Standing on the Terraces

A recent visitor to St James Park, was Matthew Bazell, author of “Theatre of Silence: The Lost Soul of Football”. Here is what he had to say:-

This summer while on holiday in Devon I attended the Exeter City v Aldershot cup game in what was my first ever visit to St. James Park.

Whilst at the game I decided that the theme of any article on the Grecians should be focused on the age demographic in the crowd, which I was totally staggered by. Most of the fans in the terraced Cliff Bastin Stand behind the goal seemed to be groups of teenagers which is an obvious contrast to the Premier League where the average supporter age is 43. After the game however, I was told by a fan that this particular match was free entry to anyone under the age of 18, which put a splinter in my plans to heap praise on the typical age of the Exeter fan. Most of the blighters were on a freebie, though credit to the club for looking after their young fans and the normal entry fee for them is only £5 anyway.

So let me stick to another theme of why a fan of a big Premier League team really enjoyed going to a game at Exeter City. It isn’t simply because they’re a small club, no disrespect intended. I’ve been to many games in Leagues 1 & 2 and felt the same frustration with the modern game as I do with the top flight. The reason for that frustration is mainly because those clubs are aspiring to be mini versions of the big boys and have managed to lose their charm, whilst not even providing the one thing they can’t emulate from the Premier League which is world class football. It’s all too commonnow for clubs big or small to move home to an out of town location and build a Legoland arena that looks the same as every other newly built stadium. It’s boring, it’s impersonal and in the long term it could be detrimental to a future fanbase. In an out of town stadium with no surrounding community, rail links or pubs, only the hardcore will continue to go.  And a hardcore supporter only reaches that point of dedication by first being just a casual follower.

So what attracted me to St. James Park was in a word – tradition. When I watch the Football League show on BBC they are one of the clubs that stand out as having an identity that’s outside of the modern trend of looking the same as everyone else. In a stadium surrounded by terraced houses my experience at the Aldershot cup game felt wonderfully familiar to what I grew up with as a football fan in the late eighties and early nineties. Standing on the Cliff Bastin Stand (AKA Big Bank) in 2012 felt like a throwback to my days on Arsenal’s North Bank terrace, albeit on a far smaller scale. I may have been in the city of Exeter on that day, but I would not have bothered to go to this game had the stadium looked like a miniature version of Middlesbrough’s Riverside Stadium which opened in 1993. Original at that time maybe, but it became the design model for virtually every new football ground.  I’m so bored of the Riverside; this stadium plan is a virus that’s infected the soul of too many clubs big and small.

Exeter’s main rivals Plymouth Argyle have already caught this disease. I’ve nothing at allagainst the Pilgrims, but I’ve no interest in going to a game at the re-developed Home Park, because I’ve been to that style of stadium enough times to the point where I’ve lost interest in knowing what I’m going to get.

At St. James I was happy as Larry and felt like I was in a football time warp. It cost me ten pounds to get in. I watched the game from a clean, smart, open terrace. And at the refreshments hut I paid comparable prices to what I would do on the high street – not the inflated rip-off that fans are accustomed to.  During the penalty shoot-out I moved from the corner of the terrace to directly behind the goal for the perfect view. Oh the freedom!  That feeling was normal to my life as a football fan a couple of decades ago, but a world away from what I’ve given up in the last few years. My alienation at Arsenal reached a point where I stopped going to matches around six years ago. It wasn’t a sudden decision but a slow build up to the point where I felt no dignity any more in being a paying customer.

The Big Bank which holds around 4,000 is now the largest football terrace left in the country, which although a depressing fact, makes Exeter City a part of football heritage that deserves to be respected and appreciated. Before going to Exeter, the last time I had this time-warp feeling at football was when I and hundreds of others came out of retirement to watch Arsenal play away at Cardiff City in 2009 in the FA Cup. Ninian Park at that point had the largest sections of open terracing in league football and being there felt like football heaven for those of us who are sick of being told to sit down. A year later Cardiff moved home to a stadium that looks rather similar to the one where Middlesbrough play their home games. If I go back to St. James Park in ten years time I wonder what it will be like. Will the Cliff Bastin Stand have lost the freedom of standing, or even worse be part of a housing estate? I hope not; too many clubs move with no good reason and lose the spirit that attracted the fans to the club in the first place.

If you want to have a look at Matthew’s book, then you can find it on Amazon, here.

Do you have something to say on standing at football matches. Many of us hold dear the principle of standing whilst watching a game. We’ve been meaning to write a series of articles about standing, terrace culture and the problems we encounter across the country with over-zealous stewarding, but haven’t yet done so. So would you like to write something? We’d love to hear from you.