THE recently-published plans for the Edgar Street grid are an exciting blueprint which, if it all comes to fruition, will give the city and county a huge boost and provide a tremendous vision for the future prosperity of the city.

While the plans remain rather vague, it appears that the football ground will be required to move 70 yards down the car park and be re-aligned.

My initial reaction from the plans is that a lot of the reason for moving the ground is to benefit the Courtyard Theatre. It will open up a more pleasing aspect for the theatre with a square in front and walkways from the town centre, lined with cafes and eating places, and from the railway station.

Rather than moving the ground, I would have thought that it was a lot cheaper to redevelop the present site. We have one stand which has a reasonable life expectancy, so three sides of the ground could be redeveloped while we are still operating from the site.

That would not be too difficult but moving 70 yards down the car park means a whole new ground and considerable expense.

And it is a logistical nightmare to build a ground, or part of it, while you are still playing there.

If the plan is aimed at improving all the links with the theatre, then surely it begs the question of whether it would not be cheaper to move the theatre instead.

The plans also beg the question of where we stand. What rights do we have when we are sub-tenants of the Richardsons and Carillion - with whom we've had no contact in, probably, six months - and Herefordshire Council own the freehold?

We are delighted to be included in a quality development but from the wording of the brief it does not appear that the football ground project would be done in the short term.

That leaves the scenario of continuing to patch up the current Edgar Street and that creates a problem. It's important to stress that the ends are safe - independent structural surveyors and council engineers look at that aspect of the ground regularly and safety is of paramount importance to us. But what is the point of spending a lot of money on something which is going to be torn down not far into the future?

We would like to know what is the time scale and how will it all be financed. Despite a bad result on Saturday, in my very biased opinion the football club is still of tremendous value to the city.