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Peterborough Awaydaze
Peterborough Awaydaze
Thursday, 23rd Aug 2012 13:50 by Tim Whelan

We’re starting the bank holiday weekend with a visit to Peterborough United on Saturday, and unlike last year we have the luxury of a 3pm kick-off.  For one more season we can look forward to the only terracing in this division, and this is possibly for the last time we will ever be allowed to stand at a Leeds United league game.

The ground is just to the south of the city centre, on the A15 London Road. The ground is fairly well signposted from the town centre, and the best bet if you’re driving is to come into the town centre, following signs for Whittlesey (A605) which will lead you onto London Road. There is currently no public parking at the ground, but there is a council pay & display car park on the other side of London Road, and also at ‘Railworld’, which is a railway museum a short distance away in the direction of the city centre.

The railway station is around a mile away from the ground. Turn right out of station and follow the main road, passing an Asda store on your right. At the traffic lights near to Woolworths, turn right. Go over the bridge and you can see the floodlights of London Road, over on your left. It takes about 20 minutes to walk from the station to the ground, and no doubt there’ll be plenty of police on duty to show us the way. At least we don’t have to put up with any engineering work on the railways this year, so it’s a direct train from Leeds and back with no diversions.

On our last visit the Cherry Tree pub on Oundle Rd was open for Leeds fans, but all the other boozers were only admitting regulars before and after the game. The Cherry Tree is a small but friendly pub and it costs £2 to park in their car park, but you get £2 off a beer if you present the parking ticket at the bar. Apart from that the CAMRA Peterborough Beer festival is taking place on Saturday in a big marquee just the other side of the river from the ground, let’s hope they let us into that! Food-wise, there is quite a good range of pies inside the ground, the usual sort of football ground stuff, and there are also several takeaways on London Road.

The total capacity of London Road is now 15,314, and the only change they’ve made since the Taylor report has been to replace an open terrace on one side of the ground with the Norwich & Peterborough South Stand. This was opened in 1996 and it’s a two–tiered stand with 5,000 seats. Otherwise the ground will be the same, which is excellent news for those of us who love terracing, and who are fed up with having to pay extra for seats we don’t want. The main stand on the north side was built in 1956/7, and the terraces behind the two goals were covered at the same time.

The low roof should make for a decent atmosphere, but there are a number of pillars in the way, which tend to block the view. As kick-off approaches the area behind the stand and the steps leading onto the terrace itself gets a bit overcrowded, so unless you’re there early you might find it easier find some space at the side of the terrace rather than trying to get behind the goal. You’ll also find the toilets a little bit outdated, though not quite down to the standard of the bogs behind the old stand at Barnsley.

Because the main away section is a terrace taking up the whole of one end, Peterborough can offer a fairly generous (by today’s standards) visitors’ allocation of over 4,000, and we also have a block of 800 seats in the corner of the north stand.  The police have warned that any Leeds fans found in the home areas of the ground will be thrown out, but that didn’t seem to be the case last season, as I saw a group of Leeds fans celebrating our goals in the stand to our left, apparently unmolested. At the time of writing neither club has sold it’s allocation (Leeds currently having about 1,000 left), but that might change by Saturday.

The Peterborough website is stressing that the game is “All Ticket”, which presumably means they won’t be selling any on the day. Adult tickets cost £20 on the terrace and £25 in the seats, while for Over 60's and Students it’s £15, and Under 16's £12 in either section. Unfortunately it’s a category A game, so we’re having to pay £2 more than the admission price for the Millwall game on Tuesday.

A couple of years ago Peterborough were thinking of moving to a new stadium, but that idea now seems to have been shelved. But they will have to go all-seater next season if they don’t go down this season, as by then they will have spent three seasons in the top two divisions. The club are backing the Football Supporters’ Federation’s campaign for safe standing to be allowed in the top two divisions, and have said would like to use the new designs of terracing they have in Germany if that was to be allowed by the authorities.

Failing that they’re going to have to demolish the terracing in the summer to replace it with a new 2,500 seater stand, which will be more expensive and give us a smaller allocation. So let’s enjoy the terracing while it’s still there.

Some of the info in this piece came from www.footballgroundguide.co.uk.

Photo: Action Images



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