Home is where the (footballing) heart is. What what if it's a brand new home?

01/29/2025 05:18 AM

I may need my bulletproof vest and tin hat for this one. Some have tackled the thorny subject of stadium improvements and/or a new stadium and not lived to tell the tale.

But to start with, let’s take a look back. City have had other home grounds – two to be precise – but stayed at neither for very long.

So a little history lesson is first on the agenda. I’ll not lie, most of it has been researched from Wikipedia. I’ve just used snippets but for those who are interested, there’s a lot more to read.

Newmarket Road

City played there from the club’s founding in 1902 to 1908, with a record attendance of 10,366 in a match against Sheffield Wednesday in a second-round FA Cup tie in 1908. It was only a six-year stay due to a dispute over the conditions of the stadium’s rental.

The Nest

As most of us know by now, it was built within a disused quarry on Rosary Road, giving it a similar appearance to Charlton Athletic’s The Valley back in the day. Following the adoption of the club’s nickname, the ground was appropriately named.

Its most noticeable feature was the large concrete wall at one end of the ground, which had a supported capacity of 3000 and a cliff on which supporters would watch the matches.

The Nest was gradually improved over the years, with the playing surface re-laid and extra terracing added. When City were elected to the Football League in 1920, crowds of between 12,000 and 14,000 were commonplace.

Further developments in the 1930s, including an extension to what was known as “the chicken run” opposite the Main Stand, saw the capacity rise still further and, on 16 February 1935, 25,037 supporters crammed into the ground to watch City lose 1–0 to Sheffield Wednesday in the fifth round of the FA Cup.

Apparently, ‘motorcycle football’ was also held there during the 1930s. Matches were played over two thirty-five-minute halves, which must have done wonders for the pitch!

Unsurprisingly, when a safety certificate was required in 1935, it wasn’t forthcoming. So an alternative had to be found (or built).

Carrow Road 

When it was built in 1935, it was reportedly described by club officials as, “The largest construction job in the city since the building of Norwich Castle”. It was miraculously built in just 82 days.

Floodlights were added to the ground in 1956, with the £9,000 cost nearly sending the club into bankruptcy. However, the 1959 FA Cup run (when, as a Third Division club, they reached the semi-final, losing to First Division Luton Town after a replay) secured the financial status of the club and provided sufficient funds for a roof to be built over the South Stand.

In 1963, the record attendance was set when a crowd of 43,984 watched a sixth-round FA Cup match against Leicester City.

***

So, with that potted history of all three grounds out of the way, it’s to the future that we now look, with new majority shareholders looking to maximise the club’s income.

Unlike the illustrious clubs in Manchester, London and Liverpool, our history doesn’t afford us a worldwide fan base so, as a result, finances are invariably limited. Yes, we have pockets of fans abroad, mainly of ex-Norfolk folk who have emigrated to other parts of the world and who still follow the club, but nothing like the numbers of the “big six”.

To put it in perspective, those so-called bigger clubs go on summer tours and have thousands cheering them on whereas City's summer tour is usually to Europe with only a few hundred die-hard travelling heroes supporting them.

We are, therefore, financially, in a different ball park.

But the first thing to say is that City need a stadium fit for the 21st century with all the facilities that go with it. It has to become a facility that’s used for non-football-related activities, just like those of the top clubs.

One or two concerts during the summer is a great start but the bigger concerts are held at grounds with 40k-plus capacities. But, as I said, it is a start.

Other stadiums in the country have been extended during a season so as not to lose revenue; a prime recent example is Anfield. It wasn’t an easy process but firstly they purchased, with the local council’s help under a compulsory purchase order, the homes closest to the ground and then built over the existing stand.

In the second stage of that process, those extra seats were used to move supporters from other areas of the ground so that the Anfield Road Stand could be upgraded, and this carried on until they reached a ground capacity of 60k.

In the past, here we were informed that a rebuild was being looked at for the City Stand at a cost of £20m plus, and were then informed that a parcel of land that could help in building a new stand was purchased. Some studies were undertaken to find a solution and to look at its financing.

But nothing has ever materialised.

The much-maligned Robert Chase missed the opportunity to increase capacity when the old City Stand burnt down.

I wonder if part of his long-term plan was to move the club out of the city centre and to the outskirts, perhaps near Colney, and finance the new stadium by the building of homes or multi-story office blocks on the Carrow Road site.

It was rumoured that Chase had a model of the possible new stadium on his office desk.

But, back to today… could we see the Norfolk Group model their next move on that of their compatriots (Fenway Group) in Liverpool? Maybe an Anfield-type project will be the way forward?  

Anyway, I’ll leave with my hope that we see significant ground improvements and an increased capacity at Carrow Road in the not-so-distant future.

I have many great memories of games at Carrow Road and can see why folk reject the idea of a new stadium, but I suppose when they moved from Newmarket Road and then the Nest, supporters at that time also had their misgivings.

I have great memories from the 1970s of going to the old White Hart Lane and friends who now go to Tottenham games at the new stadium still say they miss the atmosphere and the feel of the old place, but also admit the new one is great – no views are blocked and getting in and out of the stadium is no hassle at all.

So things move on. While an upgrade to our existing ground would be fantastic, if the most viable solution was a move away to a brand new stadium, then so be it.

I’d be happy with that.

How about you?

OTBC