Middlesbrough 0 Queens Park Rangers 2
Championship
Saturday 2 September 2023
With only ticket availability keeping us away from completing our 92 League grounds, John and I can now choose days out based on pure whim. We hadn’t been here for about ten years so it felt about time to give the pleasures of Teesside another go.
The history
This area might look neglected but is rich in heritage. Three key landmarks – Middlesbrough Dock, Clock Tower and Transporter Bridge – can be seen from the Riverside. Each recalls prosperous Victorian times. The dock facilitated coal exports; before long, Cleveland’s rich ironstone deposits turned the town into a major centre for metal founding and shipbuilding. According to legend the clock has only three faces because Teesside’s oligarchical industrialists didn’t want their employees watching it.
William Cubitt’s new harbour – opened in 1842 – provided superior cargo-handling facilities that allowed vessels to be loaded with coal irrespective of tide conditions. Yards and foundries quickly sprang up up along south Teesside in the years that followed, confirming Middlesbrough’s growing economic importance. Ships would berth here until 1963, when the need for a deeper channel that could handle larger merchant ships saw it superseded by Tees Dock six miles downriver.
Middlesbrough also owed much to railways. They arrived here earlier than most places, following the Stockton & Darlington line’s pioneering success. Commercial Street station opened in 1837, with an ornate Gothic building on the current Bridge Street West site replacing it 40 years later. New docks had necessitated re-routing the Redcar and Saltburn branch further south. This now split Middlesbrough east-west, becoming known as “the Border”.
The northern dockside – bounded by present-day Middlesbrough College and Newport Bridge – soon become overcrowded and disreputable. St Hilda’s had been the original centre of old Middlesbrough, but poor living conditions and a dubious reputation eventually led to extensive post-War slum clearance. The modern flats and houses that replaced its Victorian terraces received equally bad press and were controversially demolished two decades ago.
Many visitors are fascinated by the Transporter Bridge. This angular structure (tall enough to clear passing ships) became part of the main Hartlepool road in 1911. People and vehicles travelled cross-river by steel “gondola”, with the crossing taking just ninety seconds. In 1973 actor Terry Scott, who was appearing locally, accidentally drove his new Jag off one end (which, given that he’d just enraged Billingham residents by likening their town to a Dr Who set, did feel rather like poetic justice).
Middlesbrough FC, meanwhile, had become established in the town’s southern suburbs. They played initially at Albert Park, then Breckon Hill Road, and shared with Middlesbrough Cricket Club from 1879 to 1903. Their new Ayresome Park ground was among open fields next to the Paradise Ground, former home of defunct Football League side Middlesbrough Ironopolis. Archibald Leitch’s ornate North Stand would still be going strong 92 years later, when a by now cramped location rendered Ayresome unsuitable for conversion to all-seating.
(all pictures: Bob Lilliman)
The old ground’s final incarnation combined down-at-heel charm and pervasive decay. It had changed little since the days when Wilf Mannion, George Hardwick and George Camsell helped make Boro one of England’s best teams. The North Stand and Holgate End dated from this era. A covered South Stand had been hastily built in 1966, before Ayresome staged three World Cup matches (North Korea v USSR, Chile, and Italy). Both side paddocks were seated ahead of the same tournament.
In many ways Ayresome crystallised everything that made the Taylor Report necessary. Entering and leaving the Holgate’s left-hand side – via narrow, unlit, funnel-ended alleyways – could be notoriously fraught. Two people sadly died in 1981 after a wall collapsed following the 1-1 draw with Manchester United, and crushing when Leeds visited during 1989-90 owed much to casual policing abetted by obtrusive perimeter fences.
Such is the conundrum we terrace-era fans ponder every Saturday. Quite apart from any architectural shortcomings, many visitors found Ayresome Park a violent and intimidating place. But to Boro supporters it wasn’t just somewhere you watched football. Those crumbling steps and rusty girders represented community, local pride, liberation, decade upon decade of working-class culture. Such things might not have been for everyone; those who cared, however, have lost far more than bricks and mortar.
The journey
I set off from Preston in good time on a gloriously sunny day. Unfortunately, however, our tickets were left behind on the hall table. If an unplanned U-turn at Lancaster dissipated my early good humour, then the familiar trip across England’s scenic rooftop from Brough to Scotch Corner just as soon restored it. There would be no need for snow gates today; like Middlesbrough’s defence, this countryside is toothless in autumn and only gets dangerous as winter wears on.
