Northampton Town: Questions still unanswered over David Cardoza led stadium development - View | OneFootball

Missing millions is still a mystery.

It has been over 10 years since development began at Northampton Town's home, Sixfields Stadium, but it's finally nearing completion.

The East Stand development was subject to a scandal which reportedly saw £10.25m of taxpayers' money disappear from the hands of former Cobblers owner David Cardoza.

While construction has finally continued to finish the project, questions are still yet to be answered that are in the interest of Northampton supporters.

What went wrong?

The redevelopment of the East Stand began at the conclusion of the 2013-14 season with works set for completion before the 2014-15 campaign.

The finished development would add hospitality boxes to Sixfields, enhancing matchday revenue streams. A 100-room hotel, shops and athletics track were also planned.

However, works stopped shortly after commencing due to disputes with the contractors who had allegedly not been paid.

Millions of pounds of Northampton's council loan seemingly went missing, and the club was ordered to pay the debt. Players and staff went unpaid for weeks and the company set up by the Cardoza family to oversee the development went bust in October 2015.

In November, the club was sold to current owner, Kelvin Thomas, who took on the debt and Cobblers avoided a winding-up petition for unpaid debts from HMRC.

With attention diverted back to the pitch, Cobblers won the League Two title under the management of Chris Wilder. Progress was seen with the stand when seats were reintroduced in 2016, but progress was halted once more until the last few months.

In September 2017, it was announced that seven people had been arrested, and a further nine questioned under caution concerning the unpaid loan. The following December, the BBC revealed another seven people had been questioned under caution, with money laundering added to the list of suspected offences.

Stand saga is finally nearing a conclusion

Eventually, a new deal between the club and West Northamptonshire Council, which replaced Northampton Borough Council, was agreed in 2021.

However, further delays because of a judicial review over the sale of the land for £890,000 to County Developments Northampton Ltd (CDNL), owned by the club, meant that a contract was only signed earlier this year.

Works are finally underway following another delay, when Buckingham's, the original contractor, collapsed last year.

The club appointed local group, GRS, to continue the project. When completed, Sixfields' capacity will rise back to over 8,200 with a new pitch-facing hospitality restaurant with boxes and the return of an accessible viewing platform for supporters who use wheelchairs.

Works are coming along nicely on the development, with the stand nearly unrecognisable compared to the shell Cobblers fans were greeted with merely months ago, but the development will always remind supporters how they almost lost their football club. Questions are still unanswered regarding the whereabouts of the money.

A stain on Sixfields

Coincidentally, Northampton are celebrating 30 years at Sixfields this season, having moved into the new stadium in 1994.

The club had previously played at the County Ground, where they famously ground-shared with the county's cricket club which hosted its sole top-flight campaign in 1965/66.

After a slow first few years in the new surroundings, before the turn of the century, fortunes turned at the new stadium as Ian Atkins' Cobblers came close to securing back-to-back play-off final triumphs and a place in the Championship, as it's now known, in 1998.

In the last ten years, Sixfields has hosted three League Two promotion-winning Cobblers sides, most notably Wilder's champions in 2016, Keith Curle's Wembley winners in 2020 and Jon Brady's automatic promotion-winning side in 2023.

Despite hosting numerous fantastic occasions, the Sixfields saga with the stand and Cardoza has hung over the club in the last ten years, especially with the visual effects of the half-complete development.

Cobblers fans would like to move on from the saga, but it nearly killed the club and has overshadowed any success on the pitch, yet there are still unanswered questions. The East Stand development should've been a positive step for the club, but it turned very sour.

Fortunately, the saga is almost complete and the club can move forward under the secure ownership of Thomas.