As the dust settles today and we get back to bread and butter league action against Bristol Rovers memories of Wembley last weekend begin to fade, although given the result perhaps it's best that those memories do disappear sharply. It wasn't all about the game though for many of us who were making their first trip to the New Wembley, infact for me I hadn't actually been to the old version since our last visit in 1997. Coming up to the stadium in the coach this time at about 10.45am on the Sunday morning, the first thing that strikes you again is how ugly and uninspiring the surrounding area is. I would guess that when the original ground was constructed for the British Empire Exhibition in 1923 on the site of the unfinished Watkins's Tower, that there weren't industrial units all around. And it's those units that take away some of the mystique of the ground too, it's like having Buckingham Palace stuck in the middle of Tower Hamlets. You want to see a nice approach to the ground, an aesthetic area for the eye to feast upon, something to get your heart pounding for the beauty that is about to be thrust upon you. Even Wembley Way, or Olympic Way as it is now called, well really it is just a big concrete path, particularly without the Twin Towers to see in the distance now. Call me old fashioned if you like but my opening thought when getting off the coach, actually make that the second thought after where do we get beer from, was it's just glass and concrete. And as for the arch, well don't even get me started on that, apparently it is there to support the retractable stadium roof. But surely there must have been some other way of doing that that would have been nicer to look at than a big metal arch that looks completely out of place compared to the rest of the stadium. The complete lack of pubs and other entertainment in the area, due to those aforementioned industrial units, doesn't exactly help you enjoy the occasion either. Although at least next to Wembley Park tube station there had been an outside bar set up in the Premier Inn car park next door, that seemingly having been solely for Carlisle fans despite the fact that were some well behaved Southampton supporters in there too. Mind you, at a relatively reasonable £3.50 a pint, who could blame them. Walking up Wembley Way with a small amount of fuel on board didn't make my pulse race on the £800 million the rebuilding of the stadium cost, but it's when you get inside it's where you see your money was really spent. For a start, with our tickets being on the top tier, I can't remember ever going on an escalator in a football ground, although you do feel that one was needed on that old bank at Springfield Park, Wigan or the tarmac slope at the old Shay, Halifax. Once you wander around the concourses I suppose it is pretty much the same as any other modern ground these days, albeit on a much larger scale. But when you go up the steps and into the seats fully inside the stadium, then the view from around 20 rows down from the back simply takes your breath away. That is one area in which it certainly defeats the Millennium Stadium, although the view in there wasn't bad either to be fair. There were a few scare stories about in the weeks coming up to the game about the price of food and drink inside the ground, well for me one side of the coin was fine and the other was expensive. In the National Stadium, in London, I thought £4 for 500mls worth of lager wasn't too traumatic to be honest, but the food was daftly overpriced. And you'd think they would want football fans to have it the other way round in a captive arena, less drinking on an empty stomach. And of course that drinking has to end up somewhere too, so onto the toilet situation, was it just me or were there far more sit down facilities than there needed to be as compared to stand up ones? Surely, and I am going to help myself out here by saying that I am no expert on male toilets, I would think that around 90% of people need the stand up ones and that didn't seem to replicate itself inside the ground. Oh, and whose idiotic idea was it to close some of the stand up ones at the final whistle, and thus force twice as many punters into a block of sit down ones, stupidity in the extreme. It would seem pretty obvious that the lack of stand up ones was the reason that were enormous queues at half-time that were still there well into the second-half too, some men even going into the ladies toilets, maybe not for the first time in some cases, to avoid the queues. As for leaving the stadium itself, let's be wise and not talk about the game, it felt like the stairs going round and round and round to reach the exit doors would never stop but eventually they did and it was back to the coach. Getting out of the car-park proved to be surprisingly easy, and better organised than I expected, and we were soon back on the motorway, eventually getting home to Carlisle at just after 11pm. The lasting memory for me of the New Wembley once I have had time to think about it, is it a case of what could have been for a massive £800 million spend. Apart from the view, which I suppose is the main concern really, it's just another modern ground with the same facilities as are everywhere else, albeit, as already mentioned on a larger scale. And some of the facilities aren't really up to the mark either. That's not to say that I am pining for the horrendousness of the Old Wembley but what emotions does the new ground pull into your heart? Can you imagine as it the same place the White Horse strode out onto, the same place that saw the "Matthews Final" in 1953, the same place Geoff Hurst scored his hat-trick in that World Cup Final. I can't, and that for me is a shame that those memories have pretty much disappeared to be replaced by glass, concrete and a complete lack of history and nostalgia. |