Backyard footy comes to the Premier League
Fairytales come in different forms. In the case of Luton Town’s stunning rise to the English Premier League, it’s a creaking, rickety old time warp of a stadium built so close to terrace houses that the next-door neighbours will quite literally feel the ebbs and flows of a match as they sit down for dinner.
So close, in fact, that visiting supporters will be able to peer into their backyards, run their eyes over their laundry and judge their level of sartorial sophistication, the tidiness of their outdoor living areas, or even offer some free landscaping advice.
Welcome to Kenilworth Road – perhaps the most unwelcoming stadium seen in the Premier League. It was built in 1905, and looks like it, too. Whether it’s an anachronistic eyesore or a warm embrace of football’s longlost good old days depends entirely upon your perspective, and perhaps your appetite for prawn sandwiches.
Luton Town’s 6-5 penalty shootout win over Coventry City in the English Championship’s promotion playoff at the weekend means that the club’s decaying 10,356-seater stadium will go from lower-league curiosity to a worldwide fascination when they enter the top tier for the first time since 1992.
‘‘Where do you start, man?’’ laughed Socceroo Jason Cummings, who spent a few months in 2019 on loan at Luton Town, when they were in League One, from Nottingham Forest.
‘‘It’s got plenty of character, to say the least. I remember driving up there, and I couldn’t get a park because you’ve basically got to park in someone’s driveway. Incredible.’’ These days, residents have to move their cars on match days. There’s simply no other way for team buses to be able to squeeze down the road.
The best bit is the Oak Road End. That is where away fans enter the stadium, through a gate sandwiched between Victorianera houses, and then over a metal staircase that offers uninterrupted warts-and-all views of their back gardens.
At this level of football, there is nothing like it anywhere in the world . . . and probably for good reason. Fortunately, the locals are used to it.
‘‘We love it – especially seeing the energy of the crowd as they walk around and chant. I love that noise and watch them all the time,’’ said Khuram Maqsood, a Luton Town supporter who lives adjacent to Kenilworth Road, in an interview with Sky Sports.
Once inside, punters are treated to a hodgepodge of different-coloured seating, some without backrests, and unmatched, weathered, beatendown stands. The corporate suites – if you can call them that – are within arm’s reach of the benches.
There are no bells and whistles at all – but that’s all part of the charm, according to the club’s chief executive Gary Sweet, who is fiercely protective of their patch, and reckons it will be an intimidating place for the Premier League’s superstars to visit.
‘‘Erling Haaland’s not going to walk through that entrance, he’s going to walk through the other s... entrance we’ve got. Embrace it,’’ he said.
‘‘This is real life, real football, history, tradition right here. This isn’t a sterile bowl. This is lively. This is emotion. This is white knuckles, tears and joy in this stadium. This is a cauldron. If you can’t embrace it, you don’t love football. The old girl is beautiful.’’
Now that the Hatters – whose nickname stems from Luton’s historical association with the hat-making trade – are in the Premier League, the club will be spending almost A$20 million (NZ$21m) on upgrades to bring it up to standard, mostly to accommodate the demands of broadcasters. The new season begins in August, so they’ll need to get to work quickly.
‘‘This is real life, real football, history, tradition right here. This isn’t a sterile bowl. This is lively. This is emotion.’’
Luton Town chief executive Gary Sweet on Kenilworth Road