Another day, another story in the press about Bradford City's potential move away from Valley Parade. And today's, ironically, comes as City visit Accrington Stanley's Crown Ground - the venue, last season, of a reported attack on chairman Mark Lawn as he left the ground. It was an attack that led to Lawn threatening to withdraw his financial support for the club.
Lawn is clearly a massive City fan. He is clearly a business success. But in the four years he has been at the club, the two have not married. Having promised not to jeopardise the club's future by gambling with money, it's clear the board have. The rent on ground, offices and the associated rates and bills are clearly high - though we're hardly in a unique position here - but so too have been our playing budgets. It goes wrong, and Lawn starts publicly pointing the finger at one Gordon Gibb and yet again opts to air our dirty laundry in public.
It's not pretty. And it doesn't look entirely productive. Here we have three protagonists - in past, present and potentially future chairmen - alongside a council, while sport in the city of Bradford mirrors its other success and problems. Two iconic stadia. One a mirror into the past, a recent past, of ambition and dashed hopes. The other, looking nearly as tired and jaded as the days City were forced to play there in the months after the tragic events of May 1985.
So soon after the club and city remembered those tragic days with such dignity and grace, and so benevolently saved the Burns Unit, it's time for those very same protagonists to put petty differences to one side do exactly the same to find a solution. Or is this just symptomatic of a once-great city that is now down at heel?
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