The End Of The Don Valley Stadium
Sheffield’s Don Valley stadium was built for the World Student Games in 1991. It was never a real success and is now being demolished.
If there is a lesson from this story, it is to get the planning of what you do after the Games right. Manchester after the 2002 Commonweath Games rebuilt the stadium for Manchester City and the London 2012 Olympic stadium is going to be used by West Ham. Glasgow’s excellent 2014 Commonealth Games imaginatively built an Athletics Track inside Hampden Park. The Don Valley stadium didn’t seem to interest either or both of the city’s football clubs as a venue after the Games, so became a white elephant.
I do think a factor was that the stadium was designed in-house by Sheffield Council’s own architects. This policy was used extensively by British Rail and created some real monstrosities in the 1960s and 1970s.
By contrast the award-winning John Smith’s stadium in Huddersfield, which I visited in the afternoon and was built a few years later, was designed by specialist architects, as have most sports stadia around the world in recent years.
I do think too, that Sheffield missed a chance here of creating a prefabicated set of stands, in steel naturally, that would have fitted the standard athletics track. After the Games most could have been taken down leaving just enough for less-grand events. As the stadium is in a bowl, surely this could have been used to create an uncovered natural amphitheatre, where most people just sat on the grass. This has been used successfully at many horse racing venues in the UK and further afield, like Ascot, Goodwood and Epsom, where these areas have a totally different atmosphere.
In some ways it’s all rather sad and it has been probably a big waste of money, that could have been better spent. Athletics hasn’t drawn large crowds in the UK outside of the big set piece games and championships. The Alexander Stadium in Birmingham seems to be more than sufficient with a capacity of 12,700 for most other events, so the Don Valley stadium was probably a stadium too many for athletics. The nearest stadia at Gateshead, Manchester and the smaller track in Leeds, seem to have successfully negotiated multi-sport partnerships and appear to be on a much sounder footing, than the Don Valley Stadium ever was.
If they’d got the planning, re-use and design right, it might have been a very different story!
Is There A Klug Effect?
Bryan Klug was the manager of Ipswich’s youth academy for some years and in 2002 and 2009 he was appointed caretaker manager.
The academy didn’t produce that many good players under his tenure, but he probably helped the likes of Darren Bent, Darren Ambrose, Luke Hyam and Jordan Rhodes amongst others. Since he left the club, when Roy Keane arrived, with the exception of Connor Wickham few home-grown players have been produced.
Klug went to Tottenham, who for the last few years, have had a dismal record of creating their own stars to be Assistant Academy Manager and Head of Player Development. And then a whole host of youngsters have come through including Andros Townsend, Ryan Mason and Harry Kane. At one time against Italy last week, England had four young Tottenham players on the pitch.
In June 2012, Klug came back to Ipswich and already Teddy Bishop and Matt Clarke are full members of the First Team Squad.
Match Thirty-Nine – Watford 0 – Ipswich 1
This was a thoroughly entertaining match, which I saw on my first visit to Vicarage Road since the opening of the new Sir Elton John stand.
The New Sir Elton John Stand
Watford were on a roll of winning six out of their previous seven home matches and were sitting on top of the Championship after scoring lots of goals, so I didn’t go to the match with any thoughts of not being beaten. And probably beaten substantially!
But the Ipswich Team were reading a different script and during the ninety minutes their defence held firm and didn’t allow Watford to get a single shot on target.
The midfield of Scuse, Varney, the diminutive Tab and Bru were key in that they seemed to snuffing out many Watford attacks before they started. Hopefully for the remaining matches some of Ipswich’s injured midfield will be able to return. At least Stephen Hunt was on the bench!
Kevin Bru is one of Mick McCarthy’s finds of the season, who was born in Paris and came to Suffolk by a roundabout route which included a lot of lesser French clubs and Levski Sofia in Bulgaria. He was on superb form and was the leader of the midfield pack. He could have scored with an audacious volley with the outside of his right foot from just outside the penalty area, but it just went the wrong side of the post. I suspect he learned that sort of skill playing street football in a Paris banlieue. It’s not something you see from an English player.
The match was drifting towards a goal-less draw and as Watford pressed harder to win the match, in the ninety-fourth minute, Tabb hooked the ball speculatively away, Freddie Sears dispossessed their centre back, who should have cleared it, and then put Richard Chaplow through to score the winning goal, which no-one thought would come for Ipswich.
