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| Friday, November 8, 2002 20:33 EST |
Manchester City has called Maine Road home since 1923
[Reuters]
MANCHESTER, England -- Saturday's English
premier league derby between Manchester City and Manchester
United will earn its own footnote in the history of the famous
fixture as the last to be played at Maine Road.
At the end of the season City will leave the ground that has
been its home since 1923 -- and was that of United from
1941-49 -- to take up residence at the new City of Manchester
Stadium, venue of this year's Commonwealth Games.
While that hi-tech stadium, now shorn of its athletics
track, has been widely acclaimed, it is easy to forget that
Maine Road was also at the cutting edge of stadium development
when it was built nearly 80 years ago.
City was already 36 years old by the time the club moved to the
ambitious, newly-built Maine Road in 1923. The stadium quickly
grew to become the biggest club ground in England.
In his book "The Football Grounds of England and Wales",
author Simon Inglis said that the site of a former brickworks
was labelled the "Wembley of the North". Its southern cousin had
opened for business a few months earlier.
The original Maine Road ground had just one stand, though it
did seat 10,000 people, with the rest made up of three enormous,
open terraces.
A crowd of 60,000 watched the first match there, a first
division defeat to Sheffield United.
Later that season, 76,000 saw City beat Cardiff in an FA Cup
quarterfinal while in 1934 84,569 watched City play Stoke in an
FA Cup sixth-round match.
That remains the biggest crowd to watch an English game
outside a Cup final, while the 80,407 who watched Derby County
play Wolverhampton in a Cup semifinal replay in 1946 is the
highest at a midweek match.
By then, City was sharing Maine Road with United, whose Old
Trafford ground had been badly damaged by German bombing early
in World War Two.
United remained as tenants until 1949 and the 82,950
spectators who watched them play Arsenal in 1948 produced an
English record for a league match. Even 81,000 turned out to
watch United thrash minor-league Yeovil in the FA Cup.
United returned to a rebuilt Old Trafford but, despite being
surrounded by dense terraced housing in the run-down Moss Side
area of the city, Maine Road still led the way as City installed
floodlights in 1953. United following suit four years later.
Continual redevelopment during the next three decades led to
the capacity being reduced as more seats replaced terracing but
the famous Kippax remained barely changed for decades.
While most clubs' more vocal supporters always tended to
gather behind a goal, City's choir chose to fill the terraced
Kippax, alongside one of the touchlines.
Its low roof produced a dark, dank space but helped to
created a wonderful atmosphere, particularly in the club's glory
days in the late 1960s.
Following the Hillsborough tragedy in 1989, the Kippax went
the way of all other big terraces, keeping its name but nothing
else when it was reopened in 1994.
That year also saw the last of the ground's 18 FA Cup
semifinals, a replay between Manchester United and Oldham.
The capacity this season is down to 34,026 -- less than half
that of Old Trafford -- and is the main reason the club felt the
need to find a home where it can generate much bigger income.
While City is all set for a new era a few kilometers east,
the future of Maine Road remains uncertain.
Plans for nearby Stockport County, of the second division,
or local rugby union club Sale, to move in seem to have run out
of steam and the local council, who has inherited the ground,
is keeping quiet about its intentions.
As bulldozers in London demolish Wembley, there is a real
possibility that, in a remarkable coincidence of timing, the
Wembley of the North could soon follow suit.
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