Corby Town - Steel Park

Match - Corby Town 0-5 Harrogate Town
Competition - Conference North
Admission - £12
Scarf - N/A
Attendance - 460
Food - All Steak Pukka Pie 8/10
Ground No - 110
Ground Rating - 6/10

My last game of the 2012/13 season was to Corby Town's Steel Park to see there last game of the season against Harrogate Town. Neither team had yet guaranteed survival in Blue Square Bet North and so along with a number of other clubs were hoping to get the points to stay up.

I had been to Corby's old ground last season which I hated due to the fact that they played at an athletics stadium and were as such miles away from the play and there was also very little leg room when seated in the stand, but they have now moved to there new ground directly adjacent to the athletics ground.

On arriving at the ground you are met by a very smart set of turnstiles, as shown below.

Once me and my dad had entered the ground we made our way to get some food where they had a good selection of pies burgers and chips.

Steel park is made up of two stands, the main stand is along one touchline at the half way line and has around 500 seats with Corby made out in white. The other stand is a large terrace at the far end of the ground that stretches the whole width of the pitch. The other end is fully open with hard standing and is home to the snack bar with the other touchline also made up of hard standing that back on to the athletics stadium stand which is home to the teams and officials changing rooms.

The game itself started very slowly and almost nothing happened in the first half so I wont waste your time trying to come up with anything.

The second half though was a different matter altogether with Harrogate's monster centre half, Richard Pell scoring after a goal month scramble within the first 5 minutes of the half. Harrogate were playing by far the best football with Ex Football league player Lee Elam showing his experience and greater ability in pulling the strings down the left. Unlike Corby, Harrogate looked like a team trying to survive in the league and soon went two in front when a good strike from around 25 yards was dropped over the line by the Corby Town keeper who had a poor game throughout.

The third goal was scored from a corner and came from Pell again with a powerful header into the top left hand corner of the goal to end the game as any sort of contest. The game died a bit after that goal although Corby did have one chance, but with an open goal the attacker managed to put the ball at least two yards wide from only 10 yards out and summed up their whole day.

With only a few minutes left Harrogate scored goals 4 and 5. The fourth was a nice curled finish into the bottom right hand corner of the Corby goal from 15 yards but the best goal of the game was the fifth and came in time added on with Harrogate midfielder Tom Platt picking the ball up and smashing it in to the top corner from 30 yards out.

  

The result in the end didn't mean a lot as relegation rivals Hinckley Town lost meaning that they were the final team to be confirmed as relegated from the Blue Square Bet North.

Overall Corby's new ground can only really be described as clean and functional there was little character or atmosphere created from the small attendance.

That is my season over now but I will be updating my blog with my Olympic exploits in the summer and any other sporting events that I manage to get to. This will be difficult due to me and my wife expecting our first child at the end of May but will try none the less. I will definitely be back next football season though so keep coming back.

Thanks for reading

Fish

Glasgow Celtic - Celtic Park

Match - Celtic 2-0 St Johnstone
Competition - Scottish Premier League
Admission - £26 Lisbon Lions Stand (East)
Scarf - £7 Shirt £20
Attendance - 57,848
Food - Chips with Curry Sauce 5/10
Ground No - 109
Ground Rating - 9/10

We (Me, Will, Phil) awoke this morning at a decent time knowing that we didn't have any travelling to do for today's game with Celtic Park being only around a mile and a half walk down London Road from our Premier Inn hotel. therefore we were able to have a casual breakfast and relax before heading for the stadium. On leaving the hotel for breakfast we discovered that almost everyone that was staying at the hotel was also attending today's game as we were greeted by a sea of Green and White shirts.

Today's game was supposed to be the day that Celtic won the SPL title but a slip up in midweek against Rangers and a last minute goal in the previous days game for Rangers against Motherwell left Celtic still requiring 4 points to guarantee the championship. The game was a 12.45pm kick off so at around 11am we left for Celtic Park, the ground was easy to find as it could be seen a fair way down London Road and by following the thousands of hooped shirts.

