DockWorker67
Academy Prospect
- Joined
- Feb 20, 2026
- Messages
- 16
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Mine was 1972. My old man took me and I was about seven. I remember walking through the turnstiles and the noise hitting me like a wall. I'd never heard anything that loud in my life. The crowd was massive, the terraces were packed, and everyone was standing because that's all there was.
I couldn't see a thing because I was too short so my dad lifted me up onto his shoulders. From up there I could see the whole pitch, the floodlights, the crowd stretching all the way round. It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I don't even remember who we played or what the score was. Didn't matter. I was hooked from that moment.
The smell of Boothferry Park is what I remember most. Cigarette smoke, Bovril, the grass, and something else that I've never been able to identify. Maybe it was just the smell of ten thousand people packed together in the cold. Whatever it was, it smelled like football.
The toilets were an experience. A trough behind a wall that you could smell from about fifty yards away. My dad said just go quick and don't look down. Solid life advice that applies to many situations beyond Boothferry Park toilets.
I went to every home game after that until they knocked it down. Fifty years later and I still miss it. The MKM is a better ground in every measurable way but Boothferry Park had something that can't be measured. It had soul.
When was your first time?
I couldn't see a thing because I was too short so my dad lifted me up onto his shoulders. From up there I could see the whole pitch, the floodlights, the crowd stretching all the way round. It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I don't even remember who we played or what the score was. Didn't matter. I was hooked from that moment.
The smell of Boothferry Park is what I remember most. Cigarette smoke, Bovril, the grass, and something else that I've never been able to identify. Maybe it was just the smell of ten thousand people packed together in the cold. Whatever it was, it smelled like football.
The toilets were an experience. A trough behind a wall that you could smell from about fifty yards away. My dad said just go quick and don't look down. Solid life advice that applies to many situations beyond Boothferry Park toilets.
I went to every home game after that until they knocked it down. Fifty years later and I still miss it. The MKM is a better ground in every measurable way but Boothferry Park had something that can't be measured. It had soul.
When was your first time?
