extreme groundhopping

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Colchester United (Part 2)

14-11-2009: Colchester United 2 Exeter City 2 (Coca-Cola League One)

Colchester United

In Part 1 earlier this week I didn’t say much or indeed anything about what the stadium is like to watch football in. Well visually it’s just ordinary. Four stands, all of which are covered, single tiered and all seated. The main stand, on the west touchline, is taller than the others with a row of executive boxes running along the back. The other three are just plain seating areas although the south stand has, as viewed from the pitch, a police control room on the right hand side.

Entry into the stands is via electronic turnstiles that take you onto a concourse with the usual catering facilities, betting booth, toilets, etc. All seats are reached via entrances at the bottom of the stand. There’s a reasonable amount of legroom and, as you would expect in a new stadium, decent views to be had of the action as it unfolds. A largish scoreboard/TV screen sits in the corner between the south and east stand, the former allocated to away supporters.

There is a shuttle bus service running to and from Colchester railway station and the ground. The stop is about 150 yards away from the station entrance in front of “Big Yellow Storage”. A return will cost you just £1.00. The journey takes less than 10 minutes although we did have to wait around 15 minutes for a bus after the game (although this was before there was any sign of cars being allowed to leave the official car park).

Company Shed

Where to eat and drink? Well, as I mentioned in Part 1 there doesn’t look to be much in the immediate area so, you can either entertain yourself in the town before catching a shuttle bus from the station out to the stadium or, if you’re feeling a bit more intrepid, head out, as we did, to Mersea Island a 30 minute taxi ride directly south.

If you like seafood then this is the place to be. Not only is the island home to the renowned Oyster Bar (not visited today) but also the excellent Company Shed. Adjacent to a yard full of yachts and other boats is a large weathered clapper-board shed that was originally an oyster cleaning shed but is now a restaurant and fishmongers. There’s around ten tables covered with wipe clean tablecloths, you can’t make a reservation and you must bring your own drinks and bread. All a bit spit and saw dust but there aren’t many places where you can get a half dozen oysters and a heaping seafood platter comprising shrimp, prawn, cockles, mackerel, crab and lobster for a mere £15.00. Well worth the effort but don’t take my word for it.

Marcus Stewart

Back to the football and it was good to see Marcus Stewart in action again. This time for current club Exeter. Stewart was just a couple of goals shy of finishing as top scorer in the Premiership in Ipswich’s 5th place finish in 2000-01, as well as scoring some key goals in the previous campaign as Town won a place at the top table of English football via the play-offs. As a former Blue Stewart was subject to booing by some sections of the home crowd today. It must really rankle with the Col U fans that their hatred for Ipswich is met with total indifference by Suffolk folk.

Panoramas to be found here, here and here.

posted by chevblue at 3:08 PM 0 comments

Friday, November 13, 2009

Suffolk Premier Cup

10-11-2009: Ipswich Town Reserves 4 Haverhill Rovers 0 (Suffolk Premier Cup Quarter-Final)

Suffolk Premier Cup

Words to follow.

posted by chevblue at 11:12 PM 0 comments

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Colchester United (Part 1)

10-11-2009: Colchester United Reserves 1 Peterborough United Reserves 2 (Pontins Football Combination)

Well I set out expecting to be disappointed – as I have been with most new grounds and certainly was at the similarly sized Prostar Stadium in Shrewsbury earlier in the season – but it must be said that Colchester United’s one-year old Weston Community Stadium didn’t (disappoint) overall.

You reach the stadium via a business park but it’s set some distance away from it’s nearest neighbour and the surrounding open space will benefit from the 10,000 trees that are due to be planted in the area (one for each of the stadiums seats).

There’s a 700-space car park adjacent to the stadium and that, apart from a few bike sheds dotted about, is it as far as the exterior is concerned. If there are pubs or eateries of any consequence nearby they are not immediately obvious.

