News has emerged that Saints have been in talks with Portsmouth FC about ground sharing at a new state of the art stadium complex on the M27 corridor.
It has emerged that Jisheng Gao and Portsmouth owner Michael Eisner have been holding secret talks in Shanghai about opening the first Disneyworld in England and the focal point will be what Pompey insiders describe as will be the biggest and bestest stadium in the country.
Eisner of course has a history of being involved in Mickey Mouse organisations having worked for the Disney Corporation for many years as CEO and turned to Pompey to reignite his career being surrounded by people in funny outfits who don't speak.
When Disney approached Eisner in 2018 just after he joined Pompey as owner, he saw the potential and the enormity of the project and knew that it would not be one he could handle on his own so sent a tweet to Jisheng Gao inviting him for talks.
Since then things have esculated and a large amount of land near Swanwick is now subject to contract and the plans are set to be announced in a press conference at noon today (April 1st)
However there are still a few sticking points that although not likely to be insurmountable could be tricky.
Firstly there is the issue of exactly where the stadium should be located Disneyworld Swanwick as the complex will be called is set to be built just north of Swanwick railway station in an area stretching from Whiteley in the East to Botley in the North West an area of some 25 square miles, but where should the stadium be.
There is of course the issue of disease, Southampton has been plague free since 1665, however Portsmouth has not been so lucky, they have had various outbreaks of the Plague since medieval times although in fairness the last one was almost 15 years ago now.
But The Black Death is different, there have been cases of that on Portsea Island as recent as last July and it has never been truly eradicated.
The Hamble River has always been a natural defence keeping Southampton safe from virus's carried in South East Hampshire and it will now get it's just rewards with the Stadium set to be built across this mighty river.
The plans will reveal that the new Fratton End and the Pompey half of the SCS will be on the eastern side of the Hamble, whilst the Saints half will be safely on the Plague free side, there will also be barriers ensuring that the Blue Few will now be able to walk around the stadium outside of the west end concourse.
A second stumbling block is the capacity, it had been felt by both parties that 80,000 would be sufficient and Portsmouth initially agreed before the Pompey supporters club realised that this would be the capacity of the ground as a whole and not just the new Fratton End.
Pompey fan groups have commissioned their own architects and are now lobbying for a modified stadium with a capacity of around 150,000 of which 80,000 will be at the Fratton End.
They commissioned a survey which found that out of 85,000 at Wembley yesterday only around 14 possibly 15 were Sunderland fans and the other 84,985 were Pompey (innit)
Although they feel that 80,000 might not be enough capacity for their end, in order to push things through they are willing to compromise at this figure.
The third stalling point is that we have never had a firm, no one seems to know what this means, but they are insisting that this clause is inserted into the contract, that the words "Saints have never ever had a firm" is in the contract in big letters possibly highlighted.
Next area of contention is who gets to play Mickey Mouse in Disneyworld Swanwick, Portsmouth will contend that they already have a cartoon character with a costume, but Disney aficionados will confirm in a long career Mickey has never been pictured with a bell.
Hopefully though these minor points will be ironed out this morning and the press conference will be held at planned at noon , scheduled for one hour and to be followed by an open topped bus tour of the city to show off the Johnstones Paint Trophy,(or whatever it's called now) a trophy suddenly second only to the World Cup in stature.
By noon today all the details should become clearer and watch out for a joint announcement set to be broadcast live from Cinderella's castle in Orlando Florida and released simultaneously on
https://www.portsmouthfc.co.uk/
https://www.thewaltdisneycompany.com/
We have obtained an exclusive artists impression of the new Fratton End and we show it below, it should be noted though that due to size restrictions we are only able to show the bottom third of the proposed end and is not to scale, however the likely ratio of fans to seats in this picture is to scale.