By John Walsh

Last updated 12:42, Friday, 08 August 2008

Workington Comets supremo Keith Denham is raging that the club has been frozen out of super stadium plans – despite a crowd boom.

This season attendances have gone up by 14 per cent on last year – averaging about 1,300 – at a time when speedway is feeling the pinch.

Denham, above, said he is angry and mystified as to why the speedway team appear to have been marginalised on talks over the stadium project in Workington.

He said: “We have been the best supported sports team in Workington for a while now, and we are doing even better this year against all the odds.

“It upsets me that we have hardly been considered in all the arguments that have been raging over the so-called super stadium plan by Allerdale Council.

“Their main option is for a stadium which would house the Reds and the Town and all that is said about speedway is that there is no guarantee of the Comets’ future after 2010.

“Town, for one, should hope there is because the money that we have given them over the last nine years has kept them going. They would have been in deep trouble without it.

“I very much hope that we will be riding speedway at Derwent Park from 2011 and that the option to improve the two existing stadiums is taken up.

“I have looked at what is required at Borough Park and that could be done for less than £2 million. Considering where they see themselves in the future and the number of people watching them that would be adequate for them.

“Something similar, perhaps even a little more, could be spent on Derwent Park for the same reasons.

“To talk about a 10,000 seater stadium when the two clubs hardly pull 1,000, and to marginalise the team in the town which draws almost twice as many is crazy.

“Costs appear to be rising all the time and if we’re not careful we are going to have a Wembley on our hands here. The latest figure I’ve heard is £24 million.

“I tell you what, they are going to need to be very brave men who will make a decision to take £18 million from the sale of the community’s land, get a few more million in grants and then spend it on a white elephant. I wouldn’t be brave enough to do that.

“If we do end up with two revamped stadiums then the only thing that I expect for the Comets is that we would not have to pay rent for our use of the place.”