https://twitter.com/FIVENINE_AGENCY please log in to view this image For all you Greg Abboott fans out there.
Reminds me of Millwall 1966(?). I was on the running track in front of the North Stand. A lot of fans had climbed into the ground and there must have been getting close to as many as the Rotherham match. There was the seats in the North Stand to reduce the capacity. Had the South Stand been built? Bunkers was massive before the stand was built.
My husband tells me that the Millwall match you remember may be the one played a day after Boxing Day 1965 in City's promotion season 65/66. Over 40,000 were at the Div 3 match. City won 1-0 and played the following day at Millwall losing 3-0. It was the last December match he saw in Hull as he left the UK permanently in 1966. The South Stand was not built before he left.
When they shut the gates a lot of people climbed over and wouldn't have been recorded. Bunkers was twice as high as the South Stand terracing and there was an additional terrace on top in the south east corner. When I went to reserve games I would climb to the top and the players looked like tiny insects.
I was at the game too (N. stand), but didn't manage to get a program. I wonder if Alex Stepney was in their goal that day ?
The south stand was opened in 1966, according to this website. Sounds about right to me. If that's the case construction would certainly have been going on for a good year or so prior to that. https://www.footballgroundguide.com...s/boothferry-park-hull-city.html#asouth-stand
You would have thought the HDM would have picked up on this at the time, it's a pity it wasn't reported also by the club.
Over to my husband...." Any idea when in 1966 it was opened and was it an official opening? Have a complete memory blank about the South Stand at that time as the last game I saw with my dad was the final match of the 65/66 season when we came first in Div 3 and were promoted with Millwall. I left for South Africa a couple of months later. I have just come across a book written by David Goodman called 'Hull City a History' with a passage that reads --Finally in 1965 came a new South Stand which was to be built over the the uncovered terrace Bunkers Hill. This increased the capacity to 42,000 and with the team in the 3rd Division attention then turned to matters on the field and building a side capable of doing the new ground justice--. In April 1968 I returned to Hull for a few days when my dad died suddenly. At the funeral an uncle suggested that as Hull City were playing a mid-week fixture a couple of days later we should go and we sat in the South Stand. Think it was against Rotherham and I remember we won."
The South Stand was certainly up and running throughout the 1965/66 season. My earliest memory of being inside Boothferry Park was the Everton FA Cup game in Jan 1964 and I don't think the stand was built then. I have a memory of seeing the girders going up during the summer of 1964, which you could see from the back of a garage where my dad used to take his car for an MOT. This was just off Anlaby Road in the area near Kempton Road. It was very impressive. I was also at the first game under the new floodlights v Barnsley about October time 1964 and the South Stand was in use then. So I'm guessing it was completed during the summer of 1964 ready for the new season ?
