Dean Court

Sunday, 2 February 2014

Bournemouth 0-1 Leicester City

Aerial shot of Dean Court (Bing Maps)

Ratings

Overall Ground Quality : 7/10

Ease of getting there : 8/10

Atmosphere : 8/10

Programme : 8/10

View of Action : 5/10

Quality of the game : 6/10

The "football" feeling : 7/10

Chances of coming here for a random game : 2/10

Legroom : 10/10

Surrounding area : 10/10

Overall : 71/100

Main Stand

East Stand

The Steve Fletcher Stand

East Stand

Ted MacDougall Stand

Ted MacDougall Stand & East Stand

Main Stand

Dark clouds surrounding Dean Court

The Neptune Harvester, Boscombe
(Google Maps Street View)

Boscombe Beach

Ted MacDougall Stand

Main Stand

The Steve Fletcher Stand

Ross & Adrian sat amongst the Leicester City Disabled Supporter Association

Ted MacDougall Stand

Main Stand

The Steve Fletcher Stand

Ted MacDougall Stand

Main Stand

Ted MacDougall Stand

The Steve Fletcher Stand

Main Stand

Ted MacDougall Stand

Goal or No Goal? (Daily Mail)

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Bournemouth 0-1 Leicester City

The week leading up to our trip to Bournemouth was laden with stress and a warning to all ground hoppers and other law abiding people.
The law of the land suggests we are all innocent until proven guilty, that doesn’t quite work at Dean Court. This club will make a judgement on you without even knowing you.
I (Adrian) ordered 2 tickets for the Bournemouth v Leicester City and had my confirmation emailed.
City's allocation was already sold out so although I am a season ticket holder at the King Power, I am also a sensible human being, in my 50s, parent, responsible job and ground hopper and don't mind sitting with home fans, keeping quiet without a replica shirt, and yes sitting which makes a change as opposed to buying a seat and standing for 90 mins as seems the norm for away fans these days.
I was slightly concerned on the Tuesday prior to the Saturday game as I had still not received my tickets so quoting my confirmation number, I phoned Bournemouth. I was then informed, although I had been charged for the tickets, they had not been posted to me because I was under investigation!

As I was not on the clubs database they were contacting Leicester City to see if I was on theirs and if so would not be receiving any tickets. I was slightly surprised by all this and worked out quickly we would not be welcome.
Ross was equally dismayed by this and realising I would not get tickets and ordered two through the company he works for instead. The company although not known by AFC Bournemouth are equally unknown to Leicester City.
I was very surprised one football club would phone another asking about another supporter after all I have never ever been involved in any football related disorder.
On Wednesday, I received a phone call from Bournemouth. I will not reveal the person who phoned me however by his name and knowing ticket office staff as I do I would suggest he would be in his