Sheffield FC chairman Richard Tims has said that the club remains committed to creating a ‘home of football’ in the city despite the team being named as a user of a new multi-million pound stadium at the Olympic Legacy Park.
The world’s first football club were named as one of the users of the new stadium during a press conference by Kevin McCabe, chairman of developer Scarborough Group, on Tuesday.
But Mr Tims said the club remained committed to its original plan to move to the Sheffield Transport Sports Club in Lowedges.
He said: “[The statement about us using the stadium] is not correct, it’s a training facility for us, not a match-day facility.”
He added: “We’ve got a site that we have secured in Sheffield to build a stadium, a visitors centre and a place for the home of football, so that is moving along all quite nice.”
The club’s chairman said that Sheffield FC’s move to the Sheffield Transport Sports Club in Lowedges still has “a few hurdles to overcome”.
Sheffield FC, who play the eighth tier of the English Football pyramid have played at the Coach and Horses Ground in Dronfield since 2001.
Mr Tims said the new ground in Sheffield was ‘two or three years away’ from its execution.
He said: “Dronfield has been a great stepping stone for us.
“To move back to the city and build on what we’ve started in Dronfield and letting people know where football kicked off is a massive part of it for us”.
Mr Tims’ comments come after Mr McCabe said that the “stadium will become home to Sheffield Eagles as well as accommodating Sheffield FC, who will be utilising it for men’s and women’s football.”
The 3,900-capacity stadium will be part of a £250 million development on the site of the former Don Valley Stadium.
It will also include a £20m diagnostic imagery research hub, to increase the speed and accuracy of diagnostics for the NHS.
A £5m Park Community Arena will also be built and become the new home of Sheffield Sharks basketball team.
Over the next five years, £150m will be spent on offices, a conference centre and a hotel arranged around a cricket oval.
More than 5,600 jobs could be created and the development could pump £2bn into the local economy.
Work is due to begin next month and the stadium is set to open by February 2022.
East Sheffield Sport 