Today I'm going back 33 years to 1989 and York City's visit to Glanford Park, home of "The Iron" Scunthorpe United for a Fourth Division fixture.
I always say that football takes you to parts of the country that you'd otherwise have no reason ever to visit in your life. Scunthorpe is one such place. An industrial town and a steel town. Thoroughly depressing. Home to Scunthorpe United who had recently relocated from their old ground, the aptly named Old Show Ground to a brand new facility on the outskirts of town. Change was needed and, as a result of the cost of the upgrade required for the Old Show Ground following the 1985 Bradford City fire disaster being unaffordable, the club elected to sell their prime town centre site to a supermarket and use the proceeds to build a new stadium. Back in 1988, a club building a new home was something of a rarity and, as a fully fledged member of the "92 Club", a club for those who have visited every stadium in the top four levels of English football, I needed to visit Scunthorpe's new stadium in order to recomplete the set. The featured game was both mine and York City's first ever visit to Glanford Park.
The stadium itself was something of a disappointment. Whereas the Old Show Ground was remarkable for having the very first example of a cantilevered stand anywhere in the UK, Glanford Park's design resembled that of a shoe box. Functional granted, but it was never going to win any design awards. Subsequent new builds elsewhere in the country have demonstrated what could be done with a little bit more imagination and, thirty years on, the club are preparing to upgrade Glanford Park by replacing each stand in turn. Whether the work actually proceeds is debatable since, today, United can be found in the relegation positions at the foot of League 2 and are in distinct danger of falling through the trap door at the bottom of the Football League and into non-league oblivion. If that happens, budgets would need to be cut and I would question whether stadium investment would be a priority any longer.
A little like the town itself, Scunthorpe have never been what you might call a fashionable football club. That said, in recent years they have been relatively successful on the football field and indeed spent an unprecedented four seasons in the Championship (the second tier of English football) during the period 2006-11. Scunthorpe are probably most famous for producing players who would one day play for England. These included Kevin Keegan and Ray Clemence but you can also add England cricket captain Ian Botham to that list! Yes, Botham played 11 games for the Iron and I can remember him warming the bench for Scunthorpe in one away match at Bootham Crescent in 1980.
Scunthorpe won the featured match, played in front of 4,196, 4-2 with goals from Kevan Smith (own goal), Tony Brown and two from Tony Daws. It was clearly a day for Tony's as Tony Canham got two for York in reply. York finished the season in 11th place but Scunthorpe had a better time of it and, indeed, missed automatic promotion by a single point, finishing fourth and having to settle instead for the Play-Offs where they lost comprehensively 5-1 to Wrexham in the Play-Off Semi-Final.
CRB Match No. 594
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