On Saturday five of us made a trip to Shrewsbury to watch Bradford City play Shrewsbury Town at their New Meadow, new stadium. In overall terms in was a dreadful day out. The new stadium and general arrangements there were a hugely disappointing experience and we lost 1-0 to a penalty.
It was a deserved defeat and City continue to play in the same lack lustre style as for much of the last two seasons, which resulted in relegation to Division 2 last season. The advent of Stuart McCall as the saviour of Bradford City will realistically take time and expectations are ludicrously high given the bunch of players he has. He will undoubtedly make his mark in due course but he needs time and some resources.
The New Meadow was a disappointment. Built in the middle of nowhere in the usual modern soulless style with no atmosphere or character. A complete contrast to the old ground at Gay Meadow, which was always an enjoyable place to visit. Despite being in the middle of the Shropshire countryside and having a huge car park, for some reason car parking at the ground is not encouraged / allowed and it is necessary to park at designated Park and Ride sites set out in the club's Travel Plan. The problem being that the plan is so vague and the signposting is so poor it is difficult to determine if the Park and Rides actually exist or are a West Mercia Myth and Legend.
We tracked down a designated Park and Ride site only to find that there was a "No Match Parking" sign and a forlorn jobsworth man in a yellow coat to direct us elsewhere. He could not say where we should go but it was not here. We subsequently parked in a private housing development and had to trudge a fair distance in the pouring rain past fields full of cows and sheep, along a road to nowehere.
We eventually reached the ground, situated in splendid isolation, and asked a steward which was the away end - after several seconds contemplation it was obvious that this was too difficlut a question for her, so we set off to explore. This turned out to be the trend of the afternoon. Another steward did not know where we could get programmes and another only seemed to have the vaguest of ideas. Probably because the programmes were £6 and they did not expect to sell many.
Another officious steward insisted that we did not stand on the yellow hatched area in the concourse - presumably because we were wearing loud shirts in a public place! And so on......
On the way out I noticed that there were some nice rails for parking a bicycle ...but then it's a long way from Bradford on yer bike?
