Grounds for concern

By Shaun Atkinson

During my travels following Runcorn Linnets in the Vodkat League, I have been to grounds which certainly vary in standards. The away days so far have taken in trips from Trafford’s nigh-on pristine Shawe View facility all the way to the more humble surrounds of Daisy Hill’s New Sirs home, with many grounds falling in between those two particular stools.

I have ribbed a few people and clubs about their grounds along the way and upset one or two as well. However, the ribbing was largely done in a tongue-in-cheek style as I am acutely aware of the fact that the first class facility we are renting on match days is lacking in two crucial details:

1) It’s not in Runcorn

2) It’s not ours

Back in my far off days when I was all hair, teeth and lithe athleticism I could be found on most Saturdays and many midweek evenings at grounds in the old Football League First Division. This, if I could just point out, was actually before football was invented in 1992 - if the Pol Pot style year zero brigade in many streams of the media are to be believed.

During football’s version of the dark ages I visited many grounds which really weren’t that much better than some I have seen in the last couple of seasons, only bigger. Luton Town’s Kenilworth Road ground immediately springs to mind for obvious reasons.

I did think for a while that I may be falling victim to an inverted version of the Pollyanna Effect, but it appears not. The accounts of others, and pictures from those times, highlight the fact that facilities really were generally as desirable as a night in with Fred and Rose West.

For decades, just about everybody played in the same increasingly dilapidated temples they had played in for as long as anyone could remember. It wasn’t until Scunthorpe upped sticks to their shiny new cardboard box world in 1988 that the issue of ground relocation entered the footballing lexicon. Charlton’s and Bristol Rovers’ reasons for decamping from their long-standing venues to ground share, in 1985 and 1986 respectively, had been forced due to circumstances rather than a free choice.

Before long the grand and the not-so-grand were examining the crumbling terracing, creaking fixtures and rusting fittings, and deciding that decades of underinvestment could not be reversed. Relocation had become not necessarily the best but the cheaper option in many instances. The ageing grounds were also usually located in densely populated areas, making them highly desirable to supermarket chains and building firms.

This was a godsend for many clubs as the sale of their grounds enabled them to build a spanking new ground and clear their debts at the same time. Of course there’s always a flipside and so it proved as quite a few dubious characters appeared on the horizon.

For the Gordon Gekko set, the ties of generations of fans mattered not one jot when the smell of money was so overpowering. Why help a football club when you can help yourself to the price of an overseas property?

The one situation which still sticks out most of all is Brighton’s disgraceful displacement from the Goldstone Ground. This one was also notable in that it was probably the first time that football fans showed genuine ongoing concern for the plight of another club. The subsequent ‘Fans United’ campaign showcased a new found maturity amongst the average football fan, and shook many out of their parochial slumbers.

If it was happening at Brighton, a club which had reached the F.A. Cup final not much more than a decade earlier, it could happen to virtually any club. Of course their situation has still to have a happy ending more than a decade on. While the new stadium at Falmer has been approved and has gone beyond the nimbyism stage, it is still around 15 months away from the beginning of construction. Thankfully the same fate didn’t befall Wrexham recently thanks in no small measure to the determination of their supporters.

A new ground equals a new outlook, or so it appears. What the plethora of new stadia has given in terms of comfort, it has more than taken away in terms of character. From the charming to the quirky to the downright eccentric, all have given way to the horrendous homogeny of design of what have been unkindly, but accurately, dubbed McStadia.

So uniform are the designs, and so dull are they in their execution, that in most instances they may as well eschew normal club colours and kit them out in beige. Prawn sandwich and a glass of fruity white Sir? No thanks pal, a pie and a pint will do for me.

So, where does all this fit in with the outlook of a Runcorn Linnets fan? Well, it’s now more than six years since our club, or its previous incarnation, played a home match in the town. We are currently awaiting a decision on the go-ahead to proceed with the construction of a new facility, grant awards permitting, and have been for some months now. Whoever came up with the phrase ‘patience is a virtue’ mustn’t have had to wait long for anything, that’s for sure.

At least a return to the town is now on the agenda after the shambles of the first half of this decade. The sale of Canal Street was bad enough for many fans but the ill-thought out arrangement to move to Widnes was certainly the beginning of the end for the old club. The success of this move was seemingly based on the frankly ludicrous experiment of a free admission match, which attracted 900, in Widnes.

Needless to say, a significant percentage of the support didn’t buy into it, and soon the figures started to add up like Lester Piggott’s tax return. It also didn’t help that the football club were seen as interlopers at a rugby league ground and the welcome was as cordial as being shaken warmly by the throat, shades of which are being played out to a conclusion in St Helens at this moment in time.

Once the inevitable happened and the eviction came from the council house there then followed the final indignity of going round cap in hand. Valerie Park, home of Prescot Cables, provided the backdrop to the final acts of a once proud club.

Only the hardest of the hardcore followers stayed to watch football’s equivalent of a slow motion car crash, as the club shuffled off the final strands of its mortal coil before the curtain finally fell. We’ve had the ashes, now we await the phoenix in the form of bricks and mortar that we can once again call home.

So, no matter how shabby your current surroundings may be, treasure them. If they’re lost, there’s no telling just when another place to call home will appear on the horizon.

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