The euphoria of Bradford City's Premier League survival - one of football's great stories, according to TV soccer pundit Alan Hansen - goes on. But club chairman Geoffrey Richmond, never one to rest on his laurels, is busy planning for the future. Jim Greenhalf reports.

IF TOGAS rather than Versace suits were in fashion, Geoffrey Richmond would be wearing one, for he's the man responsible for the spectacular shows at Bradford's version of Ancient Rome's Colisseum.

Richmond's veteran gladiators have been given the thumbs down that many times that only the staunchest of believers - and the canniest of gamblers - put their money on survival.

They survived, as we know, by unexpectedly slaying some of the Premier League's bigger lions. The victories against Leicester City, Arsenal, Sunderland, Newcastle, Middlesbrough and Liverpool accounted for 18 of the 36 points that keeps them in the arena next season.

As for Valley Parade, like the Colisseum, it rises skyward as though to match the ambitions of its smiling but hard-headed emperor.

Come the New Year, when the new tier cantilevers gigantically over the existing main Sunwin Stand, the spectator capacity will increase from 18,276 to 25,000. Six years ago, before imperious Geoffrey's arrival, City were lucky to get 6,000 through the turnstiles.

"By January or February, the Sunwin Stand will be ready. It will be huge, bigger than the Kop. These two stands will be linked by a 2,300-seater family stand called The Quadrant that will fill that corner," he told the T&A.

We were sitting in his office the morning after the club's civic reception at City Hall. This office block, a series of cabins faced with brick, cost about £500,000 to build three years ago. The whole lot is coming down, hopefully to be sold off, to make way for the £7.4m development.

The new offices, 7,000 sq ft of them, will be located above the new 25,000 sq ft club shop at the Thorncliffe Road end of the stadium. Press accommodation will improve too.

"Our Press facilities have been totally inadequate for the demands placed upon them. There are 36 seats at the moment.

"In the future there will be up to 100 seats with a workbench each, an electric circuit for a laptop computer and a phone line. The media lounge will have interview rooms, a wire room, a photo lab.

"Our aim is to be equal or even ahead of the very best rather than what we have at the moment, which is Division Two standard.

"But will not lose the homely touch - the friendliness, the accessibility to players, officials and visitors. Since Sunday we have had 700 to 800 e-mails and perhaps 400 faxes and we haven't seen today's post yet. Immediately after Sunday's match the telephone switchboard was jammed with calls from all over the world with people leaving messages of congratulation. The club has been under siege since the final whistle of the Liverpool match.

"The profile of the club has changed beyond recognition because of its achievements and the sheer drama experienced in four of the past five years. Roy of the Rovers has got nothing on the story of Brad-ford City."

When Geoffrey Richmond arrived at the club in January 1994 he said he found financial rottenness, tolerance of mediocrity and a widespread expectation of what may be called "gallant failure".

"All I ever heard about was the 1987/88 season when the club nearly got promotion. There was this belief in the city and among the supporters that if we did get near success we would blow it, and why not, because you've got to go back to 1911 when the club last won anything significant.

"So there was this belief that the excitement of football and success were going to be elsewhere. That's gone now. Okay, we finished fourth from bottom. But staying in the Premier League has been a greater achievement than getting promotion the year before."

We're still buying in

"All we can do over the next five years," says Geoffrey Richmond, "is to develop from a Cinderella Premiership club to an established mid-table club. That's a challenging but realistic target.

"Over that period we will continue to be a buying club, I'm afraid.

"Setting up the football academy will take a number of years and a lot of investment in children from eight years old upwards before we start to get first-team players.

"Before this club is in the position to field five or six players produced by our own youth policy, we are going to have to continue buying in players."

That means maybe two or three experienced younger players a season, including the one to come. Both the chairman and manager Paul Jewell know the team which was good enough to survive the lions of the Premier League in its first season needs reinforcing if it is to consolidate in its second.

"I believe we can do that by bringing in quality during the summer," said Mr Richmond.

"We're talking about two or three signings - younger players of proven quality. In general terms there are one or two names floating around but we haven't taken steps," he said.

Whoever comes and goes, his hope for the coming season is for a position three or four places higher up the Premier League and for this to be secured by mid-April.

The best boss and the best welcome

Paul Jewell's post-match willingness to face the music with candour and humour has won many fans all over the country.

And, according to The Daily Telegraph's football correspondent Henry Winter, the nicest switchboard in the country is to be found at Valley Parade.

The Premier League's two best chairmen, he added, are Leeds United's Peter Risdale and Bradford City's own emperor of the unexpected, Geoffrey Richmond.

And the best fans? He doesn't say. But I would like to nominate City's. A minute or two after Sunday's final whistle I watched as a couple of thousand of them - men, women and children in claret and amber, some waving St George flags - ignored the tannoyed commandment to stay off the pitch.

The line of yellow-coated stewards could do nothing as they surged towards the Liverpool supporters in the Symphony Stand.

There they raised their flags, raised their arms in salute and spontaneously sang: "Walk on, walk on, with hope in your hearts/ and you'll never walk alone/ You'll never walk alone."

And the people from Liverpool joined in.

At the start of the match they had stood in absolute silence, remembering the dead of Valley Parade in 1985 and Hillsborough in 1989. There they were, at the end, singing football's defiant anthem of hope.

It was the most moving experience I have ever witnessed at a football match.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.