By Keith Jenner
February 20 2004

The recently announced plans for the redevelopment of The Stoop ensures that the ground will meet the requirements for Premier Rugby for future seasons However, there has been some speculation on the message board as to whether the planned new capacity will be sufficient to cater for increased numbers of spectators if attendances continue to increase as they have over the previous seasons.

Meanwhile, over at London Irish, BrianC has been looking at attendance figures for all the premiership clubs over the last few seasons. Looking at these figures for the London(ish) clubs the thing that immediately strikes you is the large increase in attendance when teams have moved out of London.

These factors together raise some interesting questions. The first is obvious: will future capacity issues mean that Quins need to move away from The Stoop in the near future, despite current improvements?

The other questions are rather more contentious, and I probably won't make myself many friends for asking them. I do think that they need to be considered though.

- Should Quins consider moving grounds now rather than invest in a ground which may be too small in a few years?

- Should Quins consider moving, regardless of capacity issues, and try to gain the same benefits that Wasps and London Irish have seen from moving out of London?

- If it was decided to move from The Stoop then where should we go?


Let me state here and now that I'm not necessarily putting these forward as suggestions. They are worth consideration though, so let us have a look at the options.

Firstly, I would say that whilst nobody connected with Quins would like to see us abandon The Stoop, in these professional days if it was necessary in order for the club to survive and progress then there would be no room for sentiment. Probably the worst point about professionalism from the supporters point of view is that money is so much more important and affects all areas. Whether it be promotion and relegation, where a club plays or its name, the money men will have the final say.

As we know, the proposed improvements to The Stoop are necessary as we must have a capacity of 10,000 by 2006 to meet Premier Rugby ground regulations. According to the club, the proposed West stand contributes approximately 3,200 seats to bringing the capacity up to 12,500. Therefore, it seems that if planning permission isn't granted for the stand then we will not meet the target capacity. Unless there is a plan B, we would probably find ourselves having to look for a new ground instead.

The management appear to be confident that they will receive approval for the current plans, so for the moment we will assume that the applications will be successful. But what of the future?

In his recent interview with CAW, Mark Evans estimated the maximum capacity of The Stoop, if it was fully developed, to be approximately 14,000 which doesn't sound unrealistic to me. Evans also stated that he believes that it will be some way into the future before a ground that size was being filled regularly. I'm not quite so sure about this.

At present Quins are able to sell out The Stoop for the majority of games. The situation has been exaggerated by post World Cup fever, but we were selling out a number of matches even before Englands victory. It is very difficult to say how high the attendances would be if there was no limit, but considering how quickly the extra tickets for the North Stand extension sold out for the recent Saracens game, I suspect that we are capable of getting surprisingly high attendance's for some games.

My prediction is that the 12,500 seat Stoop will sell out at some point during the first season.

The club will obviously have done a lot of projections and will have satisfied themselves that the new stands are economically viable, so there is an argument that it doesn't matter from a financial point of view if there is excess demand. If fact it is good for the club as it will allow them to increase prices (obviously this is bad for us). The club will obviously be in a better situation if it is selling out a 12,500 seat stadium than the current one.

Therefore, from Quins point of view, the question of what will happen if the new development is still too small in the future is not a major issue just at the moment. However, let us consider the scenario (which I am very sceptical about) that rugby could become much more successful than it currently is, maybe even challenging football. If this unlikely situation arose then Quins would be hampered by the capacity of The Stoop, compared to some other premiership teams. The clubs who have access to larger grounds would be able to raise far more income from ticket sales than Quins could. However, there would always be the option of moving in the future and, in such a situation, the increased revenues which would come into the game would allow for the building of new stadiums to be considered along with other options. There is also the agreement with the RFU to use Twickenham, but I seriously doubt whether this is a realistic option.

In my opinion, the chances of the proposed capacity of The Stoop after the redevelopment seriously hampering the club are minimal. The management will obviously have considered such factors themselves and, as they are proceeding with the plans, we can assume that they reached a similar conclusion.


So, we have decided that the potential capacity problems can be ignored for the moment. So let us look at the next question. Should we consider moving away from The Stoop anyway?

As mentioned earlier, evidence shows that both London Irish and Wasps have increased their attendance's by moving away from London, to Reading and Wycombe respectively. Let us consider why that has happened.

It has been suggested that one factor is that they have moved to larger grounds, but I don't think that this is an issue. Neither club was selling out its previous venue before they moved, although London Irish wouldn't have been able to get the average attendances which they currently achieve had they stayed at The Stoop due to capacity restrictions. It is worth noting here that if we were still groundsharing with London Irish then the financing of the redevelopment may have been made easier as the cost would be shared in some way. On the other side of the coin, gaining permission would be harder as twice as many games would be played. Also, it has to be doubted whether the two clubs playing from the same ground would have been able to attract the attendance's to make the increase necessary.

That is one of the main reasons why Wasps and London Irish have been able to do so well since moving out of London. West London had too many premiership clubs competing for spectators. When I stay in London after a Quins match I often stay with friends who live in Acton. They are just over 5 miles from The Stoop, but if we went the other way, Loftus Road is only 2 miles away. So people who are in an ideal catchment area for Quins were also targets for Wasps until they moved to Wycombe. A few years earlier London Irish were also in the hunt.

Some people point to the large population of London and suggest that there should be enough people to go round a number of clubs. It isn't just rugby clubs who are competing for the leisure pound. The entertainment options in London are in a different league to those in Reading or Wycombe for example, and a far smaller percentage of the population are likely to attend rugby, even if they have an interest in it.

Another disadvantage of being in London is that it can put off people in the surrounding areas. Having been brought up in Farnborough, about 35 miles from central London, I was always surprised by the number of people who never ventured into the capital. Twickenham is quite easy to get to, but I know a lot of people who wouldn't consider it. If they were looking for a rugby club to follow then they would go to London Irish instead. This is backed up by the number of Irish shirts you see in the area.

So, should Quins follow Wasps and London Irish out of London? I really don't think that we should. As we are the only London team left, the problems with the competition for fans is much less than previously. There is still some competition from the likes of London Welsh, and Wasps and Irish still have a core support in the area, but we are the most likely team for the millions who live in West London to come to when they decide to try rugby out. Had the other teams not moved from London then some of those people who have come to The Stoop lately would have gone there instead.

I'm not sure where we would go anyway. Quins have a connection with Aldershot, but there are no decent stadiums in the area. There are some options on the South Coast (Brighton or Portsmouth for example), but I think they are too far away and the club would lose some of its existing support. The same goes for options in other directions (Oxford, Luton).

The main reason for staying put is that we wouldn't want to leave The Stoop anyway would we? There are definite advantages to having our own ground and the club should only leave if it has no choice. For this reason we must hope that the planning permission is granted for the new stands, as I certainly don't want to be having to go to Brentford, Loftus Road or Craven Cottage for Quins home games in the future.

The future of Harlequins is bright and that future is based at The Stoop Memorial Ground.