Manchester United 3 – Ipswich 0
These pictures document the match.
It was all very disappointing, but then Mick has his priorities of getting out of the Championship.
Old Trafford is not the sort of stadium, I thought it would be. It had a rather tired air and compared to the Emirates or the Amex at Brighton, it was very second-rate.
Dreadful Doncaster
Doncaster is a town that doesn’t deserve to have a football team.
I went to the match on Tuesday, where Ipswich won by four goals to one.
On arrival at the station, as I’d got plenty of time, I thought I’d take a bus to the excellent Keepmoat Stadium. Doncaster station is next to the bus station, but I couldn’t find any information or in fact anybody to ask. So I had to take a taxi.
I asked the taxi-driver how I would get a taxi back after the game and he said that I couldn’t, as because of the traffic taxis can’t get near the ground.
Two stewards told me that I could get a bus from a particular stop to get back. So that was some progress.
As I had to catch the 22:43 train, I decided to leave after the match proper, which meant I missed the extra time, but it did give me an hour to get to the station.
Unfortunately, the buses seemed to have stopped running, so after waiting for twenty minutes, I decided to use the most reliable transport I had – my feet!
But there were no signposts and after scrambling over busy dual carriageways and walking through dark and dismal subways, I made it with about ten minutes to spare.
If a ground, is not obvious from the station, then councils and football clubs, should at least provide some signs and maps.
I shall not be going to the football in Doncaster on a Tuesday night again.
At least I’d booked a ticket in First for the trip home for £23.75.
Wliford Bridge On The Nottingham Express Transit
Wilford Bridge opened over a hundred years ago as a toll bridge and parts of it are Listed.
The Nottingham Express Transit (NET) needed to cross the River Trent and instead of building a new bridge this bridge was widened and strengthened to accept trams.
I think that the architects and engineers have done a splendid job to create a very good crossing for trams, pedestrians and cyclists. As I walked across it, there was a lot of cyclists and pedestrians crossing the river.
I do wonder if the Meadows Embankment tram stop on the north side of the bridge will become one of the better ways to get to the cricket and football grounds. You would park at Clifton South or another convenient Park-and-Ride and after getting off the tram, would walk along the river. The Google Map shows the Trent from Wilford Bridge to Trent Bridge.
River Trent
I don’t know how good the walking route is at present, but surely signs and information on the river route and a possibly more direct one cutting out the bend in the River Trent should be provided. I suspect that the route is shorter than it first appears, as there is the Wilford Suspension bridge on the other side of the bend.
Ainsley Maitland-Niles
To put it mildly Ipswich have had some rubbish on loan from various Premier League clubs in the past.
But Ainsley Maitland-Niles is in a different class.
He has all the skills and he has that added factor that so many youngsters don’t seem to possess – Keenness to get on with the game. And not in a selfish way!
For Ipswich’s first goal yesterday against Burnley, he brought the ball forward to the edge of the penalty area. Most players would have shot from distance, but he saw that Brett Pitman was free on his right and he was able to put the ball across goal for Freddie Sears to slot in.
But don’t take my word for the quality of his performance! These two paragraphs from the report in the East Anglian Daily Times describe his part in the two goals.
After Maitland-Niles’ pass into the channel, Pitman steered a low cross towards the back post and Sears only had to provide the slightest of touches inside the six yard box to help the ball on its way into the bottom corner.
One-nil became 2-0 five minutes later in the most simple of fashions; McGoldrick barely having to jump to head home Maitland-Niles’ corner from around eight yards out.
And this is Mick McCarthy’s view in an article on the BBC web site.
Read it all!
We’ve not seen a youngster of this class, wearing the blue of Ipswich since Kieron Dyer.
It’s My Fault HaHa!
I just had to post this story from the BBC, about how an Ipswich fan punched a hole in his ceiling when Ipswich equalised against Norwich and the scorer; Paul Anderson offered to pay for it.
Can you imagine the fuss of a Liverpool or Chelsea player did this for a fan living in Leeds!
Match Forty-Seven – Ipswich 1 – Norwich 1
This was the first leg of the playoffs and it was a well-fought match.
A draw was probably a fair result and I think it could have have honesty gone either way.
Mick McCarthy said this about his team.
I would say it was a terrific, hard-fought football match. When two teams are competing for a big prize it will never be expansive football.
I thought it was a good game, for us we’d like to be in front but there’s no away goals that count.
I’ve always been proud of my team, and to go behind when we were on top and come back shows everything that my team’s about.
I do think that Mick’s method of motivating the team is a lesson to everybody.
I’ve just looked up the odds of the four teams left of winning the Championship on Betfair.
Middlesbrough – 11/8
Norwich – 9/4
Ipswich – 9/2
Brentford – 9/1
That is all pretty close to me without a warm favourite, although we’re probably get a Middlesbrough-Norwich final.
