Tims 92

Portsmouth

Fratton Park

Ground No. 20 (return visit)

Visited - Saturday 1st May 2010
Result - Portsmouth 3-1 Wolverhampton Wanderers
Competition - Barclays Premier League
Attendance - 19,213

Wikipedia describes Jonathan Meades’ 1993 novel ‘Pompey’ as a story “inhabited largely by vile, corrupt, flawed freaks”, a description you might think is perhaps more suitably reserved for the hierarchy of the city’s football club.

Since winning the FA Cup in 2008, Portsmouth have lurched from one crisis to the next, culminating in their relegation from the Premier League in April 2010 with debts revealed to be a massive £120 million, but that in itself doesn’t reveal the full picture which makes even Sky One’s Dreamteam sound realistic in comparison! Owned by the son of an international gun runner, they were sold to an Arab with an arrest warrant hanging over his head, who promptly sold 90% of his shares 40 days later, before they found themselves with a fourth owner in the same season when the new owners defaulted on a loan agreement! As if that wasn’t traumatic enough then on the pitch players had come and gone, most with money owed to them, whilst January had seen the club outbidding relegation rivals to bring in loan players knowing that only days later they’d default on the wages and have to request to be able to sell players outside the transfer window. Not content with owing the big high salary stars, the general staff were even going without as well, before many were finally made redundant in March, whilst maybe worst of all, CEO Peter Storrie was forced to take a drop in salary from £1.3m to “less than 500k per annum”.

As if that wasn’t enough for him to have to bear, then along with former owner Milan Mandaric, ex-manager Harry Redknapp and everyone’s favourite agent, Willie McKay, he found himself charged with tax evasion, as HMRC issued a winding-up order against the club due to being owed £15m. The website and advertising boards had been switched off at various points due to unpaid bills, and not even making an itemised list of debts, rumours were confirmed in April that collections for two cancer charities totalling £15,000 had simply disappeared, leaving supporters to resort to collecting it once more. Vile, corrupt, flawed freaks? That’s probably being kind!

It’s a total contrast to when I’d first visited Fratton Park, the club then looked to be on the up. From spending most of the previous decade around the bottom of Division One, new owner Milan Mandaric had transformed them, with Harry Redknapp as manager and led on the field by veteran midfielder Paul Merson. They won the title in 2003, gaining promotion to the Premier League along with Wolves, but unlike ourselves, Pompey had managed to stay up that first year and build the team on what would only later reveal itself to be foundations made of sand. Still, despite their current troubles, the fans had seen their share of success in the intervening six years before we’d meet again, with the FA Cup win that would lead to them hosting European giants AC Milan in the UEFA Cup, only an injury time equaliser from Filippo Inzaghi denying the south-coast club a famous victory.

Even in the good times though, the crux of their problems always seemed to come down to Fratton Park, the smallest ground in the Premier League, and archaic even by lower league standards. With limited capacity and a lack of corporate facilities, the club were struggling to generate the revenue they now so obviously needed, and had been looking to move for some time. CGI’s of a new stadium adjacent to the Spinnaker Tower looked impressive, and for a while seemed to spell an imminent end for Fratton Park, before they were ultimately dropped in favour of a cheaper option which would involve rotating the pitch and redeveloping instead. Even this though seems unlikely to happen at any point soon, with the grounds future now more likely to be threatened by the clubs debts as opposed a move.

Partly because of this, I’d been looking to get back to Fratton for some time, and after the fixtures were drawn at the beginning of the 2009/10 season, then with this as the penultimate match for both clubs it had relegation six-pointer written all over it! Pompey’s disastrous season though had seen them down at the start of April, and for us, Liverpool’s win at Turf Moor a week beforehand was enough to confirm survival with two games still to play, taking the meaning out of the game a little bit with neither side having anything to play for.

Pompey had been formed in 1898, ironically after the town’s previous club ‘Royal Artillery Portsmouth’ had been suspended by the FA for financial irregularities (nothing changes…!) On formation they purchased fields to the east of Fratton station, and started to develop the present site with basic stands, hosting its first match in September 1899, during a week that saw a frenzy of grounds opened with Blundell Park, Hillsborough, White Hart Lane and Coventry’s old Highfield Road ground all being used for the first time as well.

