Luton travel to Griffin Park for the last time ever today, ahead of Brentford’s stadium move next term, with Hatters’ goalkeeping coach Kevin Dearden drawing comparisons between that and Town’s Power Court dream.
This is the west Londoners’ final season at their home of 115 years, as next term they will move into the brand-new 17,250-seat Brentford Community stadium, less than a mile away.
Luton have been trying to move home for the best part of six decades and, in January, they were given planning consent for a new 17,500-seat home at Power Court, with the aim of creating a sustainable future.
Dearden, who spent six years at Brentford in the nineties and made more than 200 appearances, said of his old employers: “I think they’re a club in the same situation as us. They can’t really grow unless they leave Griffin Park and we’re the same with Kenilworth Road.
“We’ll all be sad to see Kenilworth Road go because, over the last two years, that place has been rocking. It has been like a goal start for us in a lot of games, but the club needs to progress and Brentford’s the same.
“They’re moving to a (nearly) 20,000-seater stadium and I’m sure that will help push them further forward. It’s a similar sort of club and hopefully we can emulate their progress in the next couple of years.”
However, at present, the Hatters are somewhat in limbo with their moving plans because of a legal challenge to the planning permission for the associated Newlands Park mixed-use regeneration scheme at junction 10 of the M1.
While that also received planning permission in March, the club are now waiting to see whether Luton Council will have to defend their decision in the High Court. That’s after Capital & Regional, the owners of The Mall shopping centre, applied for a judicial review.
Both chief executive Gary Sweet and chairman David Wilkinson have hinted in recent match day programme notes that the costs incurred by the delays could affect their January transfer kitty.
On the pitch, however, the mood is more buoyant after Tuesday’s 2-1 win over Charlton ended a five-game losing streak.
Dearden said: “We go to Brentford on Saturday with a bit of confidence, with a bit of bubble in the camp and hopefully we can go there and continue the good performances that we put in. If we do, then we can get a good result.”
Unless you sack jones div 1 here we come he is clueless i ran a park team and with my wife in goal we would have done a better job it was called luton albion and compared to this man we were world champions