Match Forty-Six – Blackburn 3 – Ipswich 2
For the last match of the normal season, in some ways this was a bit of a disappointment, as Ipswich only needed a point to be certain of the play-offs.
But at least we got through as Reading surprisingly beat Derby. In the end the Ipswich fans were singing “Come on Reading”
Mill Hill Station And Ewood Park
Ewood Park, the home of Blackburn Rovers is not the easiest ground to get to from the main station for the town.
Normally, I take a bus from the station, but it is not the easiest way as there is no relevant information, despite the fact that the bus station is outside the train one. Obviously, the natives are psychic in Blackburn.
So today, I decided to go via Mill Hill station as it looked like a downhill walk to the ground. This Google Earth image shows the area.
Mill Hill Station And Ewood Park
Mill Hill station is in the top left of the picture and the football ground is to the bottom right. These are some pictures of the station.
I didn’t post any of the maps and signposts at the station, as there isn’t any meaningful information on how to get to the football ground.
I don’t think I’ll bother with this route again, as it has little to recommend it and a station that desperately needs more information and disabled access.
It is a truly dreadful station and after the Todmorden Curve is fully open, you’ll need to change trains at Blackburn to get here from Manchester.
Match Forty-Four – Wolverhampton 1 – Ipswich 1
It was an early start to catch the 08:43 Virgin to get me to Wolverhampton for this match’s 12:15 kick-off I travelled in First and got water, a banana and tea to sustain me on the journey. At least the trains now seem to carry a lot of fruit, which is surely acceptable to all.
Molineux stadium is not that far to walk from Wolverhampton station, as the Google Earth image shows.
Molineux And Wolverhampton Station
I’m sure there must be a quicker way that is known to regular visitors, especially for Away supporters, who are in the top-right or north-east corner of the stadium.
When I went to the ground today, I felt it would be prudent to have an early lunchtime snack, so I walked up into the city centre to the Marks and Spencer, to see if they had any sandwiches. Just as at Middlesbrough, there were none available. I then walked down from the city centre to the ground.
Coming back, I asked the stewards and they said the best way was to walk through the buildings of the University and then climb up to the Inner Ring Road, which leads to the station.
It wasn’t that difficult a walk, but I do wonder if a better direct route could be signposted that possibly ran along the canal in the area. Wolverhampton does have signposts and liths, but like this one in the city centre, the football ground isn’t always indicated.
Where’s The Football Ground?
Hopefully next time, I go, the Midland Metro will be connected to Birmingham New Street station, so it may be easier to go to Molineux by Birmingham and the Metro, as this will mean only a downhill walk in Wolverhampton and I could et in the larger city first. Coming back, it would probably be easier to use today’s route, until they extend the Metro with a loop in Wolverhampton. The Wikipedia section contains this statement.
In July 2010, Centro Director General Geoff Inskip hinted that the scheme would be reworked by taking it to “places people need to go, such as the University”, and not taking passengers to the railway station and back “if they don’t actually need to go there”
Surely as the football ground is next to the University, Wolverhampton probably needs a full city centre loop, that serves the shops, railway and bus stations, the University and the football ground. This Google Earth image shows the Inner Ring Road, the northern part of the city centre, the football ground and the train station.
Wolverhampton Inner Ring Road
Note that the Inner Ring Road has a very wide central reservation, which must offer possibilities for running the Metro along the middle, serving the various stops by subway or footbridge. At the football ground there is already a subway and there is a bridge at the railway station, that could be upgraded to tram stops. This Google Earh image shows the bridges that connect the bus and railway stations.
Wolverhampton And Midland Metro
The big roundabout south of the bridges and the three limbs of the bus station is where the Metro enters Wolverhampton City Centre to terminate at Wolverhampton tram stop. Could not a branch turn north to serve the bus and train stations, Wolverhampton University and Molineux? In an ideal world, it would continue past the football ground to perhaps a Park and Ride site on the other side of the city. Or it could even go further round the Inner Ring Road and loop back into the City Centre to the existing terminus.
There is also talk as in this article in the Wolverhampton Express and Star, of using tram-trains to extend the Midland Metro from Wolverhampton to Walsall on an old rail line. But then the West Midlands has used and disused rail lines everywhere and if tram-trains work well connecting Sheffield and Rotherham, I would think it is likely that proposals could be put forward to extend the Metro.
The possibilities are endless and by 2020, engineers and civic planners will have come up with a scheme that is much better than any so far proposed.
The football today was a hard-fought draw and a that was probably a fair result.
The pictures show the ground, the match and the half-time entertainment.According to the report on the BBC web site, Mick McCarthy was forthright after the match.
We are always hard to beat and hard to play against. The first thing I said to the players in the dressing room after the game was what a belligerent, stubborn, hard working, tough, horrible bunch you have turned out to be and I love you and I am proud of you because you need all those qualities to be a good team. It is lovely to have.
I wouldn’t disagree with Mick’s superb motivational speech. You can imagine various military commanders saying something very similar.
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!
The Anonymous Widower 