Inside it’s a bit like an open plan office with a John Constable landscape painting propped up in each corner, although one of those corners peers over traffic speeding by on the A12 faster than a haywain ever would (most of the time). Featureless on the outside the facilities inside the main stand set it apart from other new builds.

The 100 plus cars in the car park – far more than would be necessary to convey today’s crowd to the game – is a clue that many non-footballing activities take place at the stadium during the course of the week. There is a study support centre, a wedding venue, community facilities, a 400-seat corporate meeting room, and, across the otherside of the car park, five-a-side football pitches for local use.

This is all in line with the planning consent (and the part funding agreements reached with the local council) that ensured that the facilities at the new stadium should provide for activities other than a football match every other weekend, and for which the whole scheme received an RICS Award earlier in the year.

Footballing wise the highlight of the afternoon (my first Bovril for several years excepted) was the five-minute hold-up while a member of the ground staff went hunting for a new corner flag. A Colchester’s player had kicked out at said flag - after fluffing a cross - breaking the pole a foot above the ground.

Common sense would perhaps suggest that play continue but the referee was having none of it (quite rightly I discovered later when I checked the laws of the game) and a farcical delay ensued while a replacement was found.

A proper report is here and a few more pictures are here.

posted by chevblue at 6:02 PM 0 comments

Saturday, November 07, 2009

Kirkley & Pakefield

07-11-2009: Kirkley & Pakefield 3 Debenham LC 0
(Ridgeons League Premier Division)

Today’s outing begins in Aldeburgh, twenty odd miles to the south of the afternoon’s game in Lowestoft, at The Scallop by Maggi Hambling. Made from stainless steel, the controversial sculpture sits on the beach just a short walk from Aldeburgh town centre and was commissioned to celebrate the life of the internationally famed composer Benjamin Britten who lived, and died, in the Suffolk town.

Incidentally, Ipswich Town manager Roy Keane lives in Aldeburgh and no doubt takes advantage of the excellent walks available in the area, particularly along the beach, to give Triggs a bit of exercise.

As well as being perhaps the greatest English composer of operatic music ever Benjamin Britten was also a pianist of not inconsiderable note and I had the privilege of watching him in concert with violinist Yehudi Menuhin at the Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds when I was still in short trousers.

As an up and coming (and ultimately pretty awful) cellist I was given the ticket at school in recognition of my musical talents! Can’t remember who I went with but do remember riding to and from the Theatre in the back seat of a great big smeg off Mercedes. But I digress.

Britten was born in Kirkley, at 21, Kirkley Cliff Road to be precise, and while there is a blue plaque on the side of what is now a guest house, Kirkley has decided to keep pretty schtum about it’s greatest son, although I believe there is a Benjamin Britten High School and, bizzarely, a Benjamin Britten Shopping Centre in Lowestoft proper.

The beaches either side of the town’s Claremont Pier both won Blue Flag awards this year. Long stretches of golden sand with a wide promenade running parallel. Considerably nicer that the more popular resort of Great Yarmouth 10 miles further up the road (in Norfolk).

Kirkley and neighbouring Pakefield were formerly villages but are now districts of Lowestoft and Kirkley & Pakefield FC’s ground sits just back off the A12 as you enter the town from the south.

The club can trace it’s routes back to the 1880’s but have gone through a number of mergers, disbandments and name changes to become the Kirkley & Pakefield of today. On several occasions they have joined forces with near neighbours and local rivals Lowestoft Town, and have been known variously as Kirkley, Kirkley United, Kirkley & Waveney and, from 2007, Kirkley & Pakefield.

They joined the Ridgeons League from the Anglian Combination in 2003 and within two years had won promotion to the Premier Division aided by an eighteen match unbeaten run, including a run of nine clean sheets, to clinch third place in Division One in 2004-05.

Their most notable former player is Sir Stanley Rous, who as a young lad played for the club before the start of the Great War, later becoming a Football League referee, secretary of the FA and then president of FIFA. His most notable contribution to the game, perhaps, being the simplification of the rules of the game which he rewrote in 1938.