John was waiting at our familiar Middleton Tyas meeting place. You can’t beat a sleepy village just off the A1 whose only shop offers premier cru pork pies. From here it took just thirty minutes to reach Middlesbrough, where we parked up at the North Ormesby WMC. This prime spot allowed us to walk easily to and from the Riverside while still getting out reasonably fast afterwards.
The ground
You can see some of my other Riverside Stadium pictures here.
This is a first generation post-Taylor stadium. As such it resembles many others off the same mid-1990s shelf. Leicester, Southampton and Stoke, for instance, look very similar. Statues – Camsell, Mannion, Hardwick) recall halcyon times, but once inside homogeneous concourses and stairways mean you could be anywhere. Only Ayresome’s old entrance gates, repositioned outside the West Stand, add some much-needed individuality.
Location is the saving grace. Everyone talks about those views over dock and river; it’s also well worth exploring beyond Shepherdson Way, where St Hilda’s Victorian street pattern can still be picked out. Nearer to the ground, Cargo Fleet Road has its own post-industrial story for anyone who knows where to look. Forget the present, half-close your eyes and imagine ships, sooty terraces, railway lines, chimneys and factories. Few other modern stadia have so much of the significant past hiding in such plain sight.
Flesh and wine
Last time out we thoroughly enjoyed the Navigation, an old-fashioned boozer isolated in post-industrial wasteland just off Dockside Road. Visiting it again had been one persuasive reason for coming here; needless to say that didn’t happen, but the WMC’s friendly bar and free parking proved more than adequate compensation. This is one of those Tardis-like spaces still catering competently for old-fashioned communities. A pre-match passer-by might never realise that hundreds of fans were happily supping just yards away.
Eating parmo would be my number one priority today. This quest didn’t seem particularly challenging, given the locals’ well-known liking for cheese-smeared chicken and pork (I had already seen a man enjoying some with chips in the club). Teesside parmo only loosely resembles Italian melanzane alla parmigiana. It was introduced to this area by Greek-American war veteran Nicos Harris, who for many years ran a shop on Linthorpe Road close to Ayresome Park.
Unfortunately for me the parmo shop next door was closed, along with every other likely looking place along Kings Road. Stalls near the ground seemed only to sell “street food” and other nonsense. The threat of cardboard concourse refreshments loomed large, but – miracle of miracles – they sold parmo (chicken not pork, but I had gone past being fussy) in what appeared to be authentic stotties. Of such small pleasures are special trips made.
The game
Five matches into the season and both teams were playing badly. Today’s languid defeat left the home team bottom of the league, with QPR only five places better off. Boro might have gone two up but for Asimir Begovic in the Rangers goal, who saved well from Isaiah Jones and Emmanuel Latte Lath. Andre Dozzell’s spectacular thirty-yard stonker then gave the visitors a slightly fortunate lead before Begovic was at it again, somehow fumbling away a close range header by Darragh Lenihan.
Lath musts have realised it wasn’t to be his – or Boro’s – day when he saw two further second half efforts denied. And so it proved; Paul Smyth tormented Lucas Engel and Hayden Hackney, crossing low for Jack Colback to finally half-volley the killer goal. Inevitable insult was added to this injury when Begovic pulled off yet another excellent save to deny Sam Greenwood’s dipping shot. By that stage most of the grumbling crowd had already drifted away.
We waited until full time and then went to look at Ayresome Park’s one remaining wall.
Teams and goals
Middlesbrough: Dieng, McNair, Fry, Lenihan, Engel, Howson (O’Brien 69), Hackney, Silvera, Rogers (Greenwood 58), Jones (McGree 58), Latte Lath (Coburn 69). Unused subs: van den Berg, Barlaser, Gilbert, Glover, Bilongo.
Queens Park Rangers: Begovic, Kakay, S Cook (Clarke-Salter 48), Fox (Larkeche 85), Smyth, Field, Colback, Paal, Dozzell (Duke-McKenna 85), Armstrong (Kolli 72), Chair (Willock 85). Unused subs: Archer, Dixon-Bonner, Kelman, Adomah.
Goals: Dozzell 43, Colback 71.
Attendance 25,671.