By Nathan Jackson
January 28 2010

The Pirelli Stadium was a ground I was looking forward to visiting as it was quite close to Lincoln, but I ended the trip quite disappointed. Although it's not the worst away day I've ever had, there was certainly very little to get me excited about being in the ground once I was there, nor was there much to at

Burton Albion's Pirelli Stadium was built in 2005 and I had been past the stadium on several occasions, but had never actually gone into the ground, so I was quite looking forward to going there when City visited. It was short and relatively simple trip from Lincoln, going around Nottingham and then about 15 miles up the motorway before you get to the small town. The ability to park at the ground was also quite good, but there was nothing whatsoever nearby that was worth visiting.

Infact, in recent years at the time of writing, this ground has become one of more most local games as League Two was becoming considerably more southern at the time.

The ground is right on the outskirts of Burton, meaning it's easy access but the same can't be said about the parking, and after the game it can take some time to get out of the area as the main road to the ground is single lane, meaning unless you leave quite early, you're not going to get out of Burton for quite some time.

I had wanted to go in the seating but had not been made aware that you needed to get a ticket from the small club shop before hand, meaning a walk around the stadium and then back. Even stranger was that the turnstiles were wrong. The turnstiles that listed "Away Seating" never opened and you had to ask stewards and various other sources where the relevant turnstiles were.

Once inside the ground, I wasn't overly impressed to be honest. I'm not a big fan of terracing at the best of times, so to see a new ground where three of the four stands were terracing, wasn't exactly my cup of tea. The pitch seemed relatively large for such a small stadium and the view from the terrace in my second visit backed up this, you're barely able to see if a shot at the other end of the pitch has gone in or not.

The view of the goal in front of the away end is reasonable though, and one good thing about the ground is that there are no restricted views in any section, something which is also a rarity these days.

THE NORTH TERRACE

Away seating was in the Main Stand and there aren't many grounds with less leg room than this. I'm not overly tall at 5'11, but even I was cramped, fortunately the amount of space around me meant I could spread out a bit. There was no segregation between the fans and I somehow managed to end up sitting in amongst home fans, a surreal experience. However, there were no real problems caused by this and I found Burton fans to be relatively friendly. The view from the seating section was also quite decent.

Facilities were pretty basic in the stand and to be honest, it's one of the few grounds that I probably wouldn't go into overly early, even if it's just to find something to do. At the time of writing, I work for a company that has an office in Burton and I regularly travel to the town and to be honest, I could write the activities to do in the town on a postage stamp, it is a very dull little place to say the least.

THE SOUTH STAND 

The other three stands were all terracing, small terraces at that. As I mentioned earlier the view from the terrace isn't brilliant and to be honest, it's not a brilliant stand at all, feeling like a maze of twists and turns just to get into the terrace. Infact, you climb around 40 steps to get to the area behind the stand, a very small and pointless corridor that has nothing in it other than the stairs down to the bar and toilet facilities.

It just seems bizarre that a club would build a new ground that was mainly terracing. I could understand a ground that was three seated stands and one terrace, but to have the opposite is very unusual indeed.

It was also quite hard for both sets of fans to create an atmosphere, although I didn't hear much of an atmosphere from Burton at all, thus becoming yet another example of terracing failing to guarantee atmosphere, that despite what some fans claim. Even at 3-0 up in the second visit, they didn't create any atmosphere at all and out of all the teams coming up from the Conference in recent years, virtually none have produced an atmosphere as poor as Burton.

THE EAST TERRACE - TERRACED AWAY END

Then we get onto quite possibly the strangest programme I've ever bought. The content was fine, but the actual size and shape was highly unusual. I'm not even quite sure how to describe it other than being the size and shape of your average child's book, it was ridiculously small. When the programme bloke handed it to me, I was thinking "Ok, very funny, now can I have a programme?"

Overall I was a bit disappointed with Burton's Pirelli Stadium. It's not the best ground in the world, the atmosphere is poor and it has a strange programme, not to mention the segregation issue. Don't get me wrong, it's certainly not the worst ground I've ever been to, but it's certainly not the best.

Burton Albion's Pirelli Stadium

Discussion started by theimps.ka (IP Logged), 19/03/2011 22:10

theimps.ka
19/03/2011 22:10

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