Problems at Preston North End FC

This blog will chart my travels as a Londoner to many of England’s Football grounds as a neutral observer in the home end. Today we start with my recent trip to Deepdale home of, the first ever Division One Champions, Preston North End FC.

As a non-driver I rely on public transport to get to games and Deepdale is perfectly placed for this, just a short cycle from Preston Station. To walk it’s just two straight roads from the station, but some of this is one way to wheels so the cycle route is a little circuitous.
The ground itself is just off Sir Tom Finney way, but approaching from the station side of town it’s hidden till the last minute by houses. When you catch a glimpse of the ground though it is mightily impressive. On reaching the ground this is where the problems began in earnest.

First problem was parking my bike, there are no bike racks near the stadium and I ended up having to park in the park across the road. Not the perfect start to the match experience, though I was running late due to a bad choice of train on my part that meant I only reached the stadium 5 minutes before kick-off. This time crunch left me rushing to get inside so I wouldn’t miss any of the action on the pitch.
As such I went straight to the turnstile to get inside the ground without finding a programme outside like I normally do at a game. Anxious not to miss-out on a program though I asked the steward on the turnstile whether I would be able to buy one inside, he assured me that this would be no problem. He was mistaken.

The first thing I did on getting inside was go looking for the programme sellers and all I found was another steward who informed me, rightly this time, that programmes were not sold inside and never had been. This disappointment behind me I decided that given the queues at the refreshment counters I’d go find my seat and take advantage of a break in play to come back to grab food, hoping for a shorter queue.

I found my seat just as the teams were coming out and the wall of sound from both the home fans and the travelling West Brom fans was incredible, one of the best atmospheres I’ve experienced in a long time. The West Brom fans kept this up all game, with sections of the home supporters responding one after another. The atmosphere all game was incredible.

During a stoppage in play in the first half I took the opportunity to go grab food, only to find that Preston is the only club I’ve visited that closes their food counters during first half play. They reopened them at half-time but for the first-half I was extremely hungry and rather annoyed at the rising list of problems I was experiencing.

The football in the first-half was physical and skilful, West Brom are in the automatic promotion places and on this showing it was easy to see why. Their team has both height and physicality in defence making them extremely hard to score against, this physicality is matched up front by their strikers whose only drawback was that they seemed to have forgotten their shooting boots. Jordan Hugill was a particular thorn in the side of the Preston defensive line all game. Preston more than held their own though and even took the lead in the 26th minute through Ben Whiteman’s deflected strike. Hit with venom it deflected off one of the West Brom centre backs to wrong foot the keeper and nestle in the back of the net. The cheers from the home fans was deafening.

West Brom equalised through Matt Phillips in added time at the end of the half, but I couldn’t tell you anything about how he scored and I only know it was Phillips by looking through reports after the game. I had stepped out to get in the line for food just as the injury-time was being announced.

The queue was not long when I joined, maybe 15 people in front of me but with only 2 food stands each staffed by a lone worker this was quite far enough back to be waiting almost the whole of the break to be served. Preston seriously need to employ more staff on the food stands in the Sir Tom Finney stand, the lone guy was doing his best but there is only so fast one person can go!

I was served my pie and drink just in time to get back in my seat as the teams were walking out for the second half and the pie was too warm to eat for another 10 minutes.

The game in the second half was much like the first in terms of both quality and the even feel of the game with both sides carving out good chances to score. Unfortunately however there were no more goals and the game ended 1-1 which felt like a fair result for both teams. Official statistics state that West Brom has 62% possession across the 90 minutes, but it felt far more even than that from the stands.

One other notable point from the fans perspective is that there is a lack of screens within the ground with the being only one, which was situated above the away end so none of the away supporters could see it and it was hard to make out anything on it from the home side either as it is simply too small. Anyone with vision problems would struggle to make out anything on it at all. Not that much was on it anyway, it never once showed the score.

It did however show the substitutions that were going on and this came in useful later in the second half as Preston introduced 3 debutants from the subs bench. Firstly the double substitution to introduce both Alex McCann and Connor Wickham to the fray. Then later to replace the excellent Riis Jacobsen with Josh Murphy. Each substitute gave a good account of themselves, but McCann was undoubtedly the stand out of the 3. He could have capped off a brilliant debut with the winning goal if his spectacular volley had hit the net late on, but Sam Johnstone was equal to his effort.

Overall the game itself was extremely enjoyable, but there are a few problems with the fan experience at the ground that need to be fixed. These problems did not however overshadow my enjoyment of the game itself and the impressive nature of the stadium itself. Deepdale is definitely a ground I will be looking to return too for further matches in the future.

Next week I’m down south for a match in the Capital and it’s one I’ve been looking forward to for a while