By Kate Jackson
August 3 2013

Without doubt one of the more unique grounds that I have ever visited....and not just because there is a giant wooden man holding up the roof, and that description is quite literal.

Down the years I have visited grounds with many unusual features. There's the cottage at Fulham's Craven Cottage, Alfreton Town's inability to spell "CONCESSIONS" at the Impact Arena and a cow figurine at The National Hockey Stadium (MK Dons before moving to stadium:MK), but very few have ever been as unusual as a giant wooden man. I knew about it before I arrived at the ground so it wasn't a surprise.

Anyway, onto the day itself. Getting down to Dartford isn't actually that tricky, that despite it being the other side of London. This is due to the M25 going right around London and over the river, meaning that you completely miss London, and as soon as your over a massive bridge, you're pretty much there. It is well over 100 miles away but takes under 3 hours. It is the same with it's Kent neighbours Gillingham and Ebbsfleet.

Once you arrive at the ground, which is actually a bit long winded when on a coach due to the narrow gates to get into the car park, you realise just how small this ground is, and what makes it seem even smaller is the the roof is 20 feet above the actual seats/terracing. It would just be ridiculously small if you took the roof off, or lowered it down to be just above the seats, then it would probably be the smallest ground in terms of height in the top five divisions.

But anyway, directly around the ground there doesn't seem to be a lot to do so it's straight into the ground. There is a bar right as you go into the ground so for those that want to, they can go in there and exit at 3pm without having to make a dash for the ground from the pub.

One issue that our fans weren't happy with before the game though was that they had just acquired new sponsors for this bar and they decided to get the official photo taken when we visited. Now, the logic of most sensible people would be to do this before the ground opened, but nope, they chose to do it at 2:30 when the bar was full, and from the reports that the other fans were giving me, the sponsors and club officials demanded that people get out of the bar so they could do this. Unsurprisingly this wasn't a popular "request".

The away end is a small terrace behind one of the goal that could probably hold about 1000 people before you'd start struggling. There is very little actual character to this stand and it is hard to create an atmosphere from this stand because, as I say, the roof is so much higher than the stand that no noise at all would carry.

In terms of view, it's not that great from this end and even though we were at a slight angle, I was was struggling to see what was happening at our end of the pitch, which made the fact that all the goals during the game were scored at that end all the more frustrating. 

The away fans can also have a small section of the seated stand, and I can't put enough emphasis on the word "small". About 20 seats were given to our fans and even then there didn't want to give any of our fans any seats. This seated stand is only three rows high all the way along and makes you wonder what the point actually is of having a stand like that.

Continuing around the ground you get to another terrace that looks almost identical to the one that away fans are in. This stand does also appear to have a bar within it, although due to the distance it was hard to truly guage whether that was definitely the case.

The final stand to the left of away fans is a pitch length terrace that is the same height as the rest of the terracing in the ground. This is the stand where the 25/30 foot wooden man is. I have absolutely no idea whatsoever why it is actually there, but it makes an excellent change from the usual.

Princes Park isn't an awful ground but it is not a football stadium. This is a glorified school sports centre. In a similar way to Nene Park in Irthlingborough (former home of Rushden and Kettering), it really doesn't feel like football should be played here.

Dartford fans were fairly quiet throughout but that could easily be that we were 4-0 up before half time, but even when a come back appeared likely in the second half, it was hard to really hear their fans at all.

I'm not going to lie, I didn't particularly think it was a good ground and although quite tidy and with the unique wooden man, it is one of the poorest grounds I have been to. Taken wooden man out of the equation and it is quite frankly the dullest ground I think I have ever been to.....and I've been to Chester.

Dartford's Princes Park

Discussion started by theimps.ka (IP Logged), 03/08/2013 20:41

theimps.ka
03/08/2013 20:41

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