches and not the other parts of the proposed development which could be some years away and therefore are an indication only of what it might cost and would need to be re calculated.

What happens if the covenants aren’t lifted and our lease on Nine Acre ends? We would need to investigate other options at that point in time.

Our investigation to date shows that this is the very best option in our view as we obtain a 7.3 acre piece of flat land less than a mile from the Racecourse effectively for free.