CELEBRATING THE OLD SPOTTED
How a fantasic new book has brought out a non-league wanderlust...
In a world where even Wessex League stadia have corporate names, they are a throwback to a completely different era, grounds which conjure up evocative images of a far more innocent age. Bracken Moor, Iron-works Road, The Rock, Garden Walk, Earls Orchard, Victoria Bottoms, Giant Axe, The Wellesey and - gloriously, memorably - The Ewe Camp, The Old Spotted Dog and The Dripping Pan. Just eleven of the 100 venues - ranging from the Premier League to the Isle of Arran League consisting of only five clubs - featured in a truly wonderful new book, `British Football's Great-est Grounds', which Santa, bless him, delivered down my chimney a few days ago. The strapline is 'One Hundred Must-See Foot-ball Venues', and leafing through the 288 lavishly-illustrated pages that is a boast from author Mike Bayly which is hard to ignore. I've been to 20 of them, so I'm a fifth of the way there. Two of them -Bath's Twerton Park and Marine's Rossett Park (now formally known as The Marine Travel Arena) - I've been to in the last couple of months cover-ing Hawks' FA Cup run for this newspaper. Twerton Park is a classic traditional non-league ground, with open terraces at either end and wonderful, tall floodlight pylons in each corner, the sort which have now disappeared from Fratton Park. Some Pompey fans were sad to see the pylons taken down, and as a football traditionalist so was I. There is nothing wrong with maintaining links to the past. Thankfully, there are many superb pylons in Mike Bayly's book - Peterborough, Grimsby and Morton, to name just three - and may they illuminate games into the year 3000 and beyond. Marine's ground does not have huge pylons, and for one obvious reason -there is no room for them. Their cramped ground only has three sides - the dugouts are literally inches away from back gardens, as Jose Mour-inho will soon discover in one of the most romantic FA Cup ties of all time. If he looks closely enough, he will also see numbers attached to the netting which runs the length of the pitch, so everyone knows which house to knock on to get any stray balls back - a wonderful idiosyncrasy, of a kind that make non-league football so appeal-ing to so many. Though most of the 100 grounds featured are non-league/grassroots, 21 belong to Premier League or EFL clubs. That is understandable - the likes of Anfield, Old Trafford, Villa Park and Goodison are sporting cathedrals, they demand inclusion, while the new stadia at Tottenham and Arsenal showcase the best of the 21st century stadiums. Of the 92 clubs that make up England's top four divisions, more than a third play in grounds that have been built since 1990. Others - Yeovil, Barnet, Chesterfield - are on show in the top flight of non-league football