Highfield Road (5 Viewers)

[Liquid Gold]

GALLERY: Rare and behind-the-scenes photos from Highfield Road

Why why why did we have to leave. By far and away the best ground that has been knocked down for a bowl. Ayresome Park, Filbert Srreet, Roker Park, Vetch Field, Baseball Ground, Ninian Park, Goldstone Ground, The Dell, Springfield Park, Victoria Park, Elm Park, The Den, Burnden Park, Belle Vue, Millmoor, Gay Meadow, Layer Road. All tired and desperately in need of replacing. HR would have been perfectly good now. Greed set this football club back 20 years.

 

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[kg82]

GALLERY: Rare and behind-the-scenes photos from Highfield Road

Why why why did we have to leave. By far and away the best ground that has been knocked down for a bowl. Ayresome Park, Filbert Srreet, Roker Park, Vetch Field, Baseball Ground, Ninian Park, Goldstone Ground, The Dell, Springfield Park, Victoria Park, Elm Park, The Den, Burnden Park, Belle Vue, Millmoor, Gay Meadow, Layer Road. All tired and desperately in need of replacing. HR would have been perfectly good now. Greed set this football club back 20 years.

Made me hugely nostalgic going through those. Obviously there were crap parts about the ground and crap times there, but it gave us an identity. The Ricoh didn’t do that and now, well...

 

[jim20]

Just been through the photos, made me very sad. Such a shame, it could have been modernised over the last few years and would’ve been great for us. I feel if we hadn’t have moved we would still be in the championship now at the very least

 

[Gynnsthetonic]

I think HR was looking tired and did need a revamp, i look at Deepdale In Preston and what an immaculate 23000 stadium they have, if one end was similar to our West Stand to me it would be the perfect stadium. We went to over the top with the Ricoh on a too grandeur scale. If we did have to move locations like Parkside, Alvis Holyhead Rd, Jaguar Middlemarch Rd, Rover Plant Canley much better options.

 

[Liquid Gold]

I think HR was looking tired and did need a revamp, i look at Deepdale In Preston and what an immaculate 23000 stadium they have, if one end was similar to our West Stand to me it would be the perfect stadium. We went to over the top with the Ricoh on a too grandeur scale. If we did have to move locations like Parkside, Alvis Holyhead Rd, Jaguar Middlemarch Rd, Rover Plant Canley much better options.

Three questions where the answers always lead me to think we shouldn't have left.
1) Has anybody else left a ground in as good a condition as HR? - I don't think so.
2) Even if nothing had been done to it would it be out of place now? No, much worse stadiums around.
3) If we had stayed there would we have upgraded it? Most likely, if we hadn't sunk everything into the Ricoh project we'd have done more to improve HR.

 

[ccfc1234]

Made me get very sentimental looking at those pictures. As much as I like the convenience of parking at the Ricoh and it's easy to get to in a car I miss the old location. Bryan Richardson made a huge error in buying into the hype and making a few quid along the way.

 

[Gynnsthetonic]

Plenty of teams with similar capacities who havn't moved who seem to do ok ie
West Brom, Watford, Burnley, Palace, Sheff Utd, Wolves, Norwich. The thing with the Ricoh is for anyone living outside of the City you dont actually go to Coventry, just drive off the M6 or Phoenix Way, half the fun of going to another stadium was trying to find it, find your way back to the car, then navigate your way home.

 

[Legia Sky Blue]

Just been through the photos, made me very sad. Such a shame, it could have been modernised over the last few years and would’ve been great for us. I feel if we hadn’t have moved we would still be in the championship now at the very least

That's a difficult call. We did have some awful atmosphere at HR games too. When we left HR we were on a downward trajectory and might have even been relegated that season, but for the positivity and larger crowds that those final games against Forest and Derby generated. The initial years at the Ricoh also probably helped put off the inevitable for a few years where there was still a level of positivity, but in retrospect we were always heading for relegation at some point. Having gone down to League 1 though, playing in a ground the size of the Ricoh with diminished crowds was a liability, and HR would have been a much better environment to play in, and I suspect we would not have stayed so long in League 1/2 if we had been playing at HR.

