As you probably know, we’re starting the season before the rest of the division, with kick off against Scunthorpe United being at high noon on Saturday.

The ground is on the outskirts of Scunthorpe, and it’s easy to find if you’re coming by car. Leave the M180 at Junction 3 and take the M181 for Scunthorpe. At the end of this motorway, you will see the ground on your right. Turn right at the first roundabout onto the A18 and right again into the large car park at the ground. But like all other out of town grounds, they get a lot of congestion on the surrounding roads, as a higher proportion of the crowd have to drive to get to the game, compared to grounds that are located more centrally.

Unfortunately, the car park can take a long time to clear after the game, and it can’t handle all the cars that turn up whenever they have a capacity crowd, so they tend to end up with cars parked by the side of the road in all directions at the junction between the M180 and the A18.

The other disadvantage of out of town grounds is that their not easily accessible by public transport. If you’re arriving by train, you’ll go right past the ground on the way into town, and then have the frustration of having to continue for two miles before you can get off at Scunthorpe station. It’s about time they got round to building a new station at the ground, which could be put right behind the away end.

If you’ve got the energy to walk all the way back (and if you don’t get rounded up by the police as soon as you get off the train) you need to turn left out of the station and head towards the crossroads (facing a church) and turn right into Oswald Road. Go past a set of traffic lights and the Honest Lawyer and Blue Bell pubs. At the next traffic lights turn left into Doncaster Road (where there are a number of fast food outlets). Then just go straight down this road and you will eventually reach Glanford Park on your left. Otherwise catch the number 7 or 8 Yellow Line bus from the bottom of Doncaster Road (outside the Atlantis Chippy) down to the ground (fare £1).

After the FA cup tie in 2003 the police made us all wait behind for an escort back to the station, which turned out to be necessary when we met a group of Scunthorpe youths who were hanging round to try and have a go at us outside the ground. The police then treated us to our own segregated carriage of the train all the way back as far as Doncaster.

There is one pub right at the entrance to the ground called 'The Old Farmhouse', which usually welcomes all fans but no colours are allowed, and another pub near the ground that usually admits away fans pub is the Sam Smiths ‘Berkeley’. But it remains to be seen what door policy these establishments will adopt on the day, and of course they won’t be open before the game. If you’re travelling by train, the above-mentioned ‘Honest Lawyer’ and ‘Blue Bell’ pubs are worth a visit. The first of these has been listed in the CAMRA Good Beer Guide and has a number of beers on offer, while the latter is a Wetherspoons

In 1988 Scunthorpe began the trend of clubs moving to bland out of town grounds, when they sold their town centre Old Show Ground and built Glanford Park, making £1 million profit in the process. It was the first new league football ground to be built since the Second World War. The away end was originally terracing, but  unfortunately Scunthorpe are one of those infuriating clubs who converted their away end to all-seater when they weren’t required to by the Taylor Report.

All of which means that we have to pay £3 than the standing home fans at the other end, for the privilege of having seats that we don’t want. The normal away allocation is 1,678, which is the whole of the South Stand, but bigger clubs also get an extra block of seats in the corner of the west stand. This end is covered, but there are one or two pillars that might spoil the view from certain seats.

The Leeds end has long since sold out, and for home fans there are only standing tickets left. Their official website says that “online sales remain suspended after away fans tried to buy tickets for the home stands”, but they don’t mention any restrictions on who can buy tickets if you turn up at the ground, so if you’ve got a reasonably local address you might be in luck.

Of course, if they hadn’t reduced the capacity of the away end by putting the seats in, there wouldn’t be quite as much demand from Leeds fans for seats elsewhere in the ground. It is of course a category A match, which means that tickets in the Leeds end cost £19 for adults, with concessions at £11.

The current capacity is a mere 9,088, but the club have submitted a planning application to build a tier of seating above the terrace at north end, which would raise the overall capacity of Glanford Park to 11,000, as well as providing all-important conference and leisure facilities.

Some of the information in this article came from www.footballgroundguide.co.uk, though the grumpy old man bits about out of town stadia and seating are all my own.

Photo: Action Images via Reuters