Ends.

[My Name Is Ian]

You don't get "ends" any more, do you? I mean they still exist in name, but football grounds are so identikit that I don't think I've even noticed if some clubs have switched their TV gantry position from one side of a ground to the other. So, which were your favourite ends, then? I quite liked that one at Goodison Park with the church peeking out of the corner.

[EIM]

Ends.

The St Mary's Road End.

[Leon Tricker]

Ends.

Down Pompey way it's easy enough to tell the Fratton End from the Milton End. The former looks like a stand you'd expect to find in a football ground; the latter like an outbuilding you'd find on a farm.

[ursus arctos]

Ends.

The corner with the Cottage at Fulham.

Though it is worth noting that this week's Italy/England game appears to have been the Eureka moment for some football journalists when it comes to the fact that international fixtures (particularly between countries with large home markets) feature two sets of cameras from opposite sides of the pitch each of which has been fitted with a "targeted" set of digital hoardings.

It can indeed be a bit disorienting if one is always used to seeing matches from Wembley at all from one side, only to change location (or stream) and find it the other way round.

[Sean of the Shed]

Ends.

The Holte end at Villa is still pretty distinctive, I'd have thought.

[Borracho]

Ends.

The Jungle.

[caja-dglh]

Ends.

The real loss in the identikit grounds is the corners between the four stands - barren wasteland with a St John's ambulance parked there and a few groundskeepers smoking waiting for half time.

[My Name Is Ian]

Ends.

Chris, is that the old Danebank at your new place? I showed Dotmund photos of your new ground last week, and I'm pretty certain they gave him an erection.

[ursus arctos]

Ends.

For all of their faults, Italian grounds still have very much distinct ends (and distinct areas of each end for those clubs with more than one ultra group). Where people stood on the curvae in Milano were rigidly controlled without the help of any stewards or police. And in grounds like that with two resident clubs, the "home" and "away" ends will be switched depending on which club is at home.

[Giggler]

Ends.

caja-dglh wrote: The real loss in the identikit grounds is the corners between the four stands - barren wasteland with a St John's ambulance parked there and a few groundskeepers smoking waiting for half time.

The Cemetery End (now Decipher Consulting Stand)-South Stand corner at Bury was for decades filled in by the Boys' Stand.

When it was torn down post-Bradford to make way for a new emergency exit, it meant that you could see into the ground from Bury Cemetery. You'd get kids from the nearby estates perching on the cemetery walls to watch the likes of Phil Parkinson and Jamie Hoyland plying their trade and I always fancied watching a game from that vantage point, despite that the perspective of a match fanning out from the corner flag would have been weird after my South Stand upbringing.

[EIM]

Ends.

My Name Is Ian wrote: Chris, is that the old Danebank at your new place? I showed Dotmund photos of your new ground last week, and I'm pretty certain they gave him an erection.

That's the one. The big terrace behind the goal.

[My Name Is Ian]

Ends.

Do they have an opening date yet?

[EIM]

Ends.

Yeah. But it'll change to the one I've said it's going to be all along.

[Bored Of Education]

Ends.

Speak for yourselves. We have a Bath End and a Bristol End.

I'd love to say the Grange End or the Canton Stand but I loved the Bob Bank at Ninian Park. The Canton was full of swearing kids and the Grange End was just mental.

[Crusoe]

Ends.

Latics: the Chaddy End.
Farnborough: the PRE (Prospect Road End).

[tee rex]

Ends.

I remember Bristol Rovers fans at our place chanting "What's it like to have no end." Exeter's choir (mostly soprano) congregated in the Cowshed, along the side. It was the only place with a roof.

Now we've swapped that distinction for another: the biggest End in English football (standing). And where are you, Bristol Rovers, eh? Eh? We take the Tote End just by visiting Aisle 11, frozen foods.

(Edit: Wikipedia says Ikea, not a supermarket. Apologies to Gasheads for not caring enough to know this).

[AMMS]

Ends.

Green Calx wrote: The Jungle.

I was in the 'Jungle' for a cup semi on the day of the Hillsborough disaster, it was a deeply unpleasant experience.

However the old 'Rangers' end at Parkhead was a rights-of-passage for young bluenoses. It was pretty much the only time we were properly out-numbered, sure away to Hearts, Hibs or Aberdeen there were more of 'them' than of 'you' but not so many more that you'd really notice.

But at Parkhead you were genuinely outnumbered. It was an exhilarating experience. What was nice was you gave us a roof whilst letting most of your own support brave the elements. This gave us an acoustic advantage too and so for most of the game we couldn't actually hear the Celtic support, in those days the away support sang all match. Well, nearly all match. If/when Celtic scored it was an unnerving experience. Firstly you'd see the goal, sometimes not clearly, the far end seemed very far away, then you'd see the Celtic support go nuts as we went quiet and cursed out loud, then a second or so later this wall of noise would hit you. It was almost animal like, primeval, filled with menace even though it was clearly joyous. Time seemed to stand still, there was a genuine delay between seeing the goal and hearing it.