On arriving at Celtic Park we made our way to the main entrance to the stadium (above) where there are three proud standing statutes of Club legends. The first is of Brother Walfrid who was the founder of Celtic football club there are also Statues of Jock Stein CBE a former Celtic Manager and Jimmy Johnstone a former Player. I have pictures but they don't seem to want to upload properly so may try later.

We then crossed the Car Park and went to the large Club Shop to purchase scarves, I also purchased the Celtic away shirt, this is the only time of the season I buy shirts as they have usually been reduced from the normal £40-£45 to around £20. The shop was packed with a very long queue but with 10 tills in operation we were soon out and on our way to the turnstiles.

As we had seats in the second tier of the ground we had to climb a number of flights of stairs they seemed to be never ending but finally came out into a smallish rather tight concourse and headed for the food kiosk with the usual Pies, burgers and hot dogs on offer. Unlike a lot of large grounds in England they also had chips which I had with Curry sauce. I wish I'd had a burger or a pie.

We made our way to our seats in the top tier of the Lisbon Lions Stand, where we had a great view of the action. Celtic Park is a large, mainly two tiered stadium the only single tiered stand was the South Stand to the left of the above photo, which has what I believe to be a commentary position suspended underneath the roof. The South East corner is home to a very small section that is handed to away supporters which St Johnstone didn't even half fill. The ground also has two large scoreboard under the roof at each end of the stadium.

The game started in lively fashion to the background sound of "You'll never walk alone" as Celtic created a couple of chances early on without really testing the keeper, as the half went on the chances were limited apart from a great chance for Commons which he dragged wide. The most dangerous player for Celtic was Samaras and he caused plenty of problems for the St Johnstone defence especially when he drifted out to the left but was left isolated too often when surrounded by up to 3 defenders. Samaras did have a good shout for a penalty mid way through the first half as he was dragged back at a corner but the referee must have seen things differently. On 19 Minutes there was a terrific standing ovation given in support of Aston Villa's Stilian Petrov, a former Celtic hero, who had just been diagnosed with Leukaemia. The first half then ended with the scores 0-0 and with hopefully a much improved performance in the 2nd half.

The 2nd half started with the visiting side looking the more likely to score with a number of close opportunities helped by the Celtic midfield who seemed to give the ball away every time they managed to get it back. Against the run of play though Celtic took the lead, a free kick from the left was floated into the box and Samaras climbing highest managed to head the ball into the bottom right hand corner of the keepers goal. Samaras deserved his goal for all his hard work but Celtic as a team probably did not. The second came less than 5 minutes later with St Johnstone again on the attack. A foul on the attacker was missed by the officials and Celtic broke quickly and ended with a cross from the right being turned into the net by the defender.

After the second goal Celtic calmed down and played the game out easily keeping the ball away from the St Johnstone players for large periods off time. The game ended 2-0 leaving Celtic 1 point away from winning the title, and with supporters already starting to celebrate.

After the match we made our way back to the hotel and after a quick drink in the pub were in the car for the long drive home straight down the M74, M6 and A14. We were back after a few stops on the way around 11pm.

 The only problem with the weekend was there was a distinct lack of goals and as such my average goals per game has taken a massive hit as it was above 5 per game but as they say "That's Football". Overall though we had a great weekend of football, drinks and laughs and I look forward to my next Groundhopping weekend. Hopefully my Dad will be able to make the next one.

Queens Park - Hampden Park

Match - Queens Park 0-1 Peterhead
Competition - Irn Bru Scottish Division 3
Admission - £12
Scarf - £8
Attendance - 441
Food - Hampden Pie & Chips 8/10
Ground No. - 108
Ground Rating - 4/10

At 8.30am after waking up and having our breakfast in Doncaster following last night match we (myself, Will and Phil) were in the car and on the way to Glasgow for the 2nd instalment of our groundhopping weekend. this was to be my first ever game in Scotland.
The match we were off to was the Division 3 game between Queens Park and Peterhead. Queens Park were still fighting for automatic promotion along with Alloa Athletic and Peterhead were still looking to get a play-off spot. Peterhead are somewhat of a bogey side for Queens who it turns out never managed to beat them in there 4 games last season and haven't managed it in the 3 games yet this season.

