football grounds now defunct

[BoleynBadges]

GROUND: Sandy Lane, Mitcham, Surrey

RECORD ATTENDANCE: 17,500 v QPR (FA Cup) 08/12/1956

When Tooting and Mitcham United left Sandy Lane for their new Imperial Fields ground in Bishopsford Road they abandoned the last large scale venue left in the London area. Sandy Lane was built in 1932 with all the austentation of that era. The huge grandstand, built in 1958, stretched along the majority of the near side of the ground and replaced the original gable roofed wooden stand, itself extended in 1932. The rest of the ground had large sections of terrace. The clubhouse was behind the stand and showed many fading photos of Tooting and Mitcham’s glory years when great cup runs and five figure crowds were not unusual at Sandy Lane. However, with the 2,000 capacity grandstand having wooden bench seating rather than the more politically correct plastic tip-up seats, Sandy Lane was becoming something of an albatross around the club’s neck. It was a terrible shame that this leviathan of a ground had no place in the modern game. If you never visited Sandy Lane, you missed out on an integral part of British football history.














there new home knk stadium







i know which one i prefer

[BoleynBadges]

today we travel to ukraine and the FC Stroitel Pripyat




was a Ukrainian football club from Pripyat, Kiev Oblast. Founded in the 1970s, its home ground was the Avanhard Stadium.

The abandoned Avanhard Stadium, was due to be the new home ground of FC Stroitel #Pripyat but the Chernobyl nuclear disaster meant no matches were ever played there.

Pripyat’s football stadium was named the Avanhard Stadium after the Ukrainian sports society trade union, and was home to the football club FC Stroitel Pripyat before the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986. The stadium also had an athletics track which looped round the outside of the football pitch.

One of the most poignant ruins of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the local football team's stadium has been quickly reclaimed by nature.


Walking through the vast Exclusion Zone surrounding the stricken Reactor Number 4 in Chernobyl is a sombre experience. Entire villages and towns have gradually begun to disappear and be reclaimed by nature. There are some 90 towns inside the Zone, but the most iconic and well known is the worker’s city of Pripyat. Opened in 1970, it existed for just 16 years before being abandoned to a nuclear fallout a hundred times more lethal than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Pripyat was a youthful city; nuclear power was at the forefront of modern technology, and the average age of the 50,000 or so who lived in Pripyat was around just 26 years old. The city was built to be one of the most modern in the former Soviet Union, and geared to youth. It had nightclubs, sports centres, swimming pools, bars, and romantic cafes overlooking a lake. It also had a football team, the FC Stroitel Pripyat.

Like many soccer teams throughout the USSR, the team was formed out of a group of workers, “stroitel” meaning “builder” in Russian. They were founded soon after Pripyat was completed, playing in the fifth tier of the Soviet football league pyramid, as well as competing in regional competitions.

FC Stroitel, playing in the shadow of the newborn nuclear reactors, in white shirts with blue shorts and red stockings, had their best season in 1985, finishing second and looking good for promotion to the higher reaches of the Soviet league system. Their home ground was called the Avanhard Stadium, capacity 5,000, located a few hundred yards from the now iconic empty amusement park on Sportyna Street.

Walking through this silent city of ruins, past the crumbling apartment blocks, shopping precincts, and abandoned hospitals and schools is a haunting experience. But there is something especially poignant about seeing the places built for leisure and entertainment falling apart. Approaching the old stadium, you pass rusted floodlight towers, some toppled over, and into a perfect rectangle of tall trees, surrounding by a concrete moat. It takes a while to recognize that you are looking at the football pitch, surrounded by a running track. Not many places in Chernobyl show the startling reclamation of nature as much the height of the trees on the football field, which have sprung to over 30 feet in just as many years.

On the far side of the old pitch are the remains of the main stand. You can still see the tunnel where the teams would have left the home and away dressing rooms to enter the pitch. Rows of rotting wooden benches line the concrete stand, leading up to the ruins of the covered press box.

Midfield Magazine reported how on April 26, 1986, FC Stroitel Pripyat’s opponents for the upcoming weekend’s fixture, the magnificently Soviet named, FC Mashinostroitel, were preparing to leave for Pripyat. The sharp end of the season was approaching, and the two sides were scheduled to play in the semi-final of the Kiev Regional Cup. A helicopter landed on FC Mashinostroitel’s training field, and a fraught looking official informed them, “lads, go home, you’re not going to Pripyat tomorrow.” The cataclysmic events unfolding at Chernobyl meant no football team would ever play there again.

[BM Jon]

Thanks Steve.

How deep were those baths?

[BoleynBadges]

Thanks Steve.

How deep were those baths?

lol never noticed that perhapes they was for the lazy buggers that never put a shift in

[eastcoastclaret]

Interesting stuff. It’s amazing how nature takes over. Humans try really hard to build a society and we all try to find our place within it. Trouble is it’s taken for granted and we forget how fast it can all disappear. These pics are 35 years later, who knows what it may look like in say 75 or 100 years...


What with lockdown and wanting something to pass a bit of time I recommend everyone to start at the beginning of this thread and have a recap, it’s great stuff

Cheers BB

[Dwayne Pipes]

I’d imagine that’s how the shit bowl would have looked now had we not taken it.

[BoleynBadges]

I’d imagine that’s how the shit bowl would have looked now had we not taken it.

lol that is what i was thinking

[BoleynBadges]

Interesting stuff. It’s amazing how nature takes over. Humans try really hard to build a society and we all try to find our place within it. Trouble is it’s taken for granted and we forget how fast it can all disappear. These pics are 35 years later, who knows what it may look like in say 75 or 100 years...


What with lockdown and wanting something to pass a bit of time I recommend everyone to start at the beginning of this thread and have a recap, it’s great stuff

Cheers BB

hard to imagine i really could not get my head around it that it was the same ground i watch a guy on youtube harold balder well worth a watch he went to some of these places hit by radeation not good mate

[BoleynBadges]

another one i found of ayresome park

[BoleynBadges]

Old Showground Scunthorpe




sadly never got to do this or the new ground