Bloomfield Road  - Blackpool
Saturday 13th April 2002
V Bristol City, Division 2 3pm
By Sam Allward

I was looking forward to this match against Blackpool. I always look forward to City away matches as the atmosphere is brilliant because in my opinion we have got the best fans in the division. It was also the second from last game of the season, and Bristol City (the team I support) were just two points outside the play-offs. A win from this game and then the following week against Stoke and we would almost definitely be in the play-offs. However, if we lost, we were definitely out of them.

On the way up to Blackpool we stopped for an early lunch at a KFC in a service station. This bloke who was serving me, said to me, "what do you reckon the score will be today then mate?" He knew I was a City fan as I was wearing my Bristol City shirt. I said 2-0 to City, he started laughing. Then he said, "I've put a tenner on Blackpool to win 6-0". I said to him "you must be having a laugh mate" and walked off with my chicken popcorn and chips.

After enjoying my lunch, we arrived in Blackpool at about 1 o'clock, way earlier than expected. As we arrived so early, it didn't take us long to find somewhere to park, as all the spaces everywhere were free. We ended up parking right next to the ground in the car park outside it. We went and had a look round the ground (the home end looked alright from the outside, the rest all looked really old and as if it could fall ppart at any moment!), in the club shop etc, and the home fans were pretty friendly. I can't imagine any City fans taking too kindly to a bunch of away fans walking around our club shop and laughing at everything in there, but the Blackpool fans didn't seem to mind!

I think it was about quarter to two when we decided we'd try and get into the ground. It took us about an extra quarter of an hour to find where you went in though, as the turnstiles were around the corner and then behind a multi story car park so you couldn't actually see them. We only realised they were there when we saw a large queue of City fans waiting to get into the ground.

The stand we were in was along the side of the pitch, and it definitely looked better than the empty one behind the goal, which looked rather odd (and very old!). The opposite stand and the other home stand looked good, even if all the seats were in a horrible bright orange! Once inside the ground, we chose to stand right at the front of the terracing, so we'd get a perfect view of the action.

 

The atmosphere before the match in our end was fantastic (as you'd expect from over 2,000 fans who had travelled all the way from Bristol up to Blackpool), but the Blackpool fans didn't seem to sing at all though. Then the teams came out. A roar of anticipation came out from both sets of fans. The match kicked off and the party atmosphere continued in the City end. However, 2 minutes later, and we were 1-0 down. That didn't dampen our spirits though. We were all still singing, but then we went 2-0 down 5 minutes after their last goal! This silenced the City fans and we stood in silence until half time, by which time we were 4-0 down! When the teams came out for the second half, the fans came alive again, but only for a little while, as just after the restart, City conceded their fifth goal. City fans though, now given up all hope of winning, carried on singing, only now it was songs like "always look on the bright side of life" and "we might as well go home", all in good spirit though. 

With about 20 minutes to go, Tony Thorpe scored, but by now no-one cared, so he just got a round of applause instead of all the City fans jumping up and down as would usually happen. The match finished 5-1, and after the match I can remember there was a pitch invasion by all the Blackpool fans (because it was their last home game of the season), and about 100 of them ran over to our end and started taunting our fans. This wasn't a clever thing to do considering that we had just been beaten 5-1. Some of our fans tried getting onto the pitch themselves, but thankfully, the match had a high police presence and no City fans could get past them and onto the pitch. When all the high spirits had died down, we left the ground, and ran to our car (not because of the trouble, but to avoid the traffic), so we got out of the car park extremely quickly.

Overall, I would say it was a bad day out, but only because of the result. Had we of one I'm sure it would have been fine and the 4 hour trip home wouldn't have seemed as long. However, I still don't reckon I'll be going back there for a while, at least not until they finish redeveloping the ground, it bloody killed my legs standing up all game! The only thing that could have possibly made it worse would have been if we lost 6-0, that bloke from KFC would have won tons of money!

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