This season’s trip to Blackburn Rovers is tomorrow evening with kick-off at 7.45.

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 further away, 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 just after you’ve passed a petrol station on the left. The small retail park opposite the ground warns football fans not to deny parking spaces to the good customers of Aldi and Iceland, or else.

Blackburn has a direct train service to and from Leeds, namely the Transpennine express service heading for Blackpool, which leaves Leeds at five 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.

To get back after the game you’ll need to get the 22.08 and change at Todmorden, but in the past they have laid on special trains back to Leeds, and may do so again. 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 main pub for Leeds fans in the town centre is usually the Weatherspoons ‘Postal Order’, and amazingly they still seem to keep letting us in, even though Leeds fans have caused damage there on at least one occasion in the past.

Near the ground is the Fernhurst Hotel, which visiting supporters can normally use, but it fills up pretty quickly on a matchday. 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 need some grub 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 other side of on Bolton road from the stadium, where you can find a kiosk, a café and a chippie. Inside 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.

We have been allocated the whole of the Darwen end, which means an allocation of 6,918. As of this morning there were 900 tickets still available on the official Leeds website and any remaining will remain on sale until noon tomorrow, but none will be sold at Ewood Park on the night. Adult tickets are a mere £27, with concessions at £17 and £9.

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 www.footballgroundguide.com .

Photo: Action Images

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