Ninian_Park

Ninian Park

Ninian Park is a football stadium in Leckwith, Cardiff, Wales. Currently, it is the home ground of Cardiff City F.C., a Welsh club that competes in the English Football League Championship.

Overview

The ground features large floodlights in each corner and a plasma screen television showing highlights during the game. The television was bought by the club in 2002 from Bolton Wanderers, who had previously used the screen in their former ground Burnden Park before moving to the Reebok Stadium, and is located between the Popular Bank and the Grange End.

Ninian Park will host its last ever competitive football match on 25 April 2009, which is Cardiff City versus Ipswich Town, before moving to the new stadium.

Stands

The stadium fetaures four stands: the Spar Family Stand (formerly known as the Canton End), the John Smith's Grange End (formerly known as the Grange End prior to being sponsored by John Smith's Brewery), the Popular Bank (commonly known as the "Bob Bank") and the Grandstand.

The Grandstand

The Grandstand is a two-tier, all-seater stand, with old-fashioned wooden seats in the upper tier, and modern plastic seating in the lower tier. This stand also has several supporting poles holding up the roof. This stand also houses the area in which the player dressing rooms and tunnel are incorporated, as well as housing the dugouts, the V.I.P. area and the press/media benches.

Spar Family Stand

The Spar Family Stand is a fully covered, all-seated stand with several supporting poles along the width of the stand. The club ticket office is also located within this stand; an exterior entrance is provided. The rear of the stand is also home to a number of executive boxes and hospitality areas, although work began in the early 1980s they were not completed until 2001 due to financial difficulties.

The Popular "Bob" Bank Seating & Terrace

The Popular Bank has a mixture of covered seating to the rear of the stand, and uncovered standing terrace to the front. The seating has many supportive poles keeping the roof up, and in keeping with the tradition of many football teams, many seats are coloured white and when viewed from above spell the word Cardiff.

John Smiths Grange End

The John Smiths Grange End is the most vocal area of the ground and is a fully covered terrace, which was uncovered for many years, before its renovation in 2001 after Sam Hammam took over as chairman. It also has several supporting poles, and one section houses the away fans. The away section has terrace to the back and seating at the front. In between the home and away fans is a gap separating opposing fans. There is also netting in the middle just incase anybody may want to get to the other side. This gap inbetween the opposing fans came in in 2005 where before there was just a metal fence separating home and away fans.

It was officially opened on 1 September, 1928 before a league match against Burnley by the Lord Mayor of Cardiff and could hold 18,000 spectators. The area behind the goal where the stand was built was previously an earth embankment. The original stand was demolished during the 1977/78 season as structural engineers deemed it to be unsafe and it was replaced by the current stand.

Transport

The stadium and surrounding area is served by Ninian Park railway station (on the Cardiff City Line) on one side of Sloper Road and Grangetown railway station (on the Vale Line) on the other side. Trains operate frequently to Central and Queen Street stations.

In addition the stadium is also served by the A4232 dual carriageway, which is approximately 0.7 miles (1.13 kilometres) away from the Leckwith Interchange.

Other usage

Since it was built the ground has been used for numerous other events including:

It has hosted numerous Wales international matches and alongside Wrexham's The Racecourse Ground which is a current venue for the Wales U21 team.
As part of his Rastaman Vibration Tour Bob Marley staged a concert at the ground on 19 June, 1976.
Pope John Paul II held a rally here during his visit to the United Kingdom in 1982.
During the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games it hosted the show-jumping championships.
Cardiff rugby club played at the ground twice between 1960-1961 due to their ground not having floodlights, and the Cardiff City Blue Dragons rugby league team used the ground as their home between 1981 and 1984.

History

Built on land that had formerly been the site of a rubbish tip, Ninian Park is named after Lt.-Col. Lord Ninian Edward Crichton-Stuart (15 May 1883–2 October 1915), son of John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute (12 September 1847–9 October 1900).

Statistics

Capacity: 22,000
There is an advert on the roof of the Spar Family Stand for Redrow Homes, former shirt sponsor of the club (2003-2006). There is also an advert on the roof of the Bob Bank for Brace's Bread, a local bread-making firm. This was previously a mechanical scoreboard similar to that found in cricket or baseball.
Record Attendance: 61,556; Wales-England, 14 October 1961
The record attendance for a Cardiff City match is 57,893 v Arsenal, April 22nd 1953.
The 2005-2006 season's average attendance at the ground, over 23 home Cardiff City matches, was 11,720.
Address: Sloper Road, Cardiff CF11 8SX

Future

See main article New Cardiff City stadium

Work started on Cardiff City's new stadium at the end of 2007, it is to hold around 27,872 when completed, with foundations in place to increase the capacity to 60,000 if needs be. On 6th August 2008 A contract was signed for naming rights on the Leckwith Stadium project after Cardiff City recruited a leading specialist who provided Arsenal with the Emirates Stadium sponsor to find their stadium a leading sponsor. Although a fee hasn't been released it is reported to be in excess of £3million over a 100 year period. As of yet the new stadium does not have a name given to it.