JUST two weeks after Saints plans for a new Dell were finally agreed neighbours Pompey have hit back with an £80 million stadium development.

The Portsmouth scheme will mean the redevelopment of Fratton Park and include a huge retail site plus a new £30 million stadium.

The development, to be called the Pompey Centre, will open in August 2002 and involve a 90 degree rotation of the current stadium.

Its opening will be one year after the new £30 million 32,000-seater Saints stadium in Northam, which was given the go-ahead by club shareholders earlier this month.

First division Pompey are announcing an enlarged ground as part of a joint venture with Sellar Property Group at a press conference this afternoon.

In May the club, which was on the verge of financial ruin, was taken over by Yugoslavian-born electronics magnate Milan Mandaric.

The millionaire owner, who is stumping up a third of the stadium costs himself, made a new stadium one of his main pledges to fans.

He immediately entered into talks with the Sellar Property Group which had snapped up the Fratton Goods Yard site next to the existing stadium.

Sellar Property Group spokesman Chris Skyrme said: "It's a very exciting development. The ground is staying at Fratton Park and the stadium is going to be enlarged.

"It will also be a commercial retail development." A spokeswoman for Portsmouth City Council, which would have to grant the scheme permission, said they had not yet received any details of the new stadium.

"We look forward to receiving the application which we expect today."

Pompey, currently mid-table in the first division, moved to Fratton Park in 1899. The first match was played there in September that year. Its present stadium, some of which dates from the 1920s, has a capacity of just 19,500.

But the Fratton End grandstand was built just 18 months ago, when Terry Venables was chairman.

Pompey's attempts to build a new stadium have been blighted by its financial problems and difficulty in finding a suitable site.

In the early 1990s they tried to move to Farlington, on the edge of the city but the plan flopped when bosses fell foul of geese, which flock to the area during annual migration.

The plans for the new Saints and Pompey stadiums comes as fellow South-Coast club Bournemouth continue discussions for a £10.5 million 14,000-seater redevelopment of its Dean Court ground.

Saints director Andrew Cowen thought the future looked rosy for the sport: "With significant progress being made at Dean Court, St Mary's and now Fratton Park, the position of South Coast football has not looked better for some time."

Converted for the new archive on 25 January 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.