The trip north was simple and we also encountered some tremendous views as we went up and over the pennines while travelling West towards the M6 which took us onto the M74 straight to Glasgow. I say the trip was simple until we were on the outskirts of Glasgow itself and on the newly built part of the M74 which my Satnav decided didn't exist and kept trying to make me turn left. It finally found me when I decided to turn off the new road and then took us pretty much straight to the ground.

Queens Park are the oldest football team in Scotland and play there games at the National Stadium, Hampden Park. The stadium holds just over 52,000 and plays host to Scottish Cup Finals and all home Internationals as well as Queens Park home games.

Directly next to the main Hampden Park is the smaller ground of Lesser Hampden Park. This is a small ground with one stand and an artificial pitch, I believe this is used when Hampden Park proper is being used for bigger games i.e Cup Finals etc. It was being used while we were there for a youth team game between Glasgow rivals Rangers and Celtic.

Hampden Park is a large circular stadium with all sides being single tiered and the same height apart from the South Stand which slopes up and has a small second tier. The sitting at either ends is a long way from the pitch, similar to if there was a running track between seating and the pitch. The ground though looks very modern and smart. There are two large scoreboards at either end of the ground which are suspended under the roof. Which were surprisingly used for this game.

As they only average an attendance of around 500 only the South Stand is used for Queens Park games with entrance via turnstiles O & P with entrance being payed on the gate. You enter the ground into a large open concourse like most large stadiums. directly to the right of the turnstiles is a small kiosk that acts as the Queens Park club shop, all three of us purchased scarfs and then made our way to the food kiosk. Prices for food were the same as they would have been for any game played at Hampden Park so as you can imagine were quite high especially considering the level of football a hot dog was £4 and a small soft drink was £2.50 !!!!

We then went to sit in the stand you could sit where you want apart from in the centre of the South stand which was for season ticket holders only as all the seats there were padded, they also seemed to segregate home and away fans which I found surprising as I wouldn't have expected the 40 or so Peterhead fans to have caused any problem if they were mixed with the home fans.

Queens Park Mascot - Harry the Hippo

It was very odd when the players emerged from the tunnel, as there was no fairplay handshake. Even Sunday league football in England have a fairplay handshake before games now. It was even more odd when the whistle blew for the start of the match the whole ground when dead not a sound apart from the sound of boot on ball. It did pick up slightly but I'm not sure that the 50 odd thousand free seats helped the atmosphere much.

The game itself was a poor one with a lack of quality from both teams who both seemed to give the ball away very easily very regularly. The assistant referee also seemed to be rather poor having to be overruled by the referee 3 times within the first 10 minutes or so. The first half then rolled by without any real talking points.

The second half started in pretty much exactly the same way but Peterhead started looking at least slightly threatening and then finally broke the deadlock with the only piece of quality the game had seen up and till that point. The left winger cut in from the left and hit a right footed shot into the far top corner of Queens Parks goal from around 25 yards out. the goal wouldn't have looked out of place in the English Premier League. The game then returned the same level of quality and not much happened until Queens Park made a couple of changes bringing off the number 9 who had been on the end of most of the home fans frustrations. Queens park also brought on a left winger who finally brought some quality and attacking intent to there play and created a number of chances that unfortunately they were unable to take and the game ended with Peterhead taking all three points and leaving Queens still unable to beat them.

I didn't particularly like Hampdenatmosphere, it maybe different for larger games. Although if I was to go for a larger game I would not fancy sitting at one end with that large space between stand and pitch. I believe Queens Park would probably be better off playing there games in a smaller venue possibly lesser Hampden next door, but can understand why they play where they do.

After the game we made our way to our Premier Inn hotel situated at the end of the M74 and a straight walk down to Celtic Park for our game the next day.