Immediate focus remains at Wetherby Road - but will League football eventually see the need for a new Harrogate Town stadium?

Here are 19 pictures of Harrogate Town fans at Wembley - in cardboard cut-out formA major investment in improving the club's CNG Stadium over recent seasons has enabled the dream of promotion to League Two to become a reality, with strict Football League requirements on football stadia being met and the club now having to replace their current 3G playing surface with a grass pitch.

Work is due to start on digging up the plastic and laying new turf on Tuesday of this week, and will mean the team being forced to play their first few 'home' fixtures of the 2020/21 season away from Harrogate in a short-term ground-share with League One side Doncaster Rovers.

While the club is understandably focused on getting the CNG Stadium ready for the coming campaign, it has not stopped discussions re-surfacing over their future plans.

With the ground penned in by residential homes on two sides and the A661 Wetherby Road all down another, the options for future development and increasing capacity beyond its current levels are limited - leading to speculation being renewed today by supporters over the club's long-term future at the present site.

The club has worked minor miracles in improving and expanding the ground over recent years and has recently completed works on a new 880-seat Family Stand, taking the current capacity to just over the Football League's 5,000 requirement.

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But the ground remains one of the smallest in League Two - a 24 team division which has an average ground capacity of 10,938.

Discussions on whether Town will eventually need to move in order to keep pace with their heroic on-field developments have been on-going since Chairman Irving Weaver and manager Simon Weaver masterminded the team's rise from the National League North to the National League's top division two years ago.

Sites at Pannal and the Great Yorkshire Showground have been discussed as possibles, although one suggestion put forward on Social Media today that Harrogate Borough Council might support the idea of a new home for Harrogate Town at the Great Yorkshire Showground is likely to be a non-starter for the simple reason the council does not own the land in question.

The council, however, is keen to support Harrogate Town wherever it can.

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Harrogate Borough Council leader Coun Richard Cooper said: "I know there are concerns about the suitability of the club's current site on Wetherby Road now that they are in the Football League.

"Clearly we need to help our team have the right facilities to do the job and so I am sure the council will seek to support the club in whatever decisions they make over their future home.

"But at least right now this feels like a great problem to have."

Having just spent £750,000 on completing the new Family Stand, managing director Garry Plant is understandably setting his immediate sights on ensuring Wetherby Road remains fit for purpose in their new League Two surroundings. But in the future? Who knows?

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"For the forseeable future, Wetherby Road will remain our home," he said.

"We've recently undertaken a lot of work to ensure that we meet EFL ground criteria, we're up to the required 5,000 capacity and work on the relaying a new grass pitch begins on Tuesday.

"Long-term, is there another place we could play? Harrogate is not an easy place to try and build a football stadium."

Town manager Simon Weaver has already said he believes that Harrogate Town playing their first few home fixtures of 2020/21 away from the CNG Stadium is a "small price to pay" for promotion to the Football League which was secured in historic fashion on Sunday when his side beat Notts County 3-1 at Wembley.

The 2020/21 League Two campaign will kick-off on the weekend of September 12, with the season set to conclude on May 8/9. No firm date has been set on when the fixtures will be announced.