POOLE Town have revealed they are confident of being “two-thirds” of the way towards funding their dream £2.5million stadium – despite suffering an FA setback.

Chris Reeves confirmed Dolphins could be playing in their new home by at least the 2014-15 season after making strides in their bid to raise the finance required.

Poole’s vice-chairman reported that the Southern League outfit was “genuinely confident” it had covered between £1.6-1.8m of the money needed to pay for the project.

Controversially evicted from Poole Stadium in 1994 after 61 years at Wimborne Road, Dolphins were granted planning permission last April to press ahead with plans for a ground at Bearwood.

Providing an update on the financing of the venture, Reeves told the Daily Echo: “We have had a major success with a trust fund which has come up with about £500,000, specifically towards the artificial pitch.

“We are having a full-size state-of-the-art artificial training pitch adjacent to the main ground, which will be available for community use and public hire, as well as our own training purposes.

“Along the way, we have also had some disappointments. The money that we are likely to be able to get from the FA is going to be appreciably less than we had expected.

“The land owner is being incredibly supportive. I had a meeting with the land owner in the wake of the realisation that the money from the FA was not going to be what we had understood and I was apprehensive about that meeting, but it went extremely well.

“Because there is so much happening, so many meetings and so many things in the melting pot, I can only speak in general terms. But we remain optimistic that, at the latest, we will be starting the 2014-15 season in a new ground at Bearwood.

“I can’t make any guarantees but that is the aim and there are a lot of people working with the football club to try to pull it off.

“It is an ongoing exercise. We have got to come up with £2.5m and we are a step four Southern League football club. I would say that, one way or another, we have probably got 65-75 per cent of that money guaranteed.”

Reeves also revealed the Tatnam-based club was in talks over the possibility of selling the stadium naming rights – but said the sensitive nature of those discussions prevented him from going into detail.

He added: “If you take our anxiety, ambition and frustration out of the equation and just look at it in hard figures, we are doing great.

“Even allowing for the fact we are two-thirds there, the amount of money that is constituted by the remaining one-third is a massive amount. That is why I can’t promise anybody because I can’t be definite. Neither can I do anything other than be general.”