When the Circus Leaves Town , livre ebook

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218 pages

English

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What happens when a football club ups sticks and leaves its traditional home for pastures new? What replaces the terraces, stands and floodlights that tower above old town centres and terraced streets? How does football relate to the new landscapes that the clubs head to? What happens when football leaves home? When the Circus Leaves Town: What Happens When Football Leaves Home explores the impact of the ruptures created when clubs and supporters wave goodbye to their homes. It examines disruption to matchday routines, erasure of geographic memories and the difficulties in repairing these, and considers whether such moves have been for better or worse. Writer Dave Proudlove walks the streets of towns and cities across the country visiting housing estates, retail parks and shiny new stadiums. He talks to those involved with the relocation of football clubs - club officials, developers, politicians, fans - to understand the reasons behind the upheaval, and to bring us the full story of what happens when football leaves home.

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Publié par	Distributed by eBookpartnership
Date de parution	19 septembre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781801503327
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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First published by Pitch Publishing, 2022
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
David Proudlove, 2022
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright.
Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781801501736
eBook ISBN 9781801503327
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Contents
Introduction
Prologue: Home
Part One:
To the North
Roker Raw - Sunderland
Down by the River - Middlesbrough
Highway to Hull - Hull City
Old Iron, New Iron - Scunthorpe United
Roving - Doncaster Rovers
The Award Winner - Huddersfield Town
Going Loco - Bolton Wanderers
Moss Side Story - Manchester City
Part Two:
To the Midlands
The Two Meadows - Shrewsbury Town
Advertising Space - Walsall
Pride - Derby County
Fox Hunt - Leicester City
Sky Blues - Coventry City
Part Three:
To the South
It s a Gas, Gas, Gas - Bristol Rovers
Marching - Southampton
There s Only One Hazel Blears - Brighton Hove Albion
Off to the Mad Stad - Reading
Let it Bee - Barnet
Gunning for the Gunners - Arsenal
Go West - West Ham United
The Dens - Millwall
Back Home - Wimbledon
Part Four:
A Welsh Journey
Exiles on Rodney Road - Newport County 284 Capital - Cardiff City
The Ugly, Lovely Town - Swansea City
Epilogue: Who s Next?
Acknowledgements
Sources
Photos
For Karl Francis Connolly
1968-2021
Introduction
The social spaces of distraction and display become as vital to urban culture as the spaces of working and living
David Harvey
FOR MOST of my life, I ve had an interest in buildings, architecture and places, maps and plans. And I ve always had a bit of an obsession with football grounds and the social environment that sustains them. All of this has come together with this book.
My first experience of a football ground was my first trip to see Stoke City play at the old Victoria Ground. It was the second leg of a League Cup tie with Manchester City. I was five years old, and it was a school night, 28 October 1981. Stoke won 2-0 on the night but went out on penalties having lost the first leg 2-0. I remember very little of the game, but the atmosphere - the sights, the sounds, the noise, the smells - filled up my senses and will stay with me forever. This was the mysterious place called Stoke that Dad disappeared to, and I had become a part of it.
That Christmas, I received what became one of my favourite gifts of my childhood, Casdon s Kenny Dalglish Soccer Game, which Dad and I played to death. I was also into Lego in a big way, and I ended up combining the two: I built a football stadium around the Kenny Dalglish game which was my first venture into development and construction.
The following season - 1982/83 - was my first real season, and a very good Stoke City team played some wonderful football which helped me to fall in love with the game. I was hooked and began to devour books and old copies of Dad s Football Weekly and collect Panini football stickers, and I continued to go to watch Stoke City with Dad.
Towards the end of the 1980s, I began to go to the occasional away game - my first was a 1-1 draw at West Bromwich Albion, one of the oldest fixtures in English football - and I enjoyed seeing and experiencing other football grounds in other places greatly.
One of the grounds that I was most looking forward to visiting was Anfield. Old footage of the Kop - that huge old terrace, home to a swaying mass of humanity, often singing Beatles songs - captured my imagination, and although my trips there turned out to be disappointments, it has always been a ground that is up there with my favourites.
