Evening game at the John Smith’s stadium, Huddersfield — but let’s not talk about it past this point. Suffice to say that only here, when the teams were coming out, did we Brighton fans feel particularly optimistic.
A lack of cheap hotel rooms in the centre of London led to us staying last night in Stratford, on the doorstep of Olympic Park, venue for the 2012 Games. We went on a walk round there this morning. This counts as East rather than Central London, but is more than urban enough and, as is obvious from this picture, sees the occasional football fan now and again (though not this weekend).
When I first saw this cormorant perched on a post beside the unseen River Lea below, I genuinely thought it was a fake, put there as some vaguely cute piece of urban design when all this was built a few years ago. Then it moved. I wish I could have got a better photo of it — I had another one, a close-up, which made the wings look amazing but the head was out of focus and it didn’t locate it in this bizarre geographical context. I guess if birds like this can turn up in central London we may occasionally be doing something right with the environment.
I’ve given up trying to get any truly decent action shots at football matches, I can never do it. With this one I was trying for symmetry and to capture that mother-of-pearl sky. Decent day out today — except for the result. Well, I guess our unbeaten run had to come to an end at some point.
Watching a game in the sixth tier of English football — the National League North — might seem an unusual way to see in 2017, but Joe, me and 2,509 other people decided it was worth doing today; numbers which help explain the strength of the sport in this country. Halifax Town 2, Darlington 2 was the final score, a good game, quite exciting, though from listening to the home fans around Joe and I you’d think it had been a disaster of Iceland v England proportions. I worry that this shot is a bit messy, but I like the crescent moon visible to top left, so let’s give it a go. I prefer it to most pictures I get at football matches, anyway, even if it is slightly out-of-focus.
Whatever happens to football, and/or to my club, I hope I never lose the simple enjoyment of just going to a match, and that moment of excitement as you see the ground ahead; particularly for night matches when the floodlights pour illumination onto the as-yet-unseen pitch. I’ve posted before about how Ewood Park, Blackburn is a good, old-school ground (one of only three used in the first ever football league season in 1888 that is still used today — trivia fans may note that the other two have also appeared on this blog over the last five years); I like the terraced house which gets into this shot on the right.
That’s three seasons in a row that the ground’s appeared on here but if our clubs keep going in the direction they are doing, it won’t be on again for a while. Blackburn Rovers 2, Brighton & Hove Albion 3. We are top of the Championship tonight…. they are at the other end of the table.
After we visited Hampden Park last year I decided that at some point I wanted to see a match there. Football tourism, why not. Something different to do other than hang around at home on a Saturday. It is one of the world’s great football stadia and I’d never before seen a Scottish league game in my 47 years on this planet. Hampden is home to Queen’s Park FC, the oldest club in Scotland (150 years old in 2017), and the last remaining bastion of amateurism in senior British football. The crowd for their game with Brechin City was a few hundred strong, swelled by Joe and myself, and we saw the home team win 2-0 (despite Virgin Trains’ best efforts to screw up our day trip).
Hillsborough, home of Sheffield Wednesday FC, is undoubtedly a grand football stadium, but I don’t like it and never will. It’s miles away from the city, primitive in terms of the amenities offered and I’ve had some bad experiences there. This on top of the events of April 1989 when 96 people were killed there due to police incompetence (not to mention the subsequent — but now thankfully ended — 27-year establishment cover-up). But at least we, that is, Brighton & Hove Albion FC, won there today, 2-1. Go Seagulls. I like the symmetry of this shot of the entry gangway to the away end, but yes, it would be better if it wasn’t for that dark intrusion, the top of a seat I think.
St. James’ Park, Newcastle, is the greatest, and certainly the largest, true city-centre football stadium in England. Capacity over 50,000, and all ten minutes’ walk from the train station — well, 10 minutes to the bottom of the main stand anyway. If you are an away fan you then have about another 10 minutes’ climbing of stairs to negotiate: I don’t think I’ve ever been so high up in the air watching a football match before. Good views therefore; better than anything we endured on the pitch today, a poor performance (Newcastle United 2, Brighton and Hove Albion 0).
Thought I’d better do a photo of Glasgow today even though I saw nothing of it except the hotel, the room where we did the viva examination, and a restaurant for lunch. Still, the view from the second of these, being up on the 11th floor of a building at the University of Strathclyde, was a damn fine one and included this monumental structure (in both senses of the word). Celtic Park (aka Parkhead), home of Celtic FC, one of the best-supported football clubs in the world, towers above its surroundings and seems colossal even from two miles away. The ‘mist’ is, rather, steam from chimneys between it and where I stood.
Ewood Park, home of Blackburn Rovers FC, is the ground ahead — one of only three grounds used in the very first season of the Football League (1888) that is still in use, so there’s a bit of history to it. When you approach it through these terraces it really is like being back in the 1950s. No idea why the guy is taking all that luggage to the game. Good day for us Brighton fans — we won 1-0.
Being 42 