We visit beautiful Burnley for a League Cup tie tomorrow night, with a 7.45pm kick off, and you’ll find Turf Moor about a mile to the east of Burnley town centre.
If you're coming by car you need to leave the M65 at Junction 10 and follow signs for Towneley Hall. This road eventually goes past the ground, where there is a car park at the cricket ground behind the visitors' turnstiles, costing £6.
There is also a big pay and display car park on Centenary Way, next to the Bus Station, and a bit further away there are 200 spaces next to the Hollywood Park Cinema on Manchester Road, which is handy for getting back to the motorway after the game. Otherwise there is plenty of street parking, but it's recommend that you remove any Leeds colours from your car, as there have been problems in the past with damaged motors.
There are two train stations that are in walking distance of Turf Moor, Burnley Central (20 minutes walk from the ground) and Burnley Manchester Road (15 minutes walk). Anyone coming from Leeds will arrive at Manchester Road, as Central station is on the branch line to Colne and is only served by local trains coming from the Blackburn direction.
Leaving Manchester Road station you need to cross the main road towards the cinema, and the ground should be clearly visible in the distance straight ahead. Turn left down the 'Centenary Way' dual carriageway (A682) going downhill towards the ground, and in a few minutes you'll come to a roundabout where you should turn right under the canal bridge into Yorkshire Street (A671). Continue down this road and you will reach Turf Moor on your left, with the away stand being the first one you come to.
It’s unlikely you’ll be able to get back to Manchester Road station in time for the last direct train to Leeds, as that leaves at 21.41. There are later trains at 21.55 and 22.55 if you can bear to change at Todmorden and get back after midnight. Both these later trains will involve an overall journey time of over two hours, including the time spent waiting for a connection.
The pub which is recommended for away fans is the ‘Talbot’, which is around five minutes walk away from Turf Moor on Church Street (the A682). You could also try the clubhouse at the Cricket Club (by the car park mentioned above), and the ‘Queen Victoria’ (about a half a mile from the ground heading north on the A6144 Belvedere Road).
The best bet in the town centre is the ‘Bridge Bier Huis’ (and yes, it really is spelt like that) which is in the CAMRA Good Beer Guide and serves real ales and a large selection of bottled beers from around the world. Sadly, there are also pubs that are best avoided, including the Turf Hotel' on Yorkshire Street, 'The Swan' and 'The Yates' in the town centre, and any pub on Brunshaw Road.
The capacity of Turf Moor has been 22,546 since half the ground was rebuilt in the mid 1990's at a total cost of £5.3 million. The two new stands, The Jimmy McIlroy & James Hargreaves stands were built on two large former terraces at one end and one side of the ground, and were completed by September 1996. Away fans are in one of the older and smaller stands, the David Fishwick Stand (formerly the Cricket Field Stand).
For all our league games in recent years we’ve been given the whole of this end, which amounted to 4,125 seats, but for some reason we only got an allocation of 2,194 this time, which is just the standard away section in half the stand. And that’s despite this game being a cup tie, in a competition which normally has it’s own rules about away allocations. So Leeds put the tickets on sale via the ‘attendance tracker’ loyalty system, and they have now sold out, although you do still have the option of going to the ‘beamback’ at Elland Road.
The view and legroom are pretty good, although the seats are made from wood. When this stand opened it was the first in the country to have central heating installed with hot pipes under the seats, but they have never been used, even when this area was for home fans!
There are two small stanchions to spoil the view for some, though they are away from the centre of the pitch. There are several snack bars, but they don't usually serve beer to away fans, although the pies are pretty good. The concourse can get really crowded if the away team and the toilets are fairly basic.
At least the ticket prices are a mere £15 for adults, with concessions at £10 or £5, but don’t expect this generosity to be repeated the next time we go back to Turf Moor for a league game.
A few years ago Burnley were thinking of a £20m re-development of Turf Moor, which would have involves replacing the David Fishwick Stand with a new 2,500 capacity single tiered stand. Things have gone a bit quiet on that front, but if they’re not going to improve the stadium while they’re in the Premier League, when is it going to happen?
Some of this stuff came from www.footballgroundguide.com .