Grounds for Improvement

Unprecedented. Three consecutive football related pieces grace the pages of my blog. 

I can explain why. 

Most influential in my train of thought is that we are into the closing stages of the 2016/2017 season as far as my home town team, Hull City are concerned. They find themselves in the last undecided relegation place and with a seemingly hopeless task of securing two wins from their last pair of games against fellow strugglers Crystal Palace and the again thwarted title contenders, Tottenham. 

Mention of the north London team brings in the fact that today is their last match at their famous White Hart Lane ground in readiness for a temporary camping out at Wembley Stadium until their new super-stadium is completed to give them the uplift in attendances and gate receipts that would enable them to compete with the rest of the top six Premier League teams who can rely on home crowds in excess of 50,000 and all of the commercial aspects that this generates. 

In full circle is the poignant and very sad anniversary on 11^th May of the tragic Bradford City fire, an unwelcome culmination of many issues that used to be part of attending a football match yet exposing individuals to risks and threats that would not be tolerated in any other sporting or public activity. 

Many said that a disaster on the scale of the Bradford fire was just waiting to happen in a good number of English football grounds.Sadly it was an inevitability but it took the loss of 56 lives and the prolonged suffering of many more casualties to be the catalyst for a change for the better in how fans attended. 

Of course, as an 11 year old in the early 1970’s being taken to see my local team at that time, Scunthorpe United in the old Fourth Division I paid little or no regard to the potential hazards that lurked in plain sight at The Old Showground. 

It was a typical lower division ground slap bang in the middle of the town onto the main Doncaster Road amongst tightly packed shops and houses. However, for all of this down to earth stuff it was a place of wondrous magic and I can still vividly recall the sheer thrill and anticipation of emerging through the steel, concrete and corrugated sheeting skeleton of one of the grandstands to see the bright greensward of the pitch. 

Hang on a minute, perhaps my waxing lyrical on a bowling green calibre playing surface is a bit of fanciful and selective memory. In reality it is more likely that the pitch was of the calibre of a ploughed field, muddy, waterlogged, potholed and threadbare of any blades of grass. 

My complete immersion in everything football at that age served as effectively as a mental screening out of the uglier aspects of a traditional English football ground. 

The entrance to the terraces was not a gateway to a theatre of dreams but a gaping hole flanked by huge heavy gates and a liberal trailing of barbed or razor wire. Fans milled around a small kiosk selling matchday programmes, little more than a pamphlet run off on a Gestetner or similar machine in the Club Office, and a host of other ephemera from club pennants to posters, enamelled pin badges and other endorsed products. 

Equally popular was the food outlet, again a mobile wagon as I seem to remember trading in cups of tea and the trademark matchday pies. 

The surroundings were drab in the extreme giving the impression of being in the bleakest of Cold War Communist settlements. 

That period in English football was one of hooliganism and violence and so any splash of team allegiance in scarves, bobble hats or rosettes was avoided in favour of anonymous clothing. 

The sights and sounds I still found enthralling, less so the overriding stench of urine from the low blockhouse that was the toilets. If the queues were too long to use them and kick off was fast approaching it was a case of having to tiptoe over the streams of steaming piss from those who had decided to just go there and then. Public disorder was overruled in such a scenario. 

The terraces are remembered for camaraderie, a solidarity amongst supporters, humour and wit, the uniform voice of encouragement or disdain for your team. Even in the super stadia of today many fans elect to stand for the duration in homage to those long past days. They were all of those things but also frightening, foreboding and hazardous, in particular to the very young and more senior amongst the crowd. 

The first advice given by my father with whom I regularly went to The Old Showground was to make sure that I found a standing place in front of one of the steel barriers that punctuated the concrete terracing. If there was a surge in the crowd in response to action on the pitch or a disturbance off then I was to duck under the barrier so as not to be crushed against it. I had to take this evasive action a few times and it became quite a reflex. It was more difficult for the old men, the  stalwarts of the club support to act with the required agility and flexibility to avoid potential for injury. 

Anything was possible in a heaving and fractious crowd. I could often hear the sound of a glass bottle hitting the concrete and early winter evening games were punctuated by fireworks being let off or thrown indiscriminately. l should state that all of these incidents came from within the partisan home supporters. The presence of any committed body of away team supporters added a whole new dimension of activities.

For all of these hazards, actual or perceived, I was an enthusiastic match-goer with my father. It was grass-roots football, warts and all. 

Scroll forward to the new millennium, post lessons learned at Bradford and Hillsborough, and I find myself in Hull City’s modern stadium in the pre-match moments. 

I have been welcomed into the expansive foyer of the Executive Club by a suit-clad host, the doors are held open for me into a warm and well furnished lounge with complimentary programme and a choice of meals at an impressive buffet table attended by white hat-clad chefs. 

There is a myriad of wall mounted screens showing highlights of games already in progress or classic highlights from past matches and on a low stage a former player is giving an eloquent talk on his expectations for the team performance. 

If desired, bets can be placed in civilised comfort but I make my way over plush carpets to the stairwell that leads to a subtly upholstered seat and a glorious view over an impeccably manicured playing surface. 

In retrospect, The Old Showground seems like a bad dream. I have not gone soft. It is just nice to go to a football match with a better than average chance of making it home safely afterwards