 

[ccfcricoh]

It's like looking at your grandparents..... old looking, slightly worn around the edges, and could fall apart at any moment...

But by god i love it and i wouldn't be the person i am today without it!

 

[higgs]

It had character pitch looks better than the Ricoh and it would be more of an intimidating ground for the away team to play at. Should never have moved. 20k in there every game ud have some atmosphere

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

 

[Mcbean]

Sadly it was all about the money ! At the time many of us were seduced by the idea of a brand new stadium however dream and reality very different things as we now know . The green stadium plan was a really bad idea but it was a tick box for the council

 

[Adge]

Three questions where the answers always lead me to think we shouldn't have left.
1) Has anybody else left a ground in as good a condition as HR? - I don't think so.
2) Even if nothing had been done to it would it be out of place now? No, much worse stadiums around.
3) If we had stayed there would we have upgraded it? Most likely, if we hadn't sunk everything into the Ricoh project we'd have done more to improve HR.

Don’t think it was as clear cut as that. Didn’t one of the stands have concrete decay-May have been the Sky Blue Stand-can’t remember which one?

 

[Gynnsthetonic]

Don’t think it was as clear cut as that. Didn’t one of the stands have concrete decay-May have been the Sky Blue Stand-can’t remember which one?

There was plans a few years before the move to knock down the sky blue stand and build a new one similar to Leicesters old one at Filbert St, im sure a model was on show at Central Library

 

[Adge]

There was plans a few years before the move to knock down the sky blue stand and build a new one similar to Leicesters old one at Filbert St, im sure a model was on show at Central Library

Yes-thought I remembered something along them lines. Surely a better alternative than the mess that is now at a fraction of the cost.

 

[Skybluefaz]

It had character pitch looks better than the Ricoh and it would be more of an intimidating ground for the away team to play at. Should never have moved. 20k in there every game ud have some atmosphere

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Do you remember that championship day there? We'd get nowhere neat 20k, I wonder what the attendances would have been like in league two. Guess it would probably be similar as it was down to the hardcore.

 

[Sky_Blue_Dreamer]

Three questions where the answers always lead me to think we shouldn't have left.
1) Has anybody else left a ground in as good a condition as HR? - I don't think so.
2) Even if nothing had been done to it would it be out of place now? No, much worse stadiums around.
3) If we had stayed there would we have upgraded it? Most likely, if we hadn't sunk everything into the Ricoh project we'd have done more to improve HR.

With the value of hindsight it would've been much cheaper to renovate HR.

But that wasn't really the point. Being in that location it massively limited other potential income streams and future expansion. In the end expansion wasn't needed and really the money is from TV now rather than bums on seats.

 

[Liquid Gold]

With the value of hindsight it would've been much cheaper to renovate HR.

But that wasn't really the point. Being in that location it massively limited other potential income streams and future expansion. In the end expansion wasn't needed and really the money is from TV now rather than bums on seats.

Plus all the other envisioned income streams seem to be loss makers.

 

[Hobo]

GALLERY: Rare and behind-the-scenes photos from Highfield Road

Why why why did we have to leave. By far and away the best ground that has been knocked down for a bowl. Ayresome Park, Filbert Srreet, Roker Park, Vetch Field, Baseball Ground, Ninian Park, Goldstone Ground, The Dell, Springfield Park, Victoria Park, Elm Park, The Den, Burnden Park, Belle Vue, Millmoor, Gay Meadow, Layer Road. All tired and desperately in need of replacing. HR would have been perfectly good now. Greed set this football club back 20 years.

Main Road was a good ground and better than Highfield Road.

 

[cc84cov]

Stupid move leaving that ground proper ground Ricoh is a soulless bowl

 

[SlowerThanPlatt]

Weren’t the original plans of the Ricoh for it to be a 50,000 seater and home to England?

 

[Sky_Blue_Dreamer]

Weren’t the original plans of the Ricoh for it to be a 50,000 seater and home to England?

They weren't the original plans but were redone to be able to be put forward. By this point I think all the stuff about the retractable pitch had been dropped so they had a lot more spaceto play with. I think it had something like 90k seats though! I guess they'd have done it in tiers and for ours game only ever opened the bottom one had it occurred.

