By Kate Jackson
October 15 2011

Alfreton's Impact Arena is just the other side of the M1 for Lincoln fans but despite being relatively close, it is very awkward to get to and you're greeted by, and not holding back, a shockingly poor ground. It's not a ground I look forward to ever visiting again.

Alfreton had always been a ground which never looked particularly good in the pictures of it and despite being a short distance away I wasn't particularly looking forward to going here.

It's just over 40 miles away from Lincoln and although it takes less than an hour, there are some very awkward roads. There's 13 miles from Newark to the Mansfield area of just one lane and it bends so much that if you get stuck behind something like a tractor, you're screwed, and even at the end of those 13 miles if a roundabout where you can't even overtake.

When it does eventually get to a point where you can overtake, you're greeted by merging lane country, which causes a bit of a headache to say the last. Once inside Alfreton finding the ground isn't overly difficult, but the address of the ground takes you around to the home end, they don't let you through and therefore you've got a nice walk around the streets of Alfreton to get to the away end.

Whilst walking around to the away turnstiles, I noticed a small hill where you can view into the entire ground without restriction. I was tempted to stay here for the entire game but it's lucky I didn't as I noticed several young people getting chucked off it during the game.

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I have to say it, the town of Alfreton is a bit of a shithole. Specifically around the ground is particular dire and there is precisely sod all to do near the ground from what I was able to tell. Even the walk from where I parked my car to the away turnstiles was about 400 metres and in that time I saw precisely sod all other than houses and corner shops.

So the away turnstiles are in a little bunker, accompanied by two signs that are little about 2 feet from each other and yet spell the same word differently.

Once inside the ground, you realise that the advertised away end is not quite what you had expected. Despite everywhere saying that full stand was allocated to away fans, only 1/3 of it is usually and the large fence, high advertising hoardings and lack of a decent angle makes it virtually impossible to see the goal correctly. The away end stretches around to a small seated section for away fans that also has a large fence blocking the view. I sat in this stand during the FA Cup game but again could barely see anything due to the numerous posts.

The walkway between the two stands is also not available for fans to stand in, but they do not bother telling you this until the game is about to start, meaning anyone stood there would struggle to find a place where you could view the game unrestricted.

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The seated stand that away fans share with the home fans is a very small effort of only about 6 rows high. It doesn't quite cover the whole pitch, probably covering roughly 2/3 of the length of the pitch due to the walkways between stands. I stood in this stand for the game and the view wasn't brilliant due to all the pillars and a large fence, not to mention the supporting floodlight stand.

Around to the other goal is an unusual stand. You don't get many uncovered seating stands in the UK but you do get one at Alfreton. This stand is also the only one at the ground that appears to offer not restrictions with the view.

The final stand is a pitch length stand that is a very unusual style. It's hard to describe how weird this stand in because it doesn't feel like a football stand. It looks almost like a load of holiday huts that you'd get on Skegness beach.

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The atmosphere at Alfreton is very poor and I can't recall them actually singing once during the match and they were exceedingly fickle towards their own team. All you could really hear from them during the match was a constant slagging off of their squad and the only time time they weren't complaining about them was just seconds after they had scored their goal. It quickly returned to moaning as City scored again just minutes later.

Infact, as a whole, their fans are your stereotypical "inferiority complex" fans, who seem to seem to think that beating a side in the same division is a big achievement. The Imps fan, at the time of writing, never lost at Alfreton, but their fans are always full of excuses why they lost the game, and even after other home games that they have lost to other teams, I have never once seen them admit that their opponents were simply the better team, and it all turns into how Alfreton are constantly underdogs.

I must say that Alfreton's programme is also one of the poorest I have ever seen. The graphics in it are very poor and poor pixel quality really makes this look exceedingly amateurish. There's not really a lot of interesting articles in the programme and it is full of adverts.

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Overall I think that Alfreton is one of the stranger away trips in recent years and one of the worst. The ground is shockingly poor, there is zero atmosphere and I actually haven't got a single nice thing to say about the place. The area outside of the away is dangerous due to the amount of crap that they haven't cleaned up in the wooded area, including broken bottles, used condoms and stuff like that.

When you can't even be bothered to spell check the signs you put around the ground then you don't deserve a good review.

Alfreton's Impact Arena

Discussion started by theimps.ka (IP Logged), 15/10/2011 20:42

theimps.ka
15/10/2011 20:42

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