Stadium Expansion

Thanks for that. A lot I'd seen but some were new (to me).

There seems to be very few pictures of the curent Rookery stand being built. I have a couple that I found online plus there's a few vids on youtube of games during the time it was being constructed, but otherwise not a lot seems to exist. I guess most people aren't that interested. It annoys me that I wasn't interested either when it was actually built; only as I've gotten older has the history of the place become more interesting to me.

 

As mentioned above - for those remotely interested, the few pics I have of the current Rookery being built. Poor quality as either zoomed in from bigger pictures/screen grabs from youtube, or both:

 

Personally I think we should think about going back to a three-sided ground:

 

Walker? Williams?

 

Thick?

 

Walker was Ron Walker, I think. Can't remember Williams, though there may have been a Derek Williams, a goalkeeper.

 

thanks

 

Yes although I wonder if the Pearce is John Pearce who made one sub appearance, lots of names (9) in the S.E. Counties list of which we have had players of that name since and before!

 

Returning to the "very interesting" theme of the latest update of the current pitch condition - this picture was taken on Tuesday and posted publicly on google Maps by user Daryl Morrissey.

To my untrained eye, looks in great condition already. I wonder if the Bet138 advertisements in the SEJ will be replaced by FxPro before the season starts?

 

They are still sponsors aren't they?

 

Yeah, but wasn't it announced that the deal with FxPro was the biggest in the clubs history? I was assuming that they'd want their name on the part of the stadium that the TV cameras pick up very clearly, especially considering the first match is live on Sky. I guess it depends on what is in the contract though.

 

you've got to admire the work of the current ground team

 

Definitely - when you consider what happened to the pitch half way through the 15/16 season with the previous crew, plus how good all the training pitches are as well now. With the premier league being awash with cash, I hope Watford pay Scott Tingley and his staff what they deserve plus a bit more.

 

Is it just my eyes or isn't that a family of ducks at ten o'clock?

 

Pigeons mate. And I think you'll find that's not 10 o'clock...it's elevensies

 

Would like this 20 times if I could.

 

Thanks for this Stevo.
I remember checking half times from the alphabet system, presumably before a decent tannoy system (that's never changed).

And interesting that a scorer from SECounties game is Brownsell.
Alan Brownsell was a school mate and a very good footballer and I wrote to Ken Furphy (without Alan's knowledge) saying he was the next Peter Osgood and could he have a trial.
He played a few games and scored a couple but didn't go further. Lost touch after school.
Not a lot of people know that

Those were the days when I used to think if I won the pools I would donate it to the club to buy a new player.
Oh the naivety of yoof, but shows the lifelong passion for my family club when many schoolmates and my own bro supported the Chelsea' s and Spurs and Arse of this world.

 

P

Pitch looks great and the picture really shows the differing angle of the seats in the sej to account for the rising pitch

 

Agree. Yet having sat at both ends of the stand and walked back and forth to the centre bit multiple times, I still didn't notice the subtle angles changes when right in front of them until Scummybear explained on here what they'd done to negate the slope. I suppose a decline of approx 2 meters spread across 105m is quite subtle, especially when right up close (my excuse anyway!)

 

The Slope hasn't been 2 metres for many years ... From memory it was down to 66cm and that was before the last major overhaul.

 

Did you really need to pick a program that showed the Muff pipping us for the Title?

 

Ahh ok. Honestly didn't know what it was. I guessed approx 2m from looking at this pic I had, taken (not by me) from the Vic Road end of the lower GT - it looked much more than a metre but thinking about it logically, the obscured pitch surface on the other side is lower than the top of the advertising board.

 

Well you'll be pleased to see the final table from that season.
Not only did we secure our first ever Football league title.. we did it at the expensive of not only the Cherries but also piping that lot from up the motorway

 

Does anyone know what's going on behind the GT stand out on the car park and corporate entrance. They've boarded up the whole car park.

 

They had plans approved some time ago to significantly extend the corporate entrance. That included building on a portion of the car park. I presume it's that?

Link:
http://pa.watford.gov.uk/publicaccess/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=summary&keyVal=O3NQ53QWGF800

 

Did you drive all the diggers on all occasions?

 

Not only that, but we did the double over Muff aswell.

 

No but maybe Scott Duxbury did as he's the one who told us .... thinking about it, he may have said eighty something centimetres not sixty six but still nowhere near the 2m of old.

 

According to this article i found http://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/sport/9646590.Pitch_will_be_relaid_even_if_Saracens_stay/ the slope at the time Saracens were set to leave the Vic in 2012 was one meter. The planned relaying of the surface was set to reduce that further.. "marginally" according to the article.
So 80 something cm's, as Godfather stated in his last post, sounds about right.. and as he stated before it has been gradually reduced over the years to, i think, about half of what it once was.

They say the sticking point for any further leveling is how it will affect the end stands and i quote.. "Glyn Evans, Watford's operations director, said: “The ground will not be leveled because it would involve significant structural alterations regarding the sighting for supporters in the Rookery and Vicarage Road stands”
I guess by that they mean the relative heights of seating to pitch level. For that reason i dont believe the pitch has been significantly changed since the end stands were built.. unless rows of seating have been altered, taken away or added to. As such i would think that more was done prior to re-development.

PS As an aside it's worth noting that modern day football pitch are not constructed to be flat. Because they are a majority sand rootzone they are purposefully cambered to aid drainage. Ive found varying ideas on how much that should be but i seem to recall the last pitch i worked on was supposedly 25 cm's higher in the middle than the sides. I tested that out once by laying as flat as i could to the ground and sure enough you couldnt see the touchline on the other side.

 

So safe standing may aid us in the case of pitch levelling as the standing side could be raised to level it as our heads will be higher. Just a thought.

 

Yes, me - supporting my home-town team some years before I moved to Herts.

 

'A 2 storey glass extension to the entrance of the Graham Taylor stand to provide a new entrance and reception area at the ground floor and a new chairman's lounge at the 1st floor'

 

Here's a more detailed model

 

Intereting.. http://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/ne...for_business_as_Riverwell_project_progresses/

In the diagram there it looks like they have got rid of all of the older buildings at the hospital and included the area behind the GT as the "Northern Development Zone"


Maybe our last chance to grab sufficient space at Vicarage Road. Build a 10K plus stand on that side and add a few more thousand the other side and i reckon that would be job done.

 

Or a complete new stadium directly behind the rookery end???