{"id":734691,"date":"2026-08-11T16:04:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T16:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/734691\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T16:04:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T16:04:11","slug":"reading-in-talks-with-bath-rugby-over-stadium-use-rob-couhig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/734691\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading in talks with Bath Rugby over stadium use – Rob Couhig"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bath’s games against Harlequins on the weekend of 15 May and Saracens on 5 June are scheduled to be moved, and if the club were to reach the Prem semi-finals and secure a home tie next June, that fixture would also be played away from the Rec.<\/p>\n

The club’s owners say the plans are being accelerated to ensure the redevelopment is completed for the start of the 2028-29 Prem campaign.<\/p>\n

Reading’s final home game of the upcoming season is against Sheffield Wednesday on 1 May. However, they would be due to host another match that month if they reach the League One play-offs.<\/p>\n

Their ground has been regularly used for rugby in the past, having been the home of London Irish between 2000 to 2020.<\/p>\n

Couhig highlighted a number of changes and upgrades which have been made at the SCL Stadium this summer – including to the stands<\/a> and a new pitch which has been laid – as factors that make a possible agreement with Bath feasible.<\/p>\n

“This pitch is built in a way that it could handle that and recover very quickly [from rugby],” Couhig said.<\/p>\n

“Our football team is the first priority tenant and we would make sure it is handled the right way.”<\/p>\n

He added that any money generated would be reinvested in the football team.<\/p>\n

“Let’s say we did something with Bath Rugby, then we’d be allowed additional money under the SCMP [salary cost management protocol] to spend on our football players,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bath’s games against Harlequins on the weekend of 15 May and Saracens on 5 June are scheduled to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":734692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-734691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/734692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}