The record attendance at the club’s Walmer Road ground of 1,124 was set when Lowestoft Town were the visitors on Boxing Day 2005.

More club history here, a proper match report is taking shape here, while more pics can be found here.

posted by chevblue at 10:16 PM 0 comments

Thursday, November 05, 2009

A Potted (and probably inaccurate) History of Gillingham’s Gordon Road Stand

Gillingham’s Gordon Road Stand? Excuse this bit of self-indulgent rambling but there is a point. Of sorts.

1893: New Brompton Football Club, the forerunner of Gillingham Football Club, purchase the Priestfield site, lay the pitch, build a pavilion and stage their first match on September 2nd. A crowd of around 500 is on hand.

1899: A second stand is built opposite the Pavilion on the Gordon Road side. The Gordon Road Stand is born! Built by off-duty dock workers in exchange, Wikipedia suggests, for beer and cigarettes, it can seat 300 spectators. Narrow and just 30-yards long it occupies less than a third of the touchline. Nine wooden uprights support its roof with six rows of wooden bench seats below.

1920: The stand and the Gills join the Football League.

1930: The stand and the Gills are voted out of the Football League in favour of Ipswich Town (oops), but are back in 12 years and one WWII later, when the league expands from 88 to 92 clubs.

1955: The stand watches on as the ground undergoes a £28,500 facelift. The pitch is levelled (it previously had quite a noticeable slope), the terracing to its right which extended to the corner flag is re-laid and covered over. Taller than its older neighbour it maintains a reverential gap of a few feet. It’s around this time that my Grandfather becomes a Gills season ticket holder in the, yep, Gordon Road Stand.

1968 (January): Yours truly (told you there was a point to this) watches his first ever Football League game, a 1-1 draw between Gillingham and Torquay in the old Third Division, from the front row of the, you’ve guessed it, the Gordon Road Stand. Don’t recall the match at all but most certainly remember sitting in the stand, leaning on the wooden panel at front.

1968-1985: The stand continues to be lovingly preserved by the club as it watches over promotion from Division Four (1974) and a fairly pedestrian period of Third Division Football.

1985: Following the Bradford City fire the Safety of Sports Grounds Act is extended and the stand is considered too much of a fire hazard to continue in use. The void underneath the wooden stand cited as the main reason. By now the oldest stand in the League it has seated it’s very last spectators.

1995: Paul Scally takes over the Gills and soon after begins a programme of redevelopment.

1997: The grand old stand is pulled down and a new £2 Million Gordon Road Stand takes it place. A tidy modern stand which, in deference to it’s glorious predecessor comes complete with supporting pillars to impede the view of those in the rear half dozen rows. That’s progress.

Some pictures of the Priestfield Stadium taken in April 2004 can be found here.

Thank you for your attention.

posted by chevblue at 9:47 PM 0 comments

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Thank **** that's over

31-10-2009: Ipswich Town 1 Derby County 0
(Coca-Cola Championship)

Derby County fan's

These Derby County fans pictured in 2008 appear relieved that their wretched season in the Premier League is over – the Ram’s officially the worst team to ever appear in the Premiership. As the final whistle went at Portman Road this afternoon, with Ipswich recording their first league win in fifteen attempts, this image suddenly sprung to mind. One unwanted record firmly behind us too.

A proper report here.

posted by chevblue at 7:45 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Bury Town

27-10-2009: Bury Town 1 Cambridge City 2
(Red Insure Cup 1st Round)

In recent years both Bury Town and Cambridge City have been forced to switch leagues, although for entirely different reasons.

Town’s switch from the Isthmian League (Division One North), in the summer of 2008, to the Southern League (Division One Midlands), came about as the result of the reorganisation of the National League system, the seven levels of English football below the Football League. A number of clubs were shunted from one league to another, in an attempt to align clubs and leagues geographically and so cut down on travel costs, although for Bury Town this resulted in a large increase in mileage covered, from 1,408 miles in 2007-08 to around 2,024 in the 2008-09 campaign.

