By Nathan Jackson
December 26 2010

Rotherham United's Millmoor was a ground I only got to visit twice, but enjoyed both of my visits. They moved out (not by their choice) in 2008 and ended up at the Don Valley Stadium. Please note that due to losing the original pictures, I'm having to use the small version that were on the old Ground Guide.

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With City being eliminated in the FA 1st Round (again), it gave me a chance to get in a random game on the day the 2nd Round was due to take place. Luckily there was a good choice of places to go as there were 5 or 6 local teams all playing at home and although my initial choice was Hull vs Southampton, my friend Ian talked me into going to Rotherham vs Yeovil.

Getting to Rotherham was surprisingly easy and quick, with it taking very little time relatively and finding the ground and subsequent parking was also fairly easy. It didn't take long to realise that everyone had a strong Yorkshire accent, missing out half the words in their sentences and that lead to several highly amusing conversations later on in the day.

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We decided to wander around the area for a while as we had gotten there relatively early. There was a bar at the ground but other than that there didn't seem to be a lot else around within the local area.

Once in the ground, I was soon hit with a sense of feeling like I was back in the 90s but the ground was better than I had expected. The one thing I was disappointed with though was that the pictures on Rotherham's official website lead me to believe that the new stand was complete, getting there however soon made me realise it wasn't even half finished yet and the leg room left a LOT of be desired. When Rotherham were forced to relocate in 2008, the stand was left unfinished.

The view from this stand wasn't the best from the seats we had acquired. We were four rows down and it didn't offer a great view of the action at the other end of the ground, although it did give a decent view of the action in front of the Tivoli Stand.

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The Tivoli Stand was just to our left and it reminded me a lot of the away end at Grimsby but without the roof that mean't you couldn't see the other end of the pitch. The atmosphere from the Rotherham fans came from this end of the ground and was so decent that on our first visit, it inspired Delroy Facey to score twice (not a misprint)

Opposite the main stand was a stand that was divided into 3 different sections and certainly lacked consistency but it was a refreshing change to see something like that in football. The final third towards the away ends didn't appear to be used, so I'm guessing it was given to away fans whenever the numbers justified it.

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For the second visit we went into the final stand, the away end behind the goal. To reach it you had to journey down a very thin slopping alley, which I'd imagine in a more intense local derby could prove quite dangerous. Luckily Rotherham vs Lincoln may be a derby in terms of distance, but in terms of actual rivallry it's not that bad, I never had any trouble either here or at the Don Valley.

The view from inside this stand was pretty poor to be honest. Typical of behind-the-goal stands, you got an excellent view of the goal near to you but you couldn't really see what was happening at the other end of the stadium. We were heavily relying on the reactions of the Rotherham fans to realise if there had been a goal or not.

The game started and the atmosphere was fairly impressive, especially when Rotherham established a quick 2-0 lead, it went quiet however when Yeovil pulled it back to 2-2 before Rotherham scored the winner on the stroke of half time. There were one or two original chants that I haven't seen before and it was a relief not to see the Rotherham fans do the "easy" chant that was doing the rounds at the time.

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Overall, I highly enjoyed my day at Rotherham and had the ground have stayed around, I would have definitely made the journey again,possibly even for a random game (well, another random game).

Rotherham United's Millmoor

Discussion started by theimps.ka (IP Logged), 26/12/2010 00:57

theimps.ka
26/12/2010 00:57

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