Throughout the match, the Ipswich crowd were their usual superb best and they will be key in the remaining seven matches of the normal season.
I intend to be at every one!
If you look at the last seven years of the Championship, it would appear that to get promoted directly without going through the play-offs, a team needs to at least get more than eighty points. To do this Town need at least fourteen points from those seven matches. The away matches at Wolves, Huddersfield and Blackburn, are best described as tricky rather than difficult, so if we can get five points on the road from these matches, whether we get to eighty will be down to the home form, where the supreme test is Bournemouth on Good Friday. I will be surprised if the match is not a total sell-out!
A friend pointed out that after yesterday, Town has won every match they’ve played inside the M25.
And where is Wembley, should the team get to the play-off final?
Match Thirty-Eight – Ipswich 1 – Bolton 0
The best things about this match were the fact that the trains to Ipswich were working well and the result.
It was yet another tricky match and Ipswich won it with a late goal from Tabb.
The only problem I had was I fell asleep on the train and nearly ending up sleeping in a siding.
Luckily I woke up just in time!
Match Thirty-Seven – Middlesbrough 4 – Ipswich 1
I travelled very apprehensively to this early match and my fears were realised by the heavy defeat.
The crowd wasn’t big, as this picture shows.
A Sparse Crowd At Middlesbrough
I do think if they are going to have an early kick-off for the benefit of Sky, then clubs should at least make sure the crowd is bigger.
The match turned in an unusual way.
After four minutes Ayala scored for Middlesbrough and in the process both Ayala and the Ipswich goalkeeper; Dean Gerken were injured.
The replacement of Gerken made no difference to Ipswich, but after twenty-four minutes Ayala was replaced by Jonathan Woodgate. In his time, Woodgate has been talked about as one of the best centre-backs in England, but he’s hardly fulfilled his promise, due to a long list of injuries.
After he came on, Ipswich got hardly a sniff at goal.
I do hope if we are going to play in Middlesbrough in the future, that the match is scheduled for August or September.
I don’t think there can be a colder place in England!
Match Thirty-Six – Ipswich 1 – Brentford 1
This was another long day because of the works on the line to Ipswich. When am I going to get a season of football which has not been made miserable at some point by the trains?
I did travel in reasonable trains both way as I went via Cambridge, but it’s a long way round and I didn’t arrive back home until after eight.
The match was a ding-dong affair, that sums up as Mick said, the bonkers nature of the Championship. Either team could have won it with a bit of luck.
Match Thirty-Five – Leeds 2 – Ipswich 1
This was a disappointing match played in a cold Leeds.
Match Thirty-Five – Leeds 2 – Ipswich 1
It also flagged up, Ipswich’s lack of a regular penalty taker, owing to the injury to David McGoldrick. I think Daryl Murphy was a reluctant recruit and he muffed it.
Match Thirty-Four – Norwich 2 – Ipswich 0
This was a dreadful day as we lost to Norwich.
Match Thirty-Four – Norwich 2 – Ipswich 0
But what made it worse was the tediously long journey both ways due to the work on the Great vEastern Main Line.
I evetually got back into London at nine o’clock, after a match that finished at four, to find that all my normal routes home were suffering from engineering works.
Match Thirty-Two – Ipswich 0 – Reading 1
This was one of those matches that contributed to a tiresome day. It started by having to go to Ipswich via Billericay and a coach.
Ah! Billericay!
Reading scored one of those goals and then sat back and defended – Game Over!
Coming home was much worse, as I was dropped into the organised chaos at Liverpool Street.
Match Thirty-One – Fulham 1 – Ipswich 2
This was a strong performance, that gained all three points at Fulham.
We were all seated in the Putney End and you can see from the pictures that we were low down.
I’ve been to Craven Cottage a couple of times before, usually walking from Putney Bridge station. Today, I took a bus from Hammersmith station and it was easier. Going back I walked to Fulham Palace Road and then got the first bus going west, ending up at West Brompton station, from where I got a train home.
Judging by the small numbers of fans on the buses I would suspect that most home fans either live locally, drive or have their own short cuts to the ground.
Craven Cottage will always be one of those grounds, where watching football is a pleasure.
The Anonymous Widower 