The night that I attended my first ever game, Dad promised me that one day he d take me to Wembley to see Stoke City play. He kept that promise when we beat Stockport County 1-0 in the 1992 Autoglass Trophy Final. But that wasn t my first trip to Wembley. I d been on five previous occasions to watch England schoolboy internationals, but, of course, it was nothing like seeing my own team play there and win. While a trip to Wembley was always going to be special, I actually thought that the old place was a bit overrated. Mind you, I also think that the modern iteration is overrated too.
***
Everything changed on 15 April 1989. It was a warm, sunny, early spring day. Stoke were away to Bournemouth; Dad and I weren t planning to travel to the south coast for that one. And it was also FA Cup semi-finals day: Everton were facing Norwich City at Villa Park, and Liverpool and Nottingham Forest were meeting at Hillsborough.
By 5pm, Stoke had recorded a rare away win, beating the Cherries 1-0 thanks to a goal from the late, great Paul Ware. Everton had beaten Norwich 1-0 to reach the FA Cup Final. But none of it mattered. Everything paled into insignificance given the news that was coming from Hillsborough: a large-scale crush involving Liverpool supporters had left hundreds injured, while there was an ever-increasing death toll.
Dad and I drove the 15 minutes to my grandmother s house in silence. This isn t a revision of history; I remember it like it was yesterday. Dad was a happy-go-lucky person, who loved nothing more than a good chinwag and a good laugh. When he was quiet, it was because there was something wrong, something that had affected him. During that short drive, he was deep in thought, and he didn t say a word. The journey seemed to take forever.
Ninety-seven supporters eventually died as a direct result of the crush, while a large number of others passed away indirectly, and hundreds more were left traumatised. It was the biggest disaster in British football history. And if that wasn t bad enough, it led to the biggest cover-up in our country s long history, with the Establishment via the South Yorkshire and West Midlands Police forces, the Thatcher government, and The Sun collaborating in a plot to blame Liverpool supporters for the disaster. Thus began an ongoing fight for justice, a fight that still continues to this day.
Despite the findings of the Hillsborough Independent Panel and the reopened inquests, which made clear where responsibility for the disaster lay, no one has ever been prosecuted for the identified failings. It s a national disgrace.
Most football supporters empathised with Liverpool Football Club and all of those affected by the Hillsborough disaster, including everyone from Nottingham Forest, and still do. And it s not virtue signalling to do so. Football supporters were one of Thatcher s enemies within , and with the state of football grounds back then and the way that football supporters were often treated, it could have happened to any of us. Indeed, just a couple of months prior to the Hillsborough disaster, my club, Stoke City, faced Barnsley in the fourth round of the FA Cup. After a thrilling 3-3 draw at the Victoria Ground, we travelled to Barnsley three days later for the replay. We took a big following to Oakwell, and a section of our support was caught up in a crush outside the ground, and the South Yorkshire Police force didn t handle things well. Coincidence?
Lord Justice Taylor was commissioned to carry out a report into the disaster at Hillsborough, and an interim report was published just a few months later in August 1989, with the final report issued in January 1990.
Taylor found that the main cause of the disaster was a major failure of police control, and completely exonerated Liverpool supporters of any blame. Although the report found that standing at football matches was not intrinsically unsafe, it recommended the conversion of major stadiums to all-seater models. The Football League responded by introducing regulations that required all clubs within the top two divisions to have all-seater stadiums by August 1994, though this was relaxed slightly when clubs were intending to move.
The Taylor Report and the decision of the Football League triggered some of the biggest changes ever seen in English football. A new generation of stadiums rose, with clubs big and small and in all parts of the country choosing to leave long-standing traditional homes for the brave new world of purpose-built all-seater stadiums in - predominantly - out-of-town locations. Since that fateful day in April 1989, more than 30 clubs have moved on to pastures new - with more planning to do so - creating a physical legacy from the disaster.
But the Taylor Report is only one part of the story. That, combined with the birth of the Premier League and Sky TV s whole new ball game , led to the rampant gentrification of what was previously - in the main - a working-class pursuit. Over time, my comprehension of what had happened changed, and I now recognise that what we have witnessed is the ultimate neo-liberal project.
And at the same time, I began to understand that football grounds weren t simply places where people went to watch the game. They were social spaces, places where connections were made. They were drivers of local economies, working-class theatres. And they were spiritual places and became part of one s persona in some respects. Is this still the case? Are they still the folk cathedrals of modern Britain as John Bale described them? Or are the newer stadia simply places where fin