Making Light work of Lego-built stadium...
Jules Richards is a real brick!
The supermarket manager has combined his twin passions – football and Lego – to create a replica of almost all of the UK’s 92 football league grounds.
And now he has turned his attention to the Stadium of Light.
The Cardiff City fan, now exiled in Bedfordshire, has been recreating the nation’s football grounds for more than two years.
“I had a day off from work and brought the Lego down from the loft,” he said.
“I thought ‘you know what, I am going to build Cardiff ’s ground out of Lego’.
“I put a picture on social media and a lot of people liked it – I even got into the programme for one of the home games.”
His first attempt proved such a hit on social media that he was commissioned by a Nottingham-based Sheffield Wednesday fan to build a replica of the club’s Hillsborough stadium – but it didn’t exactly go as planned.
“I posted it out to him, so it arrived in bits,” he said.
“So one day I drove up, we went out for a beer, then I went back to his house and fixed it.
“I did a few more – NorJules, wich,Wigan–thensomebody said‘ you should do all the 92’. I have done 85 or 86 now.”
The exterior of the Stadium of Light had proved relatively straightforward, said but the inside of the ground was a different story.
“The outside was not too bad, but the inside, with the SAFC wording and the badge in the seats, was tricky.
“I have not done that many with seats forming lettering and the badge was hard work.”
Wolves’ ground Molineux has been Jules’s most popular commission, but is also one of the trickiest to recreate. Burnley’s Turf Moor has been the toughest challenge so far.
Orders cost up to £180 but Jules isn’t in it for the money: “Lego is not cheap and I work in Luton, where there is a Lego shop, so I do buy specialist pieces,” he said.
“I make about £50 on a model, but it’s really just a bit of a hobby.”
Jules has recently branched out into making both larger models and his first cricket ground.
“I have got about another six of the 92 to do, then I have got commissions of a big Manchester United and a big Manchester City,” he said.
“And I have done Edgbaston for a photographer who worked for Birmingham City.”
“The SAFC wording and the badge in the seats was tricky” JULES RICHARDS