Lincoln City
Birmingham City's St Andrews
By Kate Jackson
December 26 2008
Birmingham City's St Andrew's Gorund is one that has certainly benefited from rich benefactors. A neat ground with only one old style stand, the Blues have a somewhat unique way of greeting away fans from far down the divisions. It's certainly a ground worthy of higher-League football.
APOLOGIES ABOUT THE QUALITY OF THE PICTURES, THEY WERE TAKEN ON A CAMERA WITH A CRACKED LENS
DATES VISITED GROUND | ||
DATE | MATCH WATCHED | SCORE |
21/09/2004 | Birmingham City vs Lincoln City (League Cup) | BC 3 LC 1 |
Who’d have thought Lincoln would ever been playing at a decent Premier League (at the time) ground?? City had beaten Derby in the Carling Cup and I was watching the draw the next night. Lower league teams had already been drawn to either be away or home, that’s all we knew at that point. So they eventually came to Lincoln, “LincolnCity will be away” and they took a ball out of the bag/pot and said “And they will play Birmingham City”. All of a sudden, my mobile phone was ringing mentally, emails kept flooding in and all message boards went absolutely mental.
Having only started watching the Imps on a regular basis in 2000/1, this was the first time we had been drawn against a Premier League side in any competition, so I was very excited.
So the next month was mental with complete and total excitement taking over the majority of Lincoln fans. Eventually the night came but the coaches didn’t leave until an hour after they were supposed to and as a result, we didn’t arrive to the ground until 15 minutes before kick off. So I didn’t really have the chance to do what I like to do and get a good, decent feel for the ground before the game.
The stand Lincoln fans were in, was shared with the home fans and funnily enough, we took more to Birmingham in this game that didn’t really matter than Premiership teams like Charlton, Southampton and Portsmouth took there. The away end was massive but if I had been in a decent position, it would have provided a great view of the action but it was hard to get a decent view from the 8th row.
Whilst it didn't offer an awful view down at the bottom of the stand, it was hard to see the action at the other end, which is unfortunately where three of the goals were scored.
The stand to our right was also fairly large and a good quality stand that was well maintained and highly aesthetically pleasing. The stand behind the far goal was a continuation of the side stand and had a good wording style on it (see pictures). The final stand was a bit small and disappointing, it was like one of the stands at Nottingham Forest.
It's a common trend amongst a lot of rebuilt grounds now, develop three sides but keep the fourth side old so that it doesn't turn into a soulless bowl, and it works with this.
Birmingham’s atmosphere wasn’t overly great, they didn’t view the game as important and the crowd was very small for a (then) Premiership side. The one thing that was a bit odd was there were a load of “home boys” near the Lincoln fans and every time something happened in the game, they just came up to the City fans and started acting all “chavishly”.
Rather unsurprisingly, I was pleased with my trip to St Andrews despite of the result. If I get another chance in the future then I will definitely go again. With it not being overly close to Lincoln though, it might be a long time before I can actually do anything like that.
I will definitely visit the ground again, if for nothing more than to get new pictures.
| SCORES | |||
| Ease of getting to the area | 7 | Friendliness of fans (outside ground) | 5 |
| Ease of getting to the ground once in area | 3 | Friendliness of fans (inside grounds) | 3 |
| Transport in local area | 7 | Feeling of safety | 5 |
| Ease of parking | 3 | Atmosphere (noise) | 4 |
| Stuff to do near the ground | 6 | Atmosphere (chant variety) | 2 |
| Club Shop | 7 | Facilities in away end | 4 |
| Away End Quality | 8 | Quality of food | 4 |
| View from Away End | 8 | Stewards | 7 |
| Rest of the Ground | 8 | Quality of games on visits | 4 |
| Programme | 7 | Chances of a non-Lincoln visit | 8 |
| Total (out of 200) | 110 | ||
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21/09/2009 17:34
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