Harriers made history as one of the first two club sides to play at the rebuilt Wembley Stadium, and THE first club to play at both the old and new versions.

The new home of football is a vast monument of shiny new concrete and glass in one of the most run-down parts of London.  The approach to the stadium from the Midlands and North-West via the M40 and A40 begins further back these days; previously the first glimpse of the famous Twin Towers came upon leaving the A40 and joining the North Circular at Hangar Lane, now the giant arch can be seen from several miles away.

The frontage to the stadium is now an edifice of glass, with an impressive statue of Bobby Moore gazing down Imperial Way towards Wembley Park tube station.  It doesn’t have the aura of the old place, yet, but give it a few years and a few classic matches and it will soon become the Venue Of Legends again.  For what it’s worth, I like the arch and all the glass.  I’ll bet that in 1923 the old place was just as controversial.

It’s on the inside that it’s most impressive.  The concourse is wide and bright with plenty of refreshment outlets; there are more toilets than in any other building in the world.  Step through from the concourse into the arena and your breath is taken away.  The greyhound track is gone, gone also are the rows of poor seats bolted onto crumbling terrace and instead is a vast bowl, a sea of red, made up of seats with more legroom than you can shake a stick at.  There are now three levels of seating, but every seat has an unimpaired view of the action, and with the track gone the crowd is much closer to the action.  Despite the size of the stadium, it has a very intimate feel.

A few statistics: the arch is the longest single-span roof structure in the world at 315m and has a diameter wide enough to run a train through; it supports 80% of the weight of the roof (all of the north roof and 60% of the south roof).  The walls and roof of the stadium enclose 4,000,000 cubic metres, which apparently is enough to fit 25,000 double decker buses in.  Every seat has more legroom than the seats in the old Royal box, and some of them can be removed to allow for concerts to be staged in the stadium.  At each end of the stadium is a giant screen, each the size of 600 regular television sets.  The pitch is 4 metres lower than previously and is made up of 2.5 acres of turf in which every square foot contains between 15,000 and 20,000 of grass.

You can see more of my pictures of the day here.

Popularity: 81% [?]

After that dreadful opener things could surely only get better in the next two games away from Aggborough.

Thankfully, the team pulled a performance out of the hat at Burton and battled to earn a point. Saturday’s trip to Northwich was also hardworking and, although not pretty, fully deserving of the three points. So, two away games played, four points in the bag; a considerable improvement on recent seasons.

At Burton I felt that we could have come away with all three points. For a spell in the second half we had them rocking and when the equaliser came I thought Mark Yates should have made a substitution; I would have taken off Luke Reynolds and either Russ Penn (who was knackered) or Dwayne Lee (who had done nothing) and sent on Andy White and Dean Sturridge, switched to 4-4-2 and pressed for a winner. In fact just before we scored it looked like Sturridge was about to get stripped ready to come on but he didn’t. Looks like Yates has picked up a trait of Graham Allner’s; he used to get subs ready and then change his mind if we scored. All that said it was still a good point to get us off and running.

The game at Northwich never really came to life for me and was quite dull, particularly in the first half. When the substitution of Sturridge for Lee was made I thought that we were sure to add to our score as we created chance after chance. Even though we didn’t add to the score and had to hang on a little in the closing stages it was good to see Sturridge is getting sharper the more training and match time he has.

Saturday’s visit of Weymouth should be an interesting contest as they are the early pacesetters with three wins from three games.  As long as we show the same level of application as in the last two games everything should be OK, we don’t need a repeat of opening day to drive the crowds down further.

Popularity: 61% [?]

After the garbage served up at Dagenham at the weekend I have to admit I can’t wait for the season to end.

I’m fed up of making long journeys all over the country only to have my day spoiled by the men-in-red come 3 o’clock. Saturday’s game was another non-entity with the players already apparently already on their holidays; Dagenham weren’t much better but we made them look good, they created a few chances and we let them take them, all three goals were down to poor defending.

There wasn’t one player in the starting line-up who appeared to realise that he was playing for his Harriers career. Then again, maybe they did and just don’t want to be given new contracts for next season. The only player who seemed to realise the importance of the game, or at least his part in it, was Lee Thompson who came on as a sub at the start of the second half. His performance was lively and perhaps, if we hadn’t already been three down, he could have got us back into the match.

Given the performance levels for most of the season, in fact, I wouldn’t be too keen on keeping many of this squad. Having said that, I’m not too keen on the idea of a wholesale clearout and starting over from scratch yet again. It hasn’t worked for the last two seasons and given the level of finance available it probably won’t work again next.

For what it’s worth, these are the ones I’d keep: Danby, Harkness (but not if somebody better can be found), Burgess, Sedgemore (only because he’s on a contract), Reynolds, Thompson, Penn, Hurren, Mullins. I think that the likes of Blackwood, Fleming, Russell and Sheldon are all more than good enough but don’t show it often enough and we need players who can perform on a regular basis to the neccessary standard. I’d like to see some of the kids given a chance; Ash Walker, Tom Byrne have already appeared but to them you can add Mitch Butler and Scott Eaton. In my opinion it would be best to have a squad of 16 quality players and make up the rest with the kids.

Popularity: 50% [?]

Literally!! The smell from the river as you stand at the bottom end of the ground at Canvey is disgraceful, and it wasn’t helped much by the Harriers performance on the pitch.

What seems like an eternity ago I wrote that we were getting harder to beat. Seems like I spoke too soon; in the eleven games since then we’ve won two and lost five. Friday’s game at Canvey summed us up pretty well: slow to start; sloppy defending gifting goals away and then deciding too late that perhaps playing wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

Far too often this season that has been the case and there are far too few positives to be drawn from games such as these. Positives from the game at Canvey were the performances of Luke Reynolds, Ashley Walker and Tom Byrne. It’s taken ages for Mark Yates to take an interest in the current youth squad and he’s rarely to be seen at their games but at least he has now taken the plunge and given them their chance, even if it was only because he couldn’t send out a full team thanks to the stupidity of messrs Mullins and Blackwood at York.

I thought Ashley looked a little nervous on his debut, he did little wrong and will benefit from a one or two more games but Tom played well despite his lack of height which I have always thought would keep him from making it into the team. There was one amusing moment when he tried his usual trickery to take on Stuart Bimson; when he does it in the youth team he leaves the defender for dead but Bimson is older and wiser – an considerably bigger – than the players he comes up against in the Floodlit League, Bimson stood still and little Tom bounced off him and ended up in a heap on the floor. Tom had the last laugh, however, setting up Reynolds’ goal.

Popularity: 43% [?]

I think I was the only person who, on setting out for Halifax, was prepared to settle for a win and nothing less; everybody else said that they would be happy with a draw.

Coming home after a dull 0-0 I was still disappointed that we didn’t take all three points but a clean sheet away from home can’t be argued with.  One thing that mark Yates seems to have instilled in the team is a steeliness that makes us hard to break down and beat; even in the games that we have lost since he took over, against Grays and Carlisle, it has taken late, late, goals to beat  us.

So, we are now four games unbeaten in the Conference which seems like our best run of results for ages but is, in fact, not even our best sequence of the season.  That actually happened in August and September when three draws and two wins gave us a five-game run.

It was good to go back to The Shay, if only to see whether or not they had finished the redevelopments.  They hadn’t.  The only improvement I could see was that a pile of empty cardboard boxes at the top of the unfinished stand had been removed after sitting there for a couple of years.  Despite the unfinished main stand The Shay is still an impressive stadium with what must be two of the biggest terraces still in use anywhere in the country.

Popularity: 37% [?]