The Shay Stadium has the potential to hold a crowd of 14,061, of which 5,830 is seats. Fans are mainly housed in either the South Stand, a terraced section behind one of the goals, or the East Stand, an all-seater section along the length of the pitch. For games where a bigger crowd is expected such as the Charlton game I was at, the Skircoat stand (opposite the East Stand) is used for the away fans, and this is also all seater. The North stand is unused terrace behind the other goal, currently occupied by lots of flags.
Despite the bumper crowd of 4,601 for the Charlton match, I got a number of texts during the match from people watching it on ITV asking why all they could see was a nearly empty stand (the Skircoat stand that the Charlton fans were in). So when normal attendances are around 1,500 you can imagine the vast amount of empty space at the ground.
It looked much like FC United’s situation at Gigg Lane at present with the general empty spaces, but whilst they’re looking at building a 5,000ish capacity ground as a permanent home that’d much lessen the empty space situation, Halifax obviously own the Shay and as a result need a rapid ascent up the leagues to sustain themselves at that ground with the extra running and maintenance costs compared to a typical smaller non league ground.
At the moment the solution is charging above most of the other teams in their division, with adult admission £13 for Charlton and £12.50 normally according to the website (contrasting with the £10 admission for many others in their division).
The match programme was a whopping £3 - it was an FA cup special so I don't know if that's the norm, and to be fair there was a bumper amount of content to justify the high price.
Given the massive crowd I didn’t consider trying the food and drink, and from what I overheard they were struggling with the bumper crowd, a spectator returned to their seat on the 40th minute saying they’d gone to 3 different bits which had all sold out of many things already, this before the half time rush of people!
Getting to the ground on public transport is easy enough when arriving via train – the station linking up with nearby Huddersfield, Leeds, Bradford and others. It’s a simple 10-15 minute walk to the ground – exit with Eureka on your left (childhood memories!), go left on the main road you can see in front of you, and then it’s really just a case of following the main road, going straight on at a few crossroads or mini roundabouts, and eventually the ground comes up on your right.
Obviously the ground has a car park, but to those fans used to parking on nearby side streets to get away quickly after the match, it’s not the usual scenario of smaller grounds – i.e. with mainly main roads and businesses nearby it’s not easy to park close to the ground. I didn’t see anywhere obvious along the way so it’s one to suss out beforehand.
The nearby area is mostly commercial and industrial – several large car washers and similar along the main road, various warehouses including the large Nestle building. It’s not the prettiest to be honest, but the ground itself does look impressive on the inside. The club will hope to continue ascending the leagues in the forthcoming seasons – the Shay is a ground that would have a cracking atmosphere with much bigger crowds than what they’re currently getting – the atmosphere of yesterday’s Charlton match a taster of what they’ll hope will be regular in the near future.
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