 

[Ring Of Steel]

I think there are some serious rose tinted specs in evidence here. HR was an absolute morgue for the last few years. The atmosphere was utterly dead and the place was decaying. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the place- but moving was right. The issue is not whether we should have moved, it was the fact that the actual move was totally fucked up.

Nobody is going to tell me that Stoke, Southampton, Derby etc have more ‘potential’ than us, we are the only ones who messed it up so royally, right from releasing pictures with WBA blue seats, the pricing- everything was just wrong.

If we’d have rebuilt the Sky Blue Stand we’d have had a totally unbalanced ground and would still have had columns & pillars at both ends, and for all the great fun the West Terrace was, you couldn’t hear anything from them from the East Stand, the acoustics were awful in there.

I get the nostalgia, I really do- that final game was one of the best days of my life- but don’t lose sight of the fact that apart from about 10 games or less, the final few seasons showed that the time was right to move. We fucked it up and never recovered, but that doesn’t make HR some kind of Maracana

 

[Ring Of Steel]

They weren't the original plans but were redone to be able to be put forward. By this point I think all the stuff about the retractable pitch had been dropped so they had a lot more spaceto play with. I think it had something like 90k seats though! I guess they'd have done it in tiers and for ours game only ever opened the bottom one had it occurred.

it had 45,000 seats, four two tiered stands with corners filled in but four corner pillars meaning the corners didn’t have as many seats. It had a retractable pitch, then someone pointed out that the pitch when retracted would completely cover the car parks and render them unusable at the very time they’d be in use due to casinos, hotels etc- it was full on amateur night.

 

[oscillatewildly]

I think there are some serious rose tinted specs in evidence here. HR was an absolute morgue for the last few years. The atmosphere was utterly dead and the place was decaying. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the place- but moving was right. The issue is not whether we should have moved, it was the fact that the actual move was totally fucked up.

Nobody is going to tell me that Stoke, Southampton, Derby etc have more ‘potential’ than us, we are the only ones who messed it up so royally, right from releasing pictures with WBA blue seats, the pricing- everything was just wrong.

If we’d have rebuilt the Sky Blue Stand we’d have had a totally unbalanced ground and would still have had columns & pillars at both ends, and for all the great fun the West Terrace was, you couldn’t hear anything from them from the East Stand, the acoustics were awful in there.

I get the nostalgia, I really do- that final game was one of the best days of my life- but don’t lose sight of the fact that apart from about 10 games or less, the final few seasons showed that the time was right to move. We fucked it up and never recovered, but that doesn’t make HR some kind of Maracana

I agree with most of this.

 

[Sky_Blue_Dreamer]

it had 45,000 seats, four two tiered stands with corners filled in but four corner pillars meaning the corners didn’t have as many seats. It had a retractable pitch, then someone pointed out that the pitch when retracted would completely cover the car parks and render them unusable at the very time they’d be in use due to casinos, hotels etc- it was full on amateur night.

The original had £45k. The 'Wembley version had about 90k. One of the stipulations for it was min. 80k seats or something.

As for the retractable pitch I thought the parking was going to be underground, under where the pitch would roll out to?

 

[Gynnsthetonic]

I think there are some serious rose tinted specs in evidence here. HR was an absolute morgue for the last few years. The atmosphere was utterly dead and the place was decaying. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the place- but moving was right. The issue is not whether we should have moved, it was the fact that the actual move was totally fucked up.

Nobody is going to tell me that Stoke, Southampton, Derby etc have more ‘potential’ than us, we are the only ones who messed it up so royally, right from releasing pictures with WBA blue seats, the pricing- everything was just wrong.

If we’d have rebuilt the Sky Blue Stand we’d have had a totally unbalanced ground and would still have had columns & pillars at both ends, and for all the great fun the West Terrace was, you couldn’t hear anything from them from the East Stand, the acoustics were awful in there.

