Locked Out
Fittingly in the current climate, Paul Claydon looks at grounds from the outside
The unprecedented events of 2020 that saw football stop abruptly in March led many
regular followers of the game longing for when they could once again step foot inside a
football ground. When the Coronavirus lockdown began grounds were padlocked and
even when the game at the higher levels made a return in June it was ‘behind closed
doors’. This meant that even though armchair fans were relieved to have something to
watch again, those that got their fix from attending games were left feeling a little unfulfilled.
To help alleviate some of the feelings of frustration, in the summer we began posting on
Twitter views of various League football grounds from the late 80s and early 90s. This is
of course not an unusual thing to do, but this series looked at the grounds from the outside,
not only kindling some nostalgia for a period when most grounds had their own
individual character, but also acknowledging the contemporary feeling of being locked
out. The posts were well received by our Twitter followers and generated many interesting
comments about the featured grounds and the experiences of those that had visited
them around three decades ago.
In all we featured around thirty grounds in the series. On these pages we reveal the most
popular posts and reproduce some of the images that were used. Also, we summarise
some of the comments made on the posts, bringing to life memories of visits to grounds
in the era just before the Taylor Report made such an impact on the nation’s stadiums.
Blackburn Rovers’ Ewood Park, as it looked in the early 1990s, proved popular, provoking
more than 40 comments. The iconic turnstile block that stood at the junction of Nuttall
Street and Kidder Street was the stand-out feature in those days, embossed as it was
with a headstone proclaiming, ‘Rovers FC’. This block was famous for once appearing in a
1960s TV advert for Hovis bread. Also visible at this end of the ground were the cobbled
streets and old tram tracks running down Kidder Street. Anyone visiting Ewood Park today
would struggle to recognise the ground of three decades ago, with three sides totally
rebuilt, roads realigned and whole terraces of houses bulldozed. Thankfully one relic has
survived; the old ‘Rovers FC’ headstone was sandblasted back to its original unpainted
state and erected alongside a statue of Jack Walker behind the new stand at the Blackburn
end.
Photo: David Forsyth
A classic turnstile block, cobbled streets
and a tramline; it could only be Ewood Park
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