By Nathan Jackson
December 11 2011

Lincoln City's relegation from the Football League meant an appearance in the FA Trophy and the draw subsequently paired the Imps with Colwyn Bay. It was a long trip from Sincil Bank to the Welsh seaside town and what greeted the fans at the other end is not exactly eye-catching.

Lincoln City were paired with Colwyn Bay in the 1st round of the FA Trophy in December 2011. It was never never going to be a short journey as Lincoln is just west of the east coast of England and Colwyn Bay is just east of the west coast of Wales. It did indeed prove to be a lengthy journey, taking about 4 hours.

The drive to Colwyn is reasonably pleasent once you get into Wales and for the final leg you are driving along side the sea, meaning that you get a reasonable view of something other than motorway, which did make a nice change. The ground seemed relatively easy to find once getting into the town but parking facilities were at a premium, with only a small club car park and street parking seemingly available.

There also didn't appear to be a lot to do around the ground.

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There is only one set of turnstiles at the ground so it's quite hard to get lost or confused like at some grounds (such as Morecambe's Globe Arean) and every member of staff did seem reasonably friendly, which is something I do always like about non-league clubs.

Everything to do within the ground seems to be cramped into one corner of one of the stands, which is quite bizarre. The bar is only accessible from within the ground, the only food stall is a little window next to the bar, the toilets are just around the corner from that and the rather empty club shop is also nearby in that corner. It's often you seem a club that has spread everything around in such a small amount of space.

The club shop was particularly disappointing. It's a large t-hut but has virtually nothing other than old programmes and t-shirts to offer in there. This was particularly disappointing as they could have done a lot more with the space they have in there.

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The ground has quite a nice setting right at the bottom of the hill, which makes it one of the more attractive settings for a ground in the country, certainly better than grounds that are built on industrial estates and all you can see are warehouses.

As the ground is not segregated it is a bit difficult to talk about the view from the away end because there isn't one.

The main stand at the ground is a pitch length terrace that is about 15 rows high and offers a decent view of the playing action from the top, however, there is no roof and there are no bars to lean against, meaning it can be awkward to stand up for 90 minutes unless you're right at the back, where a small wall is placed. On that small wall is some unusual art work that I can only assume it part of some art project that went on, with paintings of football fans and cartoon characters overlooking the stand.

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The stand behind the goal furthest from the turnstiles is a tiny seated stand that looks like a terrace. It's capacity is tiny and even if you stood on the top row of seating, your head would be below the crossbar. The roof is also dangerously low in this stand so there is the chance of gaining a serious head injury if you celebrate your team scoring. Also, due to the tiny nature of this stand, a lot of balls went over and behind the stand.

Opposite the pitchside terrace is another small seated stand with 3 rows of seating going across the length of the pitch. This stand had a LOT of supporting pillars, which is bizarre given the small nature of the stand and having spent five minutes in this stand, I wouldn't want to spend much longer in there.

The final stand is the stand all fans enter into and that's a standing area behind the goal, although from what I recall there were no steps and the fence is quite high, making it awkward for shorter and/or disabled fans.

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There is no atmosphere from the Colwyn fans and not once during the entire match did any of their fans try and sing. Given the pleasent nature of the majority of their fans, combined with no atmosphere, this is arguably one of the safest grounds to visit you're ever likely to encounter.

The programme is quite poor and feels like something you could compile yourself on a computer in about 2 hours. It was full of uninteresting articles and was universally panned by City fans on the journey home.

Overall Colwyn Bay isn't a bad place to go but I would never go here unless City were playing. It became the 6th Welsh ground I have visited (Ninian Park, Cardiff Stadium, Newport Stadium, Millennium Stadium, Vetch Field and Racecourse) and it was probably the worst of the lot, with only the Vetch rivalling it for it's poor facilities.

Colwyn Bay's Llanellan Road

Discussion started by theimps.ka (IP Logged), 11/12/2011 16:05

theimps.ka
11/12/2011 16:05

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