Travellers' Tales v Wolves
Match: v Wolverhampton Wanderers - FA Cup Round Three
Date: Saturday, January 5th, 2008
Result: Wolves 2 Cambridge United 1
The Journey
Departure Time: 9am
Arrival at Ground: With BBC Radio Cambridgeshire presenting the whole programme from Molineux, I availed myself of the offer of being chauffeured to the match by Tom Williams, while others of the usual Travellers' Tales menagerie hopped on board the St Ives U's coach to the game.
The estimable Mr Williams ensured that those of us travelling by car arrived in good time and without incident, which was more than can be said about finding somewhere to park. With parking for visiting press conspicuous by its absence, it felt as though we spent as long looking for somewhere to leave the car as it did getting to Wolverhampton. In the end, we found some parking close to the ground that had been recommended by the club. Here the attendant told us to be careful when we returned to the car park after the match that we didn't trip over the local lady of the night plying her trade. However, she proved to be equally conspicuous by her absence - presumably she'd heard about BBC cutbacks!
Meanwhile, those on board the St Ives U's coach were enjoying a journey with less sordid potential, with the height of raciness occurring when a big tin of Quality Street was passed round. The coach joined a fleet of others lined up just outside Wolverhampton where they were held for about half an hour, presumably awaiting the stragglers to arrive, before being escorted to the ground by many police vans and motorcycles. The police closed off all junctions joining the road to enable the convoy to pass through, and red lights were ignored as they sped on into town. When they arrived at the coach park and disembarked, the supporters were all marched to the ground.
At The Ground
The Ground: The outside of the ground, with its many statues of former players, looked not unlike a high-class hotel; an impression that was reinforced by a hairdressing salon that was as much part of the frontage as the well-stocked club shop. That impression continued as you pulled open the wolf head shaped door handles, passed through a plush reception area and climbed several flights of stairs to a cavernous press room - all of which was a little bit of a contrast from some (all right, all) of the facilities we're used to at Conference venues.
Those not travelling with the press corps found plenty of turnstiles open, so didn't have to wait long to get in the ground.
Once inside, those of us who had visited Molineux when United last played there spotted one or two changes... and not just because all four sides of the ground were open. Two-tiered cantilever stands curved along either side of the ground, each with a layer of executive-area windows separating the tiers, while vast single-tiered stands loomed large at either end. An illuminated clock that may have been from the rickety old, wooden stand that used to be at the ground was at the top of one of these stands. Each stand stood in isolation and each contained a veritable ocean of old gold seats.
Diagonally opposing corners each had a massive screen that showed random replays of non-controversial action. The size of the screens may have been impressive, but the colour seemed a little off so Wolves shirts looked not so much old gold as David Dickinson suntan orange. Of the remaining corners, one contained assorted silos while, in the other, a steeply sloping grass bank was lined by the edge of the steps from an old terrace.
There were no floodlight pylons, instead a row of lights ran along the stands on either side of the pitch; a not insignificantly sized playing area that was made to look even bigger by the large fields of grass that surrounded its white-lined boundary and the swathe of tarmac beyond that.
Dugouts like Perspex bus shelters were set at the back of vast technical areas. Surprisingly, the one for the Reserve Official contained five seats suggesting that Championship matches expected a high rate of attrition amongst its officials.
The ground was set almost in a hollow and overlooked by a tower block and a church, which contrived to reinforce the overall impression of the whole club being built on an imposing scale.
United Fans: Fantastic, loud support from around 4,000 travelling U's fans throughout the whole game. The ticker-tape welcome was as impressive as it was long lasting. Even in the second half, pieces of it were floating above the heads of those in the press box in the upper tier of the stand opposite.
View from Away End: U's fans were given the entire lower tier of one of the side stands and a block at the end of a stand behind the goal, and the view was pretty good from just about everywhere despite everyone standing for virtually the whole game.
Home Fans: Only heard them after they scored, apart from one or two isolated chants of "South Bank" (although why they were cheering for the former Wearside League club is beyond me). Some threw things at U's fans behind the goal, resulting in a lot of running around by the police and stewards as some U's fans made to discuss it at closer hand with the perpetrators. There were also some ejections for spitting down at the United fans in the lower tier of the side stand.
Police/Stewards: Despite the dire warnings in previous United match programmes and on the tickets themselves about remaining seated, the numerous stewards' repeated efforts to get people to sit down were done in good humour, and they eventually gave up trying. I have never seen so many police for any of our matches in over 30 years of watching United home and away. The travelling supporters were escorted away from the ground in a similar fashion to before the game, with many stationed on bridges above them, and motorcycle outriders going with the coaches as far as Birmingham. Although this made everyone feel very safe on the journey both ways, clearly this protection is very necessary otherwise they wouldn't make such a big operation of it.
Programme: It was something of a struggle for the travelling fans to track down a programme seller. Those that did paid £3 for 68 pages, with plenty to read and a good section on the U's that included an interview with Courtney Pitt.
Food/Drink: The bars in the concourse under the stands were about six deep with people mainly buying beer, so our tasters in the away section found it was impossible to get served as they had only got in the ground 20 minutes before kick off.
State of Toilets: Large, clean facilities coped adequately with our equally large following.
Facts And Figures
Mileage: 230.3 miles
Total Distance for Season: 3,918.9 miles
Mark Johnson, with additional reporting by David Gray, Paul Johnson, Ryan Johnson and Gordon McMillan
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