Aston daring to dream as Eagles confirm stadium plans

Sheffield Eagles coach Mark Aston is very happy with the plans for a new stadium for his club.

The club are scheduled to move into the newly-built structure in March 2016. The facility will include a school, university technical college and a hotel.

“I’m pinching myself because it means Eagles have finally landed in Sheffield,” Aston told local reporters.

“We’ll have a facility that is a rugby league ground first and foremost instead of a football stadium, an athletics arena or a dog track. It will be our home.”

The stadium will feature a state-of-the-art 4G pitch, measuring 70m by 100m, giving the team plenty of scope to play an entertaining brand of rugby.

“As a professional club, we’re in the entertainment business,” Aston added.

“We need to entertain, play football and challenge ourselves. What we want is for people to walk away from watching games at this new stadium and say, ‘That was great. I really enjoyed it.’

“Different fields don’t allow you to be able to do that, but this one is a state-of-the-art 4G surface.

“We use a 3G pitch for training at Sheffield Hallam, so it won’t take us as long to adapt to it as it might have done.

“It is important it is used by the school as well; it gives us an opportunity to involve kids.

“When we relaunched the club 15 years ago, we talked about giving a kid a dream.

“I don’t only want kids to dream about playing professional rugby league; I want them to dream about captaining Great Britain and playing at Wembley.”