A few years back the outlook was looking bright for the Cambridge City. Having joined the newly formed Conference South for the 2004-05 season, they not only enjoyed a decent FA Cup run (reaching the second round proper where they succumbed to the MK Dons) but reached the play-offs too, losing to Eastbourne Borough over two legs (first leg coverage here). But after their best season for over thirty years it all started to go pear shaped.

Financial problems forced the club to sell their Milton Road ground and in 2006 the board announced that an agreement had been reached to amalgamate with cross-town rivals Cambridge United who had just been relegated out of the Football League. In stepped the Cambridge City Supporters' Trust, and after extensive campaigning they were able to force the existing directors to resign and replace them with their own members.

Next followed a legal dispute, eventually settled in the High Court, over the sale of Milton Road that the previous board had off-loaded or a price well below its market value. City can now stay at the ground until 2010 (at the very least) and will receive 50% of all profits arising from its future development. Good news though was to be followed by bad.

At the end of the 2007-08 season the Lilywhites were demoted from the Conference South to the Southern League Premier after Milton Road failed to meet the FA's Ground Grading requirements (Category B at this level), namely no terracing behind either goal and inadequate turnstile facilities. They appealed but the FA were having none of it and so in the summer of 2008 twenty-two consecutive seasons in non-league football’s second tier came to an end.

So now both clubs are in the Southern League (albeit a division apart), which found a new sponsor in the summer in the form of drinks company Zamaretto. Actually it found two sponsors, the League Cup being sponsored separately by Red Insure, and it is for the latter that the two sides were in competition tonight.

Bury have a good pedigree of late in cup competitions and as recently as Saturday almost made it to the first round proper of the FA Cup for the second year in succession. Despite going ahead at Oxford City they suffered the agony of conceding two late goals and went out (but not without a fight) 2-1. A recent surfeit of cup games (they’ve also competed in the FA Trophy and Suffolk Premier Cup in recent weeks) has meant that they have not played a league game for over five weeks.

A proper report on tonight’s proceedings can be found here.

posted by chevblue at 10:41 PM 0 comments

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Mildenhall Town

24-10-2009: Mildenhall Town 4 Harwich & Parkeston 3
(Ridgeons League Premier Division)

Two years ago I made the journey from East Suffolk to Mildenhall through torrential rain arriving at Mildenhall Town’s Recreation Way Ground only to find that the game I was planning to watch had been postponed over two hours earlier due to a waterlogged pitch.

Today it rained intermittently - in between bursts of brilliant sunshine as the clouds moved elsewhere to shed their loads - but not enough to threaten the game or indeed (as it turned out) the entertainment level in a gripping, OK moderately engaging, seven-goal tussle that the home side, the ‘Hall, clinched by the odd goal. A win sealed by a second half penalty, one of two shared by the two sides.

The home side enjoyed a purple patch between 2004-05 and 2007-08 finishing in the top six four seasons in succession, a run that included a runners-up spot in the Ridgeons Premier Division in 2007. Last year they settled for mid-table but have struggled during the opening months of the current campaign with today’s three points lifting them just clear of the drop zone. Harwich (a bit more on them here), on the other hand, are now without a win in thirteen outings, and remain firmly rooted to the bottom of the table.

Tucked away behind the local swimming pool and town centre car park the first thing you notice about the ground (apart from an interesting mural-ly looking thing on the side of the clubhouse) is the pronounced slope of the pitch. Second are the mature trees at the bottom end of the ground and their colourful autumnal display. These occupied camera and I for a number of minutes before kick-off, and during breaks in the action, although I’ve spared you all but one tree picture in today’s offering of snaps (link at bottom of this post).

