Glorious past but uncertain future for Maine Road
Mitch Phillips
Saturday's English premier league derby between Manchester City and Manchester United will earn its own footnote in the history of the famous fixture as the last to be played at Maine Road.
At the end of the season City will leave the ground that has been their home since 1923 -- and was that of United from 1941-49 -- to take up residence at the new City of Manchester Stadium, venue of this year's Commonwealth Games.
While that hi-tech stadium, now shorn of its athletics track, has been widely acclaimed, it is easy to forget that Maine Road was also at the cutting edge of stadium development when it was built nearly 80 years ago.
City were already 36 years old by the time they moved to the ambitious, newly-built Maine Road in 1923. The stadium quickly grew to become the biggest club ground in England.
In his book "The Football Grounds of England and Wales", author Simon Inglis said that the site of a former brickworks was labelled the "Wembley of the North". Its southern cousin had opened for business a few months earlier.
The original Maine Road ground had just one stand, though it did seat 10,000 people, with the rest made up of three enormous, open terraces.
A crowd of 60,000 watched the first match there, a first division defeat to Sheffield United.
RECORD CROWDS
Later that season, 76,000 saw City beat Cardiff in an FA Cup quarter-final while in 1934 84,569 watched City play Stoke in an FA Cup sixth-round match.
That remains the biggest crowd to watch an English game outside a Cup final, while the 80,407 who watched Derby County play Wolverhampton in a Cup semi-final replay in 1946 is the highest at a midweek match.
By then, City were sharing Maine Road with United, whose Old Trafford ground had been badly damaged by German bombing early in World War Two.
United remained as tenants until 1949 and the 82,950 spectators who watched them play Arsenal in 1948 produced an English record for a league match. Even 81,000 turned out to watch United thrash minor-league Yeovil in the FA Cup.
United returned to a rebuilt Old Trafford but, despite being surrounded by dense terraced housing in the run-down Moss Side area of the city, Maine Road still led the way as City installed floodlights in 1953. United following suit four years later.
Continual redevelopment during the next three decades led to the capacity being reduced as more seats replaced terracing but the famous Kippax remained barely changed for decades.
While most clubs' more vocal supporters always tended to gather behind a goal, City's choir chose to fill the terraced Kippax, alongside one of the touchlines.
CAPACITY DOWN
Its low roof produced a dark, dank space but helped to created a wonderful atmosphere, particularly in the club's glory days in the late 1960s.
Following the Hillsborough tragedy in 1989, the Kippax went the way of all other big terraces, keeping its name but nothing else when it was reopened in 1994.
That year also saw the last of the ground's 18 FA Cup semi-finals, a replay between Manchester United and Oldham.
The capacity this season is down to 34,026 -- less than half that of Old Trafford -- and is the main reason the club felt the need to find a home where they can generate much bigger income.
While City are all set for a new era a few kilometres east, the future of Maine Road remains uncertain.
Plans for nearby Stockport County, of the second division, or local rugby union club Sale, to move in seem to have run out of steam and the local council, who have inherited the ground, are keeping quiet about their intentions.
As bulldozers in London demolish Wembley, there is a real possibility that, in a remarkable coincidence of timing, the Wembley of the North could soon follow suit.
