This was the home for Emley FC, when they left Emley & relocated to Wakefield, becoming Wakefield Emley. Though by the time I visited they had left & changed their name again to Wakefield FC.
Suffice to say I did NOT enter the ground through this turnstile!
'Wildcat' paws were painted all over the place.
More old football signs.
I stood on this terrace, which ran down one side, in front of the main stand.
Behind the posts to our left was this corporate monstrousity!
Here we look down our terrace, towards the large open home end.
This is my friend Mark, a fellow Dulwich Hamlet fan, who is a stalwart of the amateur rugby league game in London.
Here is another look at the open terrace behind the far posts, from our paddock.
From this end we look back down the stand side.
Back down the other end, the players come out from the corner.
From this end we have another view of the stand.
The game is over, & we look across the pitch, from post to psot.
There is a stretch of terrace down the far side, opposite the stand. Unfortunately I didn't take ant decent photographs down this side of the ground.
Which is a shame because it would have been far more interesting than this carbuncle!
I have been thinking about going to see Wakefield Wildcast but maybe now i wont bother. The VIP boxes building is hideous. Bradford Bulls have a similar 'thing' at Odsal but Odsal is so vast it doesnt dominate in the same way. You would like Odsal - a natural bowl with terracing over 50% of the ground that brings to mind Hampden Park in it's heyday.
ReplyDeleteI went to see the Bulls play at Castleford this year and really enjoyed their old stadium. Could be the last year Castleford play there once the funding, planning permission for their new stadium is finally sorted out (last season was supposed to be the last season in the old stadium).
Not my favourite ground, but it was where the match scenes in This Sporting Life (1963)were shot. One of the best of the "kitchen sink" films of the time, but it didn't represent the game itself very well.
ReplyDeleteThe open side used to feature the main stand, a tall, elegant wooden one with fancy Victorian fretwork, similar to that on many railway station structures of the period. It had to go after the Bradford fire (as did wooden stands at several other RL grounds). It was a unique structure which would have been worth re-erecting for another use, perhaps glazed as a conservatory in a park. It was this ground's one redeeming feature.
That corporate monstrosity at one end is on the site of what used to be a substantial covered terrace. The ground once held 30,000, but has a current capacity of 12,000.
I believe Trinity have made quite a few improvements recently, including more cover, to propitiate Super League after numerous delays to their plans for an edge-of-town, shopping centre by the motorway junction with some sort of dull, sterile ground tacked on.
Local rivals Castleford have similar dreary plans for the next motorway junction along. They're making more ..err.. "concerete" progress than Trinity but meantime are still at Wheldon Road, which is one of the few remaining jewels of old RL grounds. There are no longer coal wagons on the railway embankment rising above the south end terrace, but it's still the same old "claustrophobic coliseum" as Leeds Other Paper used to call it. Go there while you still can!