The Good Companion pub on Eastern Road, less than half a mile from
Fratton Park, where the fans of Plymouth Argyle have gathered before the game
against Portsmouth. This assemblage cannot be offered as a cross-section of Plymothian
society, but they are legion: the total attendance of away fans on the day will
reach 2,405 – way above average for League Two. Many of the older supporters
look out-of-shape, unwell, lacking any concern for their appearance. The
younger are more neatly dressed but have drank too much, some of them spilled
over tables next to barely touched pints, others behaving more boisterously.
The bar is at least three deep, and this is not a small bar. The staff is doing
its best to chronologise service, but it cannot be guaranteed. There is queue
for the men’s toilet that leads well out of its door. Approximately 90% of
those present are male, all are white. There is nothing to fear; the partisan
is reactive, moved to oppose only when opposed. The atmosphere is congenial, if
unrefined. Pasties are being hawked in the car park.
The North–South divide is mythic, a dichotomy that supposedly hard
northerners perpetuate when wishing to denigrate supposedly soft southerners. I
determine so because whenever I've travelled somewhere in this respect
considered 'north' – Edinburgh, Sedgefield, Leicester, Nottingham, Grantham,
Cardiff, small towns and villages in Wales and Lincolnshire – I've found the
manner and attitude to be comparable in tone to that found in places like
Plymouth, Bristol, Exeter, Torquay, Southampton, Portsmouth, small towns and
villages in Cornwall and Somerset. The implication is predictive by dint of
geographical allusion: it is not a North–South divide at all but a South East–the
rest of it divide.
This still doesn’t quite satisfy. Romford and
Southend hint at trouble, Cambridgeshire is as bleak as hell, and I’ve heard
the Medway towns are very rough also. Jonathan Meades talking to The Quietus
I don't think the South is a paradise, that's a complete
nonsense. I have a friend who grew up in Liverpool 8 above a pub, and he went
to university in Southampton and he said that Liverpool will kick you but then
say, ‘Sorry, whack,' but Southampton will just kick you. We're
talking about places that are hard, without any doubt, especially port
towns – Plymouth and Portsmouth as well. Say if you go to the Medway towns,
they're very hard and rough places.
My formative years spent in Plymouth give credence. Whenever I
return from London I’m reminded of the variance in mood, the dissimilar mores.
The city isn’t as violent or shabby or parochial as it was, yet there’s still
something inured about many of the residents. Not a more pleasing quality
necessarily, but maybe more sincere.
Specks Lane around the back of the away (‘Milton’) end at Fratton
Park, the sort of passageway you wouldn’t want to be caught walking along,
having visited as an opposing spectator, by an active mob of Portsmouth fans
coming the other way. The rear gardens of terraced houses look over it from
behind breeze-blocked walls and incongruously large flat-roofed garages. Facing
this are graffiti covered concrete slabs aligned vertically, like a portion of
the Berlin Wall. This is by far the cared less for quarter of the ground. Signs
assert “No Smoking”. Fag-butts, ubiquitously littering a weedy declination held
in place by those concrete monoliths, suggest otherwise. This is what all
inner-city football grounds were once like, built ad hoc, giving rise to
strange wasted spaces with no access; buildings born of utility, it is the
spectacle within that counts.
The view from the Milton End may be the best
Fratton Park offers: the South Stand to the right, North Stand left, the
Fratton End straight ahead with just four spindly stanchions required to carry
the corrugated iron roof above it. If the goals go in here you won’t miss a
thing. The South Stand is by far the most interesting, dating back to 1925,
designed by Archibald Leitch (responsible for the Johnny Haynes Stand at Craven
Cottage, Ibrox, much of Villa Park, etc.) and one of the few examples of his
work that remains. The North Stand exhibits a certain charm too: its
rectangular shape is compromised at one end, rather like Everton’s Goodison
Road stand. (It is unclear why as behind lies simply a car park, as opposed to
the residential housing that hampers at Goodison.) Both stands are double tiered
but the South Stand more elegantly so. The Fratton End is an example of the
sort of single-tiered structures built over the last twenty-odd years where
clubs have been unable to redevelop, or move away from, their existing ground –
or there just isn't the attendance to justify it. In and of
themselves they’re rarely much to look at but are usually raked more steeply
and their roofs cantilevered, which benefits sight-lines greatly.
Portsmouth was competing in the Premiership as
recently as 2010 and had intended to build a new stadium elsewhere in the city.