Walking up Frogmore Road then you are greeted by the sight of a half-timbered building that at first you can’t really think is part of a football ground. First of all on the right hand side is the former ‘Pompey’ pub, opened in 1902, which in recent years has been turned into a club shop. Adjacent to it is the remnants of a pavilion which was opened in 1905, reportedly as impressive as the one that still stands at Craven Cottage, with a clock tower and balcony on the inside. This is where the clubs offices are, although the front half of the pavilion was knocked down in 1925 when Archibald Leitch built the South Stand that is still there today. The other three sides of the ground aren’t much to look at from the outside, other than some murals behind the Milton End, but inside and it opens up a bit more compared to the tight streets and alleyways that are a thing largely of footballs past nowadays. The South Stand is one of a dwindling number of Leitch stands left, and probably now looks as smart as it ever has with a bright blue coat of paint. A classic double-decker, the lower tier is dug beneath pitch level, and looks quite gloomy at the rear, with the upper tier hanging low above it. Opposite is the North Stand, which was once a fair sized terrace that ran around the corner to include the Milton End. The upper tier was added in 1934 and its roof extended to cover the lower section when seats were installed in 1997. The Milton End itself was still uncovered on my last two visits, but has since had a roof added in 2007 to provide cover for away fans. This is the same basic terrace as the North Stand lower tier, with seats bolted on to make for an uncomfortable afternoon if you wanted to sit down. With four big thick pillars supporting the roof they’ve actually managed to make it even worse since last time, something many might have assumed was impossible given the already ‘basic’ facilities on offer. Opposite is the Fratton End, the only side of the ground to have been rebuilt since the Taylor Report. It was once a two tiered terrace which had its upper section removed in 1988, leaving it open until 1997 when the current stand was built. A large, single-tier cantilevered structure it offers the best views and facilities at the ground, all of course reserved for the home supporters. It also features a picture in the seats of former player, secretary, PR Officer and eventually manager, Jimmy Dickinson, who holds the clubs record for appearances (828 from 1946-1965). The ground is finished by its four floodlight pylons, which are some of the tallest left in the league now since Millmoor’s demise (although the ones at Rotherham’s new home, Don Valley are a lot bigger, if not as traditional looking). They were donated by the supporters club in 1962, the previous ones having had the honour of seeing the first league game played under floodlights in 1956 for the visit of Newcastle United (no blaming Sky for a long distance trip on a midweek match this time!)

I’d arrived into Portsmouth earlier than expected after my train was early into Reading, and another one late getting in, meaning I avoided a half hour wait, so I got off at Fratton to have a look round, before making my way into town to meet a friend, spending the time near the dockyards which have changed remarkably since my last visit, with the building of the Spinnaker Tower and retail units around it. The Ship Anson however is still a throwback to years gone by and after a few pints we jumped onto the train for the short journey back up to Fratton ready for the game. The last time we were here it was pretty much agreed that the away section offered the worst facilities in the league, but since then, with the addition of the roof it has been moved to the other side of the stand, and here they’re even worse! Toilets with warning signs ‘urinals only’ on the outside don’t exactly go hand in hand with the glitzy Premier League experience that they’d like to have you believe the English top flight is! We’d filled out our allocation, and after three of their previous four games had only attracted crowds of 16,000 then this was a comparatively high attendance with the home ends mostly full, Pompey fans coming out for what could potentially be their last ever home match.

The game started at a pace that suggested it might not be an end-of-season borefest. Wolves did most of the early running, with David Jones forcing a good save from James in the Pompey goal, whilst Jody Craddock came close to connecting from a corner, but it was the home side who took the lead against the run of play in the 20th minute. A Michael Brown free-kick into the box found Aruna Dindane who benefited from some shocking defending that left him unmarked and free to head home, before they nearly made it 2-0 minutes later, only for Hahnemann to acrobatically save a stinging shot from John Utaka that looked goal bound. Wolves got back into it in the 35th minute thanks to Kevin Doyle who found the ball at his feet following a scramble in the box which had seen David James make two point-blank saves, only to be beaten at the third attempt. Four minutes later and it was all change again when the hosts went back ahead, John Utaka hitting a daisy cutter that skimmed in after some more lazy defending, to make it 2-1 at the break.

The second half was more of the same, Wolves having most of the chances, and it really should have been 2-2 when the ball came to Sylvan Ebanks-Blake who summed his season up with a shocking miss when the goal was gaping, asking him to make the net bulge instead of hitting it across the face and out for a goal kick. It was a let off for David James who was having an otherwise fantastic game, staking his claim for the England number 1 jersey in South Africa, and it was his agility that continued to keep the visitors out with more saves, including a great tip over the bar from Kevin Doyle’s scissor kick that looked to be dipping in. Once more though, against the run of play the hosts were able to find the net, again from more poor defending, this time George Elokobi who backed off to allow Michael Brown all the time in the world to pick his spot and win the game for the home side in the 67th minute. There was still time for Ebanks-Blake to get in another howler, but with our main attacking outlet, Matt Jarvis missing through injury, then it wasn’t to be and the ref eventually blew for full time with the hosts taking a welcome three points to help restore a little pride.

After staying behind to hear Avram Grant’s speech on how Pompey have been so hard done by for being made to adhere to the rules set out for all clubs (the drum banging sheep all bought it) then it was eventually time to leave and head home, stopping off in Oxford overnight before going back the next day.

Overall, whilst the game had turned into a sort of inevitability that the players were never going to break any legs to win, it still hadn’t been too bad a trip. The ground is a throwback to a different age, facilities and all, but that in itself tends to make the day a little bit more interesting compared to the boring, sanitised bowls like at Leicester and just up the M27. What will happen to Pompey is anyone’s guess at the moment, their success has quite clearly come at a price, but that in itself you can’t help but think is justified when clubs who run themselves on a sound financial and moral basis lose out in comparison. The drumbeat of the past few years is that football is on the verge of collapse with plenty of clubs in a similarly precarious position, but if you believe that line then you’ll have believed that the game was on its deathbed at any point during the last 40 years. The hooliganism of the 70s, the Bradford, Heysel and Hillsborough disasters and low crowds/poor grounds of the 80s, the spiralling ticket and merchandise prices of the 90s and now the financial troubles of the 2000’s all cited as about to cause the game to imminently die out. It will survive somehow, and whether it’s in their current form or not, I’ve no doubt Pompey will as well, even if it does involve having to restart at a lower level. As for Fratton Park though, maybe that has a less certain future as the modern game continues to pass it by. Both a recovery and their demise could see the club moving, so only time will tell how long football continues to be played there.