Mildenhall, a not unattractive market town sitting on the edge of the Fens, is probably best known for the two large US Air Force bases close by. During the Second World War East Anglia was covered with airfields of a multitude of shapes and sizes, and two survivors from that era, RAF Mildenhall and, three miles to the north-east, its sister base RAF Lakenheath are the largest US Air Force bases in the UK. They both continue to feature regularly in post WWII action. Two examples…

After the Rome and Vienna airport massacres of January 1986 allied intelligence services revealed conspiratorial Libyan involvement, and three months later, on April 14, fighter-bombers from Lakenheath and three other support bases in England launched a retaliatory strike on Tripoli.

Fifteen years later the record for the longest long distance bombing raid in history was set during Desert Storm by an American B-52, when it flew from the US to Iraq, and then returned to RAF Mildenhall afterwards. Many other missions during the conflict flew in and out of the two bases too.

Today RAF Mildenhall provides air refuelling to US and NATO aircraft over Europe, while Lakenheath is home to the USAF’s 48th Fighter Wing.

From Battle fields to ploughed fields and Mildenhall grabbed the headlines back in the 1940’s when a Suffolk Ploughman discovered a hoard of 4th century Roman Silverware which has since become known as the Mildenhall Treasure. Now housed at the British Museum, the haul included a two-foot diameter silver platter (which weighed in at 18lbs) plus other mostly tableware items.

Back to football (although I’m done with Mildenhall Town I think), and in the latest post on the entertaining 300 Grounds and counting the author says that one of his criteria for adding a new ground to his list is that it must have hosted a meaningful contest, basically no friendlies. Which is fair enough. Others won’t count a ground unless they’ve seen a goal scored there. Which seems a bit odd. A friend of mine has “done” Doncaster Rovers (two visits to their old Belle Vue ground) although he’s not been to their new Keepmoat Stadium and doesn’t plan to either. Just a bit obstreperous.

A simple soul I have no criteria whatsoever. If a ball is being kicked around on a pitch in anything remotely resembling a ground it goes on the list. My rule used to be that an entrance fee had to have paid but then that would have ruled out my visit to the Nou Camp in 1979 when I was given a complimentary ticket. Rules are there to be broken. Or dropped.

To do a ground properly a visit during day light hours is best so that I can photograph it without the aid of a flash gun although I do prefer the atmosphere at night games the best, even when there are just a few fans on hand to watch.

Likewise, the criteria for selecting a game to watch is also quite simple: proximity to where I’m staying/working at the time in a village/town/city that has something else remotely of interest in it or close by. Which could be anything from a jam factory to a cathedral to a decent Chinese Restaurant. I’m easy to please.

More pictures here.

posted by chevblue at 1:46 PM 0 comments

Friday, October 23, 2009

Arsenal (Highbury)

13-02-2004: A lap around Arsenal Stadium

As Arsenal’s new stadium, the Emirates, was beginning to take shape half-a-mile away to the west I took the opportunity presented by a slack day at work to bunk off and head over to it’s forerunner Highbury (a.k.a. Arsenal Stadium) and take some shots of the exterior (and it’s surrounds) of what had been the Gunner’s home for previous 91 years.

Archibald Leitch was the architect of the original stadium hurriedly constructed during the summer of 1913 as Arsenal (then with a Woolwich prefix) moved north of the Thames from Plumstead. Rectangular in shape, three sides of the new ground had banked concrete terracing while the fourth a covered grandstand with 9,000 seats.

In a principally residential area the stand, on Avenell (?) Road, was the only one not backed onto by the gardens of the neighbouring terraced homes (a not inconsiderable fact that would prevent the club from extending the capacity of the ground in the later part of the 20th century and ultimately lead to the move to Ashburton Grove).

In keeping with the clubs domination of English football during the 1930’s (five League Championships and two FA Cup wins) Highbury underwent a major and rather grand facelift, with most traces of the original Leitch design disappearing in the process. First, a new stand on the west touchline was constructed (opening in 1932) followed by demolition of the original grandstand and building of a new one in 1936.

