What to do with a couple of friends who are down in London from the North and so hungover that they can’t face the thought of a beer?
We talked about looking round museums or a Thameside walk or even just sitting in a pub and watching sport on the telly. Nothing really appealed. Particularly not sitting in a pub. Not after the night we’d had before.
So we decided to go to the football. West Ham v Watford was our initial choice but then we oohed and aahed a bit and changed to Brentford v Bolton Wanderers. “Proper Football” we said.
None of us had ever been to Griffin Park, Brentford’s ground, before and didn’t know what to expect. It turned out to be a small, cute, old fashioned ground surrounded by surprisingly cute terraced houses, which were well kept and didn’t seem to mind having a football ground in their midst. The streets were busy with fans wearing red and white, which are good colours at this time of year and many Brentford fans also wore Santa hats to supplement their football shirts and scarves. The atmosphere was relaxed, unthreatening. We didn’t spot any Bolton fans outside the ground.
We did notice that there is a pub on each corner of the ground, something which we later found Griffin Park is famous for – it is the only football league ground so abundant in local pubs. We didn’t drink in any of them, however, our hangovers were still toxic even after a big breakfast en route to the ground.
Tickets were £20 each for the Ealing Road stand, which we were promised was where the best atmosphere was. The lady who was selling the tickets tried to put us in the away end but after we had said we were from Grimsby not Bolton she put us down as Overseas Vistors. We were delighted to find that we were actually standing, the first time I have stood at a football match since the1980’s. The atmosphere was very like it had been at our hometown club of Grimsby Town in that decade. Lots of school kids and twenty-somethings singing old songs over and over. But instead of songs about Scunthorpe, Hull and Yorkies, these boys were decrying those with allegiances to QPR, Arsenal and Millwall. Many of the tunes were the same though. We particularly enjoyed the rounds of “You dirty northern bastards” after each free kick conceded by the away team.
Half time came with the home side playing the best football and one goal up. We headed down to tea room to buy some refreshments. My friends had steak and ale pies, which were very acceptable, swilled down with hot Bovril. I joined them in the Bovril but chose a cheeseburger, which proved to be a mistake as the burger was so cold that the cheese didn’t melt, but rather refridgerated in the bun. The burger was tasteless and made of dubious meat, looking like the horrible cheap burgers my mum used to get from the cash and carry in the 1970’s when burgers were just arriving on these shores. My one piece of advice if you should be considering a visit to Griffin Park is to avoid the burgers.
So why Griffin Park? The football ground was built on land that had belonged to Fullers Brewery, whose logo includes a griffin. Brentford Football Club was formed in 1899 and moved into this ground in 1904.
If you’d like to visit this cute little ground, you should go soon. Brentford are planning to move to a new ground across the M4 in the 2019-20 season, so you won’t have many more opportunities to catch Brentford at Griffin Park which will thereafter be turned into a housing development for seventy-five new houses.
It was a good day out. Brentford held out for the 1-0 win even though the Bolton keeper missed with a header in the last minute of play.
We walked back to the train station in the winter night lit by orange street lamps and headed back into London, just beginning to fancy a pint as we pulled into Waterloo.
