Blackburn Rovers is always one of the best away trips for Leeds fans, with a large away end and plenty of our fans making the short trip to the wrong side of the Pennines. And once again we’re really going to do ourselves proud, with the division’s highest away following of the season travelling over to cheer Leeds on.

By car it should be pretty easy to find Ewood Park as you need to head for junction 4 of the M65 and then take the A666 (no idea if the number of the road comes from any local satanic rituals) towards Blackburn for about a mile and the ground will appear on your right behind a couple of side-streets.

Street parking is very limited near the ground but there are a couple of car parks available, including behind the Fernhurst pub (on the left hand side as you approach the stadium) and in the industrial estate on Branch Street, which is a sharp right hand turn off the A666 before you get to the Fernhurst. I'm told that if you park anywhere along the main Bolton Road (the A666) you are likely to be stuck in traffic for a good while after the game. The small retail park opposite the ground warns football fans not to deny the good customers of Aldi and Iceland parking spaces, or else.

Blackburn has a direct train service to and from Leeds, namely the Transpennine express service heading for Blackpool, which leaves Leeds at eight minutes past every hour. The main railway station is 1.6 miles to the north of Ewood Park and is opposite the Bus Station, from which routes 1,3,and travel from stand N down Bolton Road past Ewood Park on the way to Darwen.

There is another railway station called Mill Hill, which is only half a mile from the stadium, but this is only served by local stopping trains on the Preston line, so you will need to change trains in the main Blackburn station to be able to get there.

The recommended pubs in the town centre are the Weatherspoons ‘Postal Order’ (well known for it's cheap ale) or the ‘Last Orders’ by the cathedral on Darwen Street. The official away fans pub near the ground used to be the Fernhurst Hotel, but this no longer admits visiting supporters, but for anyone driving in there is the Golden Cup near the motorway intersection, while if you're coming to Mill Hill railway station a good bet is the ‘Navigation’ next to the canal.

If you are dining in town before or after the game, you should head for Darwen Street where every other outlet is a take-away of some description. Nearer to Ewood Park the best bet is the three outlets opposite the ground on Bolton road, a kiosk, a café and a chippie. Inside the ground the hot dogs are as tasty but dry, in contrast to the meat and potato pies which are tasty but messy.

Ewood Park now holds 31,367 and it had three new large two -tiered stands built during the 90's, as the stadium was expensively rebuilt by Jack Walker in the mid-nineties. And the oldest stand (the smallest) on the riverside was built as recently as 1988. Around ten minutes form the end of a match you can expect around half of the spectators in the main stand to leave their seats and walk along the track in front, leaving the stand half empty.

The Away fans usually get an allocation of 4,000, but for this game we’ve got the entire Darwen end both the upper and lower tiers, which amounts to roughly 6,800 tickets! This must be because of the way Venky’s are running Rovers into the ground, as the season ticket holders we displace can easily be accommodated elsewhere in the stadium and their debts of over £54 million mean they urgently need to get every penny they can in gate receipts!

Inevitably this game is category ‘A’, and for Leeds fans adult tickets cost £33, with concessions at £23 and £13. Home fans can get adult tickets in the Riverside stand for a mere £27, but to make sure that we can’t take advantage of these cheaper prices Rovers are only selling tickets for the home stands to fans “with a database history of buying match tickets”. Yesterday the Leeds site said that there were 250 tickets remaining for the away stand, and that none would be sold on the day of the game.

The away stand itself offers pretty good facilities, as we would expect from a modern stadium. It is disappointing that there wouldn’t be much legroom if we ever sat down, but at least the toilets are pretty good and spacious, and the stewarding is relatively relaxed.

At one time there were plans to turn the remaining original part of the ground, the smaller Walker Steel Stand by the riverside, into a 15,000 seater development including an exhibition hall and an hotel, but these were shelved when Rovers fortunes began to dwindle and it remains to be seen whether this scheme will ever be completed. If a new stand was built on this side it would raise the overall capacity to 40,000, but these days Rovers don’t get large enough gates for such an increase in capacity to be needed.

Some of this stuff came from http://www.footballgroundguide.com

Photo: Action Images

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