PREMIERSHIP Rugby Union side Wasps will today meet Wycombe Wanderers to discuss plans to share Adams Park.

The plan would bring the Blues much-needed extra cash but would also attract extra traffic and parking with 8,000 plus fans to be expected on rugby match days.

Wanderers chairman Ivor Beeks says his club has been approached by Wasps, currently struggling at the bottom of the Zurich Premiership League.

Mr Beeks said: "The board agreed to listen to Wasps' proposals and arranged to discuss the matter fully at a board meeting.

"Nothing has been agreed, and we understand Adams Park is one of several stadiums Wasps are looking at."

Wycombe Wanderers, like most clubs, is looking at ways of making extra money, but Mr Beeks said no decision would be taken until he was satisfied that the arrangement would be good for the club in every way.

Wasps currently share the Loftus Road ground of Queens Park Rangers, but they may have to leave to make way for Fulham, which wants to move there for two years while its own ground, Craven Cottage, undergoes a £70 million redevelopment.

Wasps chairman Chris Wright hopes to sell his holding in QPR and sees Adams Park, 20 miles away, as a good place to relocate his club.

When Wycombe Wanderers proposed moving to Adams Park ten years ago from Loakes Park, there was strong opposition from people in Sands, furious at the prospect of traffic, noise and trouble.

Yesterday, the current High Wycombe Mayor Nigel Vickery, an avid Wanderers fan, said "I would be concerned about people living in Sands who would have something on every Saturday."

He could not say whether he was in favour of the ground share or not, until he had been given far more details by the football club. But he said: "I would also be concerned about how the pitch would hold up from the football point of view."

The most contentious issue is that there could be matches every Saturday, or on Sundays as well, and that a top division club like Wasps could attract 8,000-plus fans compared with the average 5,000 to 6,000 Wanderers' gate.

Not only that, but the rugby fans may cause proportionally more traffic and parking outside people's homes, because the club does not have Wanderers' system, designed to keep cars away.

Wanderers' safety officer Frank Knowles has run the system for eight years and said that with only 500 parking spaces at Adams Park the aim was to get people to come by bus and coach.

He said: "There is traffic congestion, as there is at any football ground, because many people prefer not to walk."

And people did complain about cars parked outside their homes. But the club organised buses and coaches to pick up people in villages, and buses to the railway station.

And with up to 100 trained stewards at any game, police were not needed at games he said, unless they picked up information that there might be trouble.

He said the system worked for the football club and it could be that Wasps or any other club sharing the ground would want to hire the Wanderers safety team. This would be up to them and the football club chairman.

Wanderers had to get planning permission for Adams Park and Wycombe District Council is looking into whether it needs to apply again.

In a similar arrangement, Saracens pay £500,000 plus their share of the running costs to share Watford Football Club's ground. But Watford are in the first division and have a 24,000 seater ground so the figures for Wycombe could be expected to be smaller.