THE fact the Swindon Town are 'moving house' has not come as a surprise to many supporters as it was an inevitable development, pardon the pun.

With the debenture and Neil Ruddock issues satisfactorily resolved, the last of the 'big three' situations to be resolved was the question of a new stadium.

Directors past and present have made no secret of the fact that the only way to prosper is on a site with ample opportunities to generate revenue seven days a week.

The news will not be formally announced until Monday but it is clear that a lot of the groundwork has already been done behind the scenes.

For any such development to succeed, it is going need across the board agreement.

Club, council and developer need to be singing from the same hymn sheet for the plan to succeed.

Of course, it then hinges on the level of objections voiced.

But club officials will no doubt have examined a past failure and be seeking to learn from the mistakes made.

Terry Brady had grand dreams of seeing Town making a new home in a £35-million pound super stadium on the area known as the Front Garden.

There was talk of a cinema, health and leisure facilities and a conference centre.

It was even mooted that the ground (which would have been ready at the start of the current season) could host World Cup matches had England won the race to host the 2006 tournament.

A bright future beckoned in June 2000 but the dream gradually began to fade.

Arguments began to surface about whether the Front Garden was suitable.

The move was challenged in the High Court and as results threatened to drag the club towards Division Three it became increasingly clear that Brady's dream was in danger of becoming a nightmare.

Less than a year after publicly revealing his intentions, the wheels came off in spectacular fashion.

The improving relationship which now exists between club and council is a far cry from the increasingly fractious one that was developing between the previous board and those running the town.

As the club's backers Ian Blatchly and Danny Donegan threatened to pull out unless they received written assurances that Swindon Borough Council would support their intentions (in the form of Swindon Town Properties Limited) the club limped on until an emergency council meeting in April.

There it was decided that STPL would be granted preferred developer status.

Planning rules rather than football dominated fans' thoughts.

As the club's finances began to look more unsavoury than your average football pie, the stadium issue turned distinctly flat.

Brady quit, Donegan and Blatchley saw STPL's preferred developer status removed by the council in September 2001 and the latter two were forced out by the current board.

In little more than 18 months, the talk turned from new stadiums capable of hosting World Cup football to the very real prospect of the club being wound up.

In July last year the Front Garden dream was finally killed off with the news that a new stadium had been scrapped from Bryant Homes' master plan for land near the M4 at Blagrove.

Kissing goodbye to the Front Garden did not mean binning the stadium-switch idea and Monday looks like being the fruition of 'if at first you don't succeed'.