It was during this period that the Art Deco style came to the fore and architect Claude Waterlow Ferrier used this as the principal theme for the new West Stand and then, joined by Major William Binnie, for the East Stand too. While the former cost £45,000 costs for the later were well over budget at £130,000, most of this additional expense being lavished on the stand’s famous façade and the oppulent interior (many years ago I watched a game from a padded (and heated?) seat in the directors box and can atest to this).

Seven steps up from the pavement the entrance door has metal lamps on either wall and above a frieze containing the clubs initials AFC. Over the frieze there is a window that provides light to the first floor landing on the inside, and this in turn is topped by a further frieze with the Gunner’s logo.

Inside the front door and you begin to understand why Highbury was once referred to as the Marble Palace by the Illustrated London News. The floor and stair is paved with terrazzo (actually a fake marble), an imposing bust of legendary manager Herbert Chapman looks out at you from a niche in the wall while the Gunner’s logo is set in black stone within the paving. Doors off the entrance hall and an impressive Art Deco staircase with polished hardwood rails in the original building led to…

… a general office, typist rooms, accountant’s and cashier’s rooms, spacious players changing rooms and bathrooms (with underfloor heating), match officials changing room, managers office, a Ladies' Tea Room, a general Refreshment Room, a press area and board room. In addition telephone booths, a control room and a radio broadcasting box for the BBC were provided, and in a very forward looking piece of thinking a room was set aside for television equipment and cabling.

Described as “the grandest pieces of football architecture ever built in Britain with the single possible exception of the East Stand at Ibrox Park", the East Stand is Grade II listed. Both it and the West stand have since been converted to apartments as the site is redeveloped for residential use (the North Stand and Clock End demolished to make way for purpose-designed apartment buildings), Arsenal’s having played their final game there in May 2006.

More pictures here

posted by chevblue at 5:06 PM 0 comments

How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers won the FA Cup

Just before the 2002 World Cup in Japan I attended a course at Birkbeck College in London entitled Football, Culture and Society, a series of 6/8 lectures on covering footballs role in community and culture. Not only was it an excellent course but it also gave participants a chance to meet the likes of Professor John Williams (from the Centre for Football Research, Leicester University) and Mark Perryman (football activist and writer and convener of the London England Fans supporters' group).

The series of handouts from the lecturers included several pages of recommended reading (which I have reproduced here, here, here, here, here and here for anyone that’s interested) and I’ve been working my way through the list every since.

Up until that time I’d given up on finding any half decent writing on the game (Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch excepted) after starting and stopping after a few pages on at least a dozen of footballers autobiographies. Nobby Stiles’ autobiography for instance. How can the story of a man who played for one of England top clubs – winning World Cup and European Cup medals in the process – be converted in to two-hundred or so utterly tedious pages.

Anyway, this links very untidily with a book that is not on the list, which I picked up on my recent holiday in Lincolnshire, the truly wonderful How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers won the FA Cup by JL Carr (1975). Set in a fenland village it tells the story of how the local amateur side – guided by an ex-patriot Hungarian academic and two retired football league players – not only reach the FA Cup Final, but win it in style with victory over Glasgow Rangers. Is it believable? “Depends on whether you want to believe”, says the author in the introduction. The title is a bit of a spoiler but if fantasy, David v Goliath or whimsy are you’re thing then you should try and get hold of a copy.

posted by chevblue at 4:54 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Unbelievable!

20-10-2009: Ipswich Town 1 Watford 1
(Coca-Cola Championship)

Ipswich Town

Well that was by far and away the best home performance by an Ipswich side this season, perhaps the best in the last twelve months.

We dominated the game for large spells, we passed the ball around like Town teams of yore, and we defended so well that we restricted Watford to just one shot on target.

Unfortunately they scored from that one shot and unbelievably we’re denied yet another win by a goal deep into injury time.

And so after thirteen attempts we remain the only side in the top four divisions in England without a win – but that win can’t possibly be far away if tonight’s performance is anything to go by.

The reaction of supporters after the game was quite something. Rooted to the bottom of the table but still applauded off the pitch.

Proper report here.

posted by chevblue at 11:24 AM 0 comments