By theimps.tk
May 17 2009

Vale Park is one of the larger venues in the lower Leagues and is the home to Port Vale. In the Burslem area of Stoke On Trent, it suffers due to it's bigger neighbours, but it full of passionate, if somewhat miserable fans. With half a finished stand, a massive club shop and one of the shallowest away ends in the entire UK, it's certainly an interesting ground to visit.

I must admit, without trying to sound disrespectful to Port Vale, that I was quite disappointed by drawing them in the first round of the FA Cup in 2006/7 season but then again, it was a chance to visit a new ground in the country after missing our last game there 5 and a half years earlier. Getting to Burslem (the town the ground is based in for the geographically challenged amongst you) was a lot easier than I'd expected and there are plenty of places to park around the ground, it's just a pity that there is virtually nothing worth doing anywhere near the ground though, Burslem is a drab little area.

I had the chance to have a proper look around the stadium before our visit in 2008/9 and despite being a fairly large city, I wasn't expecting it would be as long of a walk as it was to get to something worth while....and even then I was struggling to find more than the occasional betting shop and/or pub.

THE BIG AM STAND 

The club shop at Vale Park is huge and one of the biggest never to feature in the Premiership, it sells all kinds of random stuff in there such as slippers, cricket bats, pool cues and even bowls. However, finding the away end is slightly tricky if you don't notice the signs because the length of the away end which is the stand nearest to the road you approach on, is quite a fair distance.

There's also that ever lovely feature to some lower-league grounds, a hut for buying tickets before going into the turnstile......you can always tell a club has too much money when they hire four people to do a job that one person could do.

The ground is slightly inconsistent, mainly due to only half of the main stand being finished. This Lorne Street Stand is to the right of the away fans and has 3 tiers of seating, however the top 2 are obviously just for executives as they are really too small to be general seating areas. It occured to me during one visit that they could easily just turn the half that isn't finished into a terrace and have the home fans in the stand where away fans are currently housed.

Next to that (to the away fans left as they look out) is a stand that reminds me of Craven Cottage and then it's round to the final stand, another 2 tiered effort. The away end itself is single tier and although not a bad stand, is far too shallow to get a good view of the action.



Overall, the ground is good by lower league standards but still doesn't feel like a footballing ground and the atmosphere is pretty poor from my visits. At first I thought this was because of the FA Cup but the atmosphere continued to be generally poor in all subsequent visits. Even at later visits when they had introduced songs that you can chant to after goals are scored, they still didn't create much of an atmosphere.

I wouldn't be against going to Vale Park again but I'd say the chances of going to this for a random game are generally unlikely.

Despite having a lot of fickle fans (based on sitting amongst them at one game), I found the Vale fans to be quite friendly on my visits and there's a friendly atmosphere around the place. It seems like a fairly safe place to go, although the policing and stewarding was a bit over the top.

THE PHONES4U STAND - THE AWAY END

Port Vale's Vale Park

Discussion started by theimps.tk (IP Logged), 17/05/2009 23:33

theimps.tk
17/05/2009 23:33

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