Shrewsbury Town's New Stadium has today been officially opened by Football League Chairman Lord Mawhinney and Roland Wycherley, Chairman of STFC.

The Club moved to the New Stadium over the summer marking an end to their 97-year stay at their old Gay Meadow home. The stadium opened in July with the visit of an All-Stars side captained by Gianfranco Zola. Since then Town have played a number of Coca Cola League and Carling Cup games but today marks the official opening of the Stadium.

Lord Mawhinney and Town Chairman Roland Wycherley unveiled a plaque to commemorate the opening before sitting down to lunch with a number of invited guests.

Town's Vice Chairman Keith Sayfritz took time to speak to ShrewsWeb about another historic day in the club's history:

"We are absolutely delighted that today we have been able to officially open our New Stadium.

It has been a great honour to have Lord Mawhinney the Chairman of the Football League conduct the opening ceremony with our Chairman Roland Wycherley. We are particularly pleased that Lord Mawhinney was able to join us on this historic occasion as he also attended our final League game in May against Grimsby Town.

Although the Stadium has been hosting matches since the opening game against the All-Stars we felt it was very important to mark the occasion with an official opening ceremony to celebrate what is the culmination of a long journey for the Club.

Many, many people have already had the opportunity to enjoy the match day facilities which are a vast improvement on what we had available at the Gay Meadow. The comments we have had from our fans regarding the quality of the food in the buffets, the hospitality in our Sovereign Suite and the overall match day experience have all been extremely positive.

The move has also allowed us to open our new facilities to the whole of Shrewsbury and Shropshire with our Hospitality Manager Miguel Hidalgo and his team, providing excellent banqueting, conference and hospitality opportunities on non-match days. Already Miguel is receiving accolades for the tremendous high standards of food and service provided."

Another major announcement today was the naming of the East Stand of the New Stadium.

The stand will now be known as the Roland Wycherley Stand in recognition of the Chairman's outstanding contribution to the Football Club.

Since taking over the reins of the Club back in 1996 Roland Wycherley has worked tirelessly to achieve stability and to allow the Club to develop. Early on he highlighted the need for the Club to move stadiums to survive and his dedication and hard work has culminated in the move to Oteley Road.

Mr Sayfritz and the Town Board had wanted to recognise the Chairman's work on the New Stadium and they finally hit on the idea of naming one of the stands after him:

"We wanted to announce the opening of the Roland Wycherley Stand on the same day as the official opening of the Stadium.

I think everyone knows that without the drive, determination, enthusiasm and financial support of the Chairman our dream of a New Stadium would not have been achieved.

About eighteen months ago I was talking to fellow Directors Colin Poole and Mal Whitrick and we all realised the unbelievable commitment Roland had put into making sure that this project came to fruition and we were thinking about the best way of acknowledging that.

In many ways we could have named the Stadium after the Chairman but we knew his feeling would have been that by doing so we would have denied ourselves the chance to earn substantial revenue out of branding the stadium.

It was important for us that he received public recognition for making the move happen, not just now but also in future years so that he and his family could look back at what he has achieved and he can come to matches and see his name on the stand every time he drives into the Stadium.

The decision was reached by the Board and we didn't consult with him because knowing the Chairman as we do he wouldn't have wanted it.

We were absolutely determined to give him the recognition that he deserves above anybody else and as long as this Stadium is in operation his name will always be associated with it.

It's a great honour for him but it's also a great debt that we owe him and on behalf of the Board I want to publically congratulate him on the opening of the New Stadium and on the opening of the Roland Wycherley Stand.