How do you solve a problem like the Pickerings?

It is difficult to know exactly what Ben Pickering Ltd want with from Rockingham Road.

Other than a time machine to go back to a point when builders paid astronomical sums for any plot of land, of course.  Sorry chaps.  2007 isn't coming back again anytime soon.

With the council authorising wholesale building of cardboard hutches on any field that dares to be in sight of Kettering, builders aren't going to be falling over themselves to "snap-up" barely two acres of artificially leveled, poorly accessed land covered in steel and concrete.  Why should they?  Given they can build almost anywhere these days, why put themselves through all that hassle?

The seemingly moderate bids BP Ltd received when they tried to auction the site off a couple of years ago should have told them all they needed to know about the price of land these days.  Perhaps once upon a time Rockingham Road was worth multi-millions, and the people who owned the stadium were already dreaming about purchasing a small Caribbean island.  Well, tough.  In today's market, the place might just pay for you to buy a static caravan at Mablethorpe.  Provided you don't want a view of the sea....

When Ben purchased Rockingham Road (the biggest own-goal ANY football ever scored) for a figure thought to be no more than 50 grand, he made one of the best investment anyone has ever made.  He made his money back at least 20-30 times over.  Perhaps more.  And he still owned the asset.  Not bad when these days a top ISA will return a profit of 0.000000000000001%.

Without Ben in the picture, the current owners of BP Ltd haven't done quite so well.  They squeezed their golden goose too hard, once too often and encouraged Ladak to seek pastures of a more inbred nature.  So, instead of banking a regular income of £20 of £30K (rather than the 70K they wanted back in the Conference days) per year for the past 5-years they've managed to secure a return of precicely "f*ck-all", if you'll forgive this accountancy term.

So, now what does BP Ltd have?  A site no-one except the Poppies want.  In it's current condition, Rockingham Road is  not especially appealing.  As a cleared site it might be a better bet, but they obviously cannot afford to tear the ground down, or they'd have done it by now.

All BP Ltd have in their favour is a local council that hates Kettering Town FC so much it is happy for them to leave the site to both rot and overgrow, and strangely mute neighbours who don't seem to have complained about the state of the area.  But, if you live adjacent to Rockingham Road and want something done, feel free to contact your council, who have been keen so far to look the other way.

C'mon KBC - get off your f*cking arses!