| Back to the previous photograph | |
|
| |
 According to the Wikipedia page about Luton Town, "The club first stated its intent to leave Kenilworth Road in 1955". That means that they played here for 50 years before starting to look for somewhere else, and they've now been looking for 60 years. I remember there being a few proposals for new stadia during the time when I lived here. The club considered moving to the nearby new town of Milton Keynes several times but such proposals were unpopular with the fans, although that didn't stop Wimbledon Football Club subsequently doing exactly that. I used to live about 700 metres from the ground; close enough that if I was in the garden, I could tell whenever Luton had scored by the roar of the crowd. I didn't realise at the time what an unusual ground it was and how strange an experience it must have been for visiting teams to play here. For a start, this entrance is a bit odd. I can't tell whether that's a real house over the top of it or just some kind of facade. It's got a front door. Another strange thing was that from 1985 to 1991, the grass was replaced with an artificial playing surface. It wasn't the high-quality modern type of artificial pitch used by a lot of the big clubs these days though, and it wasn't very popular. I remember hearing sports reports at the time which would say things like "such and such a team went to Luton today and lost 2-1 on the plastic", a phrase which led me to completely misunderstand what it meant if a team was said to have, for instance, "won 3-2 on aggregate". Even stranger though was that the visiting team would have no support at all. Following a riot involving visiting Millwall fans, Luton Town banned all away supporters from 1986 to 1990. Only supporters with identity cards were allowed to enter the ground and you could only get a card if you lived within 25 miles of here or provided a good justification for having one. In his 1989 report into ground safety, Lord Taylor suggested that all clubs might have to impose similar restrictions. Luckily, other solutions to the problem of hooliganism were found. UTC Time: 09:29, Thursday 17 September 2015 Local Time: 10:29, Thursday 17 September 2015 Estimate of longitude: 0° 25' 58.01" W = -0.432780° Estimate of latitude: 51° 53' 4.96" N = 51.884710° Possible error on position estimate: 100 metres | |