How Wasps' ground share news has been received by football club's fans

Wasps’ potential move to The Valley in a ground share with League One’s Charlton Athletic has been met with fear by the football club’s fans over the damage it could do to the pitch.

It was reported by The Times last week that Wasps, who went into administration in 2022, “are believed to have secured use of The Valley — where a new hybrid pitch has been laid — as they eye a return to competition ‘at the highest possible level'”.

This move would be ahead of a potential return to action for Wasps next season in the Championship, with the league set to be expanded to 14 teams.

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It was also reported that the two-time European champions still harbour ambitions to build a stadium in Sevenoaks in Kent.

Sharing a stadium is familiar territory for Wasps, who had played at Queens Park Rangers’ Loftus Road, Wycombe Wanderers’ Adams Park and Coventry City’s Coventry Building Society Arena in the professional era. Charlton too have shared their ground with Super League’s London Broncos in the past.

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Wasps’ plans were recently discussed on the Charlton Live podcast, where host Louis Mendez said that the story has been “overblown” and that “there might not be much to it”.

The greatest fear for fellow podcaster Mark Newbury is the damage a rugby union side could do to the pitch- a new hybrid surface that has only been laid for this season.

“It seems strange that we’d spend money putting a new surface in and then let someone say ‘oh yeah let’s play some rugby on it’,” he said.

“I don’t think it’ll happen. It may have been one of those things that people put out there as a taster to see what the feedback would be.

“I don’t know much about Wasps’ home crowd, whether they would suddenly bring in two, three, four, five thousand or whether the club would say if you’ve got a season ticket you get half-price tickets or something. It’s a stadium which needs to make money so I would rather if they did want to do something they would put a concert on or something.

“But as for the rugby, I can’t see it and if it were Wasps, again you’ve got to look at the long-term planning and go ‘we’ve got a lovely pitch, would that affect us?’ Because I don’t think they’d be happy if we’d have to re-lay it halfway through a season – you know how our winters get here – and not be playable and we have to call games off, which would be embarrassing for a club of our nature.

“So I think it was one of those ones put out there to get a tickle to see if anyone was interested and pick up some feedback for free. I can’t see it, so I wouldn’t start worrying about it now, to be honest.”