Sometimes we won, but not often. Goals for us were celebrated with a vigour not seen elsewhere. Victories sent you down London Road high with joy, hoarse and giddy. Then you reached the Barras and the Gallowgate closed in and suddenly you remembered there were loads more of 'them' than you today and they weren't happy and some of them looked like they'd like to kill you.

Happy days.

[Bored Of Education]

Ends.

That is a brilliant post and I hate Rangers. I do love non-league football and the benign half-time changing of ends and drinking together in the bar but there is a whiff of nostalgia about that sort of experience. Well, until you remember being chased around the streets of Gillingham, Peterborough or some other grim provincial outpost. The last time I experienced that atmosphere was at Ashton Gate, I suppose.

[E10 Rifle]

Ends.

Yeah, great writing there AMMS, even though I too hate Rangers. My only experience of the old Celtic Park is climbing into it on a drunken Sunday afternoon in 1993 with some Celtic mates (no security around or anything - no wonder the club was going down the pan at the time) and running around on the pitch scoring imaginary goals and then gesturing at the various ends.

In general, the decline of "ends", though sad, has, I've noticed led to an increase in all sides of grounds joining in songs. It used to be quite regimented - the behind the goal mob (or, in our and a few others' case, halfway along the side stand) would make all the noise, and the other stands would join in only at moments of high drama. At least now, you can - as well as long periods of bland deadening silence - get outbreaks of noise in all bits of grounds.

[Jobi1]

Ends.

tee rex wrote: I remember Bristol Rovers fans at our place chanting "What's it like to have no end." Exeter's choir (mostly soprano) congregated in the Cowshed, along the side. It was the only place with a roof.

I think Sides might almost merit their own thread here. I remember as a 9-yr old on a trip to Manchester being utterly overwhelmed by the sheer scale and mass of humanity that was the Kippax. A few years later I got to go on the rather scary Longside at Turf Moor when the end part of that was given over to away fans. The East Terrace at Leeds Road was pretty imposing too.

[E10 Rifle]

Ends.

The Longside at Burnley was immense and intense. That league-survival game in 1987 is still one of the two or three loudest crowds I've ever been in (up there with such as England-Holland in 96)

[Geoffrey de Ste. Croix]

Ends.

AMMS wrote:

The Jungle.

I was in the 'Jungle' for a cup semi on the day of the Hillsborough disaster, it was a deeply unpleasant experience.

However the old 'Rangers' end at Parkhead was a rights-of-passage for young bluenoses. It was pretty much the only time we were properly out-numbered, sure away to Hearts, Hibs or Aberdeen there were more of 'them' than of 'you' but not so many more that you'd really notice.

But at Parkhead you were genuinely outnumbered. It was an exhilarating experience. What was nice was you gave us a roof whilst letting most of your own support brave the elements. This gave us an acoustic advantage too and so for most of the game we couldn't actually hear the Celtic support, in those days the away support sang all match. Well, nearly all match. If/when Celtic scored it was an unnerving experience. Firstly you'd see the goal, sometimes not clearly, the far end seemed very far away, then you'd see the Celtic support go nuts as we went quiet and cursed out loud, then a second or so later this wall of noise would hit you. It was almost animal like, primeval, filled with menace even though it was clearly joyous. Time seemed to stand still, there was a genuine delay between seeing the goal and hearing it.

Sometimes we won, but not often. Goals for us were celebrated with a vigour not seen elsewhere. Victories sent you down London Road high with joy, hoarse and giddy. Then you reached the Barras and the Gallowgate closed in and suddenly you remembered there were loads more of 'them' than you today and they weren't happy and some of them looked like they'd like to kill you.

Happy days.

That was smashing.

It reminds me of the old Billy Connolly joke about the importance of knowing how the other side was doing in the days before wifi.

Two Celtic fans swaying in the toilet at half time, or what was passed for a toilet in the Jungle end- a putrid uncovered trench that a WWI soldier would have been horrified by. Both of them are pished and one of them has vomit down the front of his shirt. The other one holding a half eaten pie in one hand gets out his left testicle thinking it’s his penis and starts peeing down his trouser leg. He turns round to his mate and says “Hey Stevie, I wonder how the animals are getting on?”

[The Red Max]

Ends.

Green Calx wrote: The Jungle.

The Jungle was a "side" rather than an "end" though.
I fondly remember Doug Rougvie provocatively doing his warm-up right in front of the natives, while the shrinking violets like Cooper, Simpson, McLeish & Miller chose a nice safe area in the middle of the pitch. Rougvie loved the abuse, and it seemed to inspire heroic performances from him at Parkhead, in excess of what his limited abilities should have been capable.
But perhaps Gordon Strachan was less appreciative of him winding up the locals after one of their number jumped the wall and tried to chin him.

[beak]

Ends.

Pertinent quiz in the Guardian.

I managed 6/10 but might have to go into hiding, having confessed to the Glaswegian colleague who sent me the link that I thought Celtic Park was Ibrox.

[torres]

Ends.

10/10.

Grounds are my thing.

I was in the Rangers end at Celtic Park when Billy Stark scored the winner, at first I assumed the ball had not hit the back of the net as it was so quiet, then a wall of noise nearly knocked me over. I've not encountered this at any other ground.