Following the club’s calamitous decline these plans were shelved. Vague ideas
concerning the redevelopment of Fratton Park have since been proposed but such
schemes are unlikely to come to fruition while Portsmouth remains playing in
League Two. Yet how many other clubs’ home fans get to enter their ground via a
mock Tudor façade dating back to 1898? And despite the business parks to the
west (a contemporary conglomeration of hotels, supermarkets, gyms and fast-food
establishments) and north (red brick industrial units and warehouses), much of
the surrounding area is still residential. There are parks nearby too.
View from the Milton End. Archibald Leitch's stand is just visible to the left.
Central Park, not New York but Plymouth. See it on a map, it’s no
token recreational space. There is: a library; a clinic; pitch-and-put;
5-a-side; extensive leisure and sporting facilities in the form of the Plymouth
Life Centre; allotments; a cemetery; a number of playgrounds; a bowling green;
a baseball field; more allotments; ample seating; Home Park – residence of
Plymouth Argyle Football Club.
Central Park is 'trust land', which is how it
continues to exist – only leisure related facilities may be raised upon it.
Like much of Plymouth, it undulates. Home Park occupies the western apex of the
park adjacent to a large open carpark that adjoins Outland Road (a component of
the A386, which continues up to Dartmoor and ultimately as far as Appledore on
Devon’s north coast). To the east this verdant landscape falls away, meaning
the stadium’s profile appears more elevated from its eastern aspect than from
any other vantage point. When observed from the higher ground of the suburb of
Hartley the impression is of a stadium almost twice its actual size.
In fact Home Park is of modest proportion,
always has been. In 2001, the ground underwent redevelopment. The Lyndhurst
Stand and Devonport and Barn Park Ends were knocked down and a continuous
all-seated U-shaped structure built in its place. This reconstruction
contributed little in terms of capacity and was focussed mainly on comfort and
improving viewing angles, as well as complying with legislation that applied to
the leagues Plymouth was rising towards at the time. Phase 2 of Home Park’s
development was to involve replacing the existing Mayflower Stand with a new
multi-tiered grandstand that would have granted an all-seated capacity of
18,500. Like at Portsmouth, the project was put on hold, and the Mayflower as
it was survives to this day, restricting the capacity to around 16,000.
Artists’ impressions tend to deceive, so it’s
hard to say whether Home Park has missed an opportunity or benefitted from a
stay of execution. Clad in corrugated aluminium, the Mayflower may be outmoded
but it simultaneously remains a far more arresting structure than the
Devonport/Lyndhurst/Barn Park combo presently surrounding it. It looks like
another Archibald Leitch job but was in fact built some ten years after his
passing, a testament to his influence in the field. With a shallower rake, the
grandstand rises only a little higher than the rest of the ground but its two
tears impose a much more commanding disparity. Only from the air does it appear
insubstantial.
Not to say that progress should be resisted.
The old Home Park was a rickety and disjointed affair. None of the roofs
stretched as far as the goal-lines; the Barn Park End didn’t even have one. The
Devonport End was set at a funny angle and the uncovered junction separating it
from the Lyndhurst – the Spion Kop – lacked cohesion. The Lyndhurst –
rectilinear, fan-trussed – afforded a little more protection, and actual seats
were installed toward the end of the 1980s. (The crowd leapt out of them and
jeered as Gascoigne’s reputation preceded him in a pre-season friendly against
Tottenham Hotspur.)
But for all that, the general feeling was one
of openness and of free movement (despite the perimeter fencing, which was deemed
reasonable back then). You could look towards the Barn Park End and see Hartley
rising up above the dot-matrix scoreboard (prone to malfunction) and the trees
beyond. Like at Portsmouth – and at Fiorentina to a fanciful degree – there
were separate sections you could move around in, with views towards the rest of
the ground that were unique to where you stood. Light permeated almost
throughout. There was shade if you preferred. Now, aside from your allocated
seat, the only place to loiter is within the industrial interior of the stands
themselves. Try to imagine what it might be like having a quick pint in your
local B&Q.
Home Park pre-development. Plenty of space to move around in.
Fratton Park and Home Park feel comfortable in their surroundings.
So do many modern stadia, but when you consider that those surroundings are
more usually out-of-town industrial estates then maybe that’s not so much
comfort. It becomes not so much a question of architecture relating to its
surroundings – although it is still that – but finding surroundings worth
relating it to. In the case of Portsmouth and Plymouth, if undertaken with
sufficient regard, their surroundings could have a positively mitigating
effect. My fear is that, when it finally comes to pass, these grounds will be
subject to either the cheapest tender or the demented ego of some preening architect,
determined to leave their mark where it’s not welcome.
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