I get the nostalgia, I really do- that final game was one of the best days of my life- but don’t lose sight of the fact that apart from about 10 games or less, the final few seasons showed that the time was right to move. We fucked it up and never recovered, but that doesn’t make HR some kind of Maracana

Totally agree, its just that the Ricoh does not have that community club feel, wrong design and location, ive looked at other new build stadia more of the unique ones like FC Mainz, Boavista, Kansas City, Malmo, all have a style more suited to a club with the home attendance we could averagely achieve.

 

[Ring Of Steel]

I agree with most of this.

And I want to reiterate- that ground was my second home, I was and still am madly in love with the ground, the surroundings, the way you could see the city through between the Main & West Stands from my final seat- everything. But it’s time had come- the only way to upgrade & get the kind of facilities every other club that moved got would have been to rebuild every stand. And by the end it had got pretty rare to have a decent atmosphere.

 

[Ring Of Steel]

Totally agree, its just that the Ricoh does not have that community club feel, wrong design and location, ive looked at other new build stadia more of the unique ones like FC Mainz, Boavista, Kansas City, Malmo, all have a style more suited to a club with the home attendance we could averagely achieve.

If we’re going to look at what we could attract you have to look at teams like Stoke- no way in hell are they ‘bigger’/ ‘more potential’ etc and they pulled 27k every week in the Premiership and over 20k in the Chanpionship, we can be pretty sure we’d match that- more if we had something to get behind.

Got to be approaching 30k- but the size isn’t the issue, it’s that we also had a rugby ground with huge areas behind the goal, and a design which meant that anything under about 19k seemed lost. Design has come so far- you can have a 30k ground these days that still feels intimate and can generate a great atmosphere even with a lower crowd, but when you have an enormous bowl with massive spaces- there’s nowhere to hide when you have a lower crowd. Take a look at Stade Oceane, Le Havre- 25k and every single seat close to the pitch, it “feels” much smaller, more intimate and therefore more intense. It’s a ‘football ground’, not a general purpose ‘Arena’

 

[NortonSkyBlue]

If we’re going to look at what we could attract you have to look at teams like Stoke- no way in hell are they ‘bigger’/ ‘more potential’ etc and they pulled 27k every week in the Premiership and over 20k in the Chanpionship, we can be pretty sure we’d match that- more if we had something to get behind.

Got to be approaching 30k- but the size isn’t the issue, it’s that we also had a rugby ground with huge areas behind the goal, and a design which meant that anything under about 19k seemed lost. Design has come so far- you can have a 30k ground these days that still feels intimate and can generate a great atmosphere even with a lower crowd, but when you have an enormous bowl with massive spaces- there’s nowhere to hide when you have a lower crowd. Take a look at Stade Oceane, Le Havre- 25k and every single seat close to the pitch, it “feels” much smaller, more intimate and therefore more intense. It’s a ‘football ground’, not a general purpose ‘Arena’

Let’s be brutally frank, just about everything that could go wrong has gone wrong at the Ricoh. The actual stadium isn’t the issue for me, it is all the shit has gone on that makes the stadium seem cursed.
Highfield Road was part of my DNA, it was my soul, it was my shared experience with my fellow supporters, the highs and too many lows were my childhood, my adulthood and my middle age. It was my playground.
We moved on a low, who knows if it had been different if were in a successful spell but what do we know? St Andrews anyone....

 

[pusbccfc]

People overhype Highfield Road and massively underrate The Ricoh.

 

[Ring Of Steel]

People overhype Highfield Road and massively underrate The Ricoh.

Completely agree with you

 

[SlowerThanPlatt]

Highfield Road is associated with better times and the Ricoh is associated with well 17th in the Championship. The Ricoh has potential to be a good ground but not if it’s a third full

 

[SlowerThanPlatt]

Just as an aside has a club ever left a ground for a smaller one? (and no answers like St Andrews and Sixfields don’t count)

 

[oscillatewildly]

Just as an aside has a club ever left a ground for a smaller one? (and no answers like St Andrews and Sixfields don’t count)

Chesterfield?

 

[Ring Of Steel]

Just as an aside has a club ever left a ground for a smaller one? (and no answers like St Andrews and Sixfields don’t count)

Walsall, Scunthorpe, Chester... and Juventus spring to mind. Milan and Inter are going to as well.