Behind Enemy Lines - The view from Villa Park

Behind Enemy Lines – The view from Villa Park

Wed 20th Mar 2013 22:55 by ShotKneesHoop
In the latest in an occasional series of articles on LFW, message board regular John Hansell reports from the home end at Villa Park on Saturday’s heartbreaker.


Background
I have two grandkids living in Worcestershire, that have been cultivated to be Villa supporters by their dad, and a daughter who has been brought up properly by me and supports the R’s; so this fixture was a belated Christmas present to them of a visit to a proper football ground to see a relegation dog fight.

Villa often use fixtures with potentially low crowd appeal to do special offers to recruit families. Their offer of four for £44 (two adults and two juniors) was cheaper than any day ticket to watch at Loftus Road this season, so I called their ticket office as soon as the offers were open to the general public. The call was handled very pleasantly and efficiently and four bar coded tickets arrived in the post within 48 hours.

Villa 1 - QPR - 0.

Journey
I’ve always got the train to Witton, as the walk to Villa Park is the nearer of the two stations, but the train service is a bit irregular. This time I booked the train from Bromsgrove to Aston, left on the 12.45 and we got to Aston Station in just 30 minutes.

After a stroll through the Aston wastelands - avoiding the vomit in ‘Lovers Lane’ - we were approaching Villa Park. There can’t be a more impressive stadium to be walking towards. The magnificent Holte End appears as we cross under the Aston Expressway. Lots of Villa supporters were disappearing into pubs for refueling or waiting in line outside large mobile burger bars to buy hot dogs and burgers that look 100 times healthier than the ones you get from the grease trolleys outside Ellerslie.

Villa 1 - QPR - 0.

The Ground
The TV screens under the stand were showing the Everton game, again good catering on offer, pies, pasties, etc. We were in the Upper Tier of the North Stand, similar to the Upper Loft. The journey to the ground had been so swift that when we took our seats at 1.45 pm, we were one of the few in the ground. It gave you a real chance to appreciate what Villa have built there. It’s a template for a perfect football ground, where you can watch a game in relative comfort. The seats seemed to have the same sort of leg pitch as the Loftus Road seats, but because their North Stand is built to such a tighter elevation, the legroom was adequate. The backs of the seats were curved to allow more room at either side and the tops of the seats in front were level with shins - rather than knee caps. We got a view of the whole pitch as there were no pillars, gantries to obstruct the view. The ground seemed to take a long time to fill up; probably my fault, because I had used Loftus Road time planning to allow for a couple of pints in the White Horse and cod and chips at Ocean Billy’s.

Villa 1 - QPR – 0

You can read the rest of this enjoyable post on Clive Whittingham's 'Loft for words' site ..... http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/fb_news.php?storyid=31692