Joined: Jun 25 2006 Posts: 14138 Location: Forum21
matt_wire wrote:Sat/stood near the dugouts as a kid, mithering for sockties! Then graduated to the Fletch with my school mates until Wilderspool shut in 2003. We were in the same school year as 'IndepenDance' who used to perform alongside the Starlights. Halcyon days indeed.
Remember going to Wilderspool the day after it happened, and just looked in disbelief at the charred remains of the old wooden stand. I was lucky enough to get my hands on two tickets for the opening game in the new stand, where (IFRC) we gave Hull FC a good pummelling.
Joined: Sep 15 2014 Posts: 1160 Location: Jack Rabbit Slims
Walk across the playing fields from my mum's on Burgess Ave, into Marshalls on the Causeway for a quarter of sweets, get told I was a sinner by a bloke in a bowler hat, buy the latest copy of T F & The Wire and then into the darkness under the Fletcher End and on to the terracing, always just to the right of the sticks. Throw some change at the guys with the blanket & then enjoy the 1st half. Always change ends at half time if we were attacking railway end.
I remember the fire, I remember the touchdown club, and Snookers & Fiesta on a Friday night (or Peppermint Gardens), and sitting in the new Bevan stand for A team games, where I had my moment of fame when they called out my car reg for being illegally parked and I had to shift it!
I've not lived in Warrington for 30 years but I was over the other weekend and drove down Fletcher St.....hard to believe there was ever a ground there (even though there is a blue plaque on the wall), and very hard to believe they've never done anything with the land.
I used to stand near the tunnel at Wilderspool ,the smell of liniment didn't half clear the nostrils. I seem to remember a tea & Arrowsmith's pie kiosk at the corner of the main stand & Spion Kop. Last time i was at Wilderspool was to watch the Wizards with my grandson.
I guess you all refer to pondline corner as the small terrace under the hospitality boxes at the Fletcher st end? As a child i stood in the Fletch but could never get a good view. Later moved to the open section (in summer) underneath the scoreboard. Maybe looking back with nostalgia but the place always made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up when you got onto the terrace. Not wure what is was. I can't really say i've had the same feeling when entering the HJ. Wilderspool could look a bit of a dump but it was a traditional RL ground with lots of history so it had a bit of an aura about it. I don't remember changing ends much. Maybe once or twice.
Negotiating the crumbling Fletcher St terraces whilst carrying 3 pints and still to sober up from the night before.
Visiting the WWI latrines that claimed to be the toilets.
Player of the Year awards in The Touchdown Club when the awards took second place to drunkeness of Led Zeppellin proportions.
2023 health and safety would have shut the whole site down instantly. Thankfully, we enjoyed it in a time when you didn't have to conduct a census to make sure you didn't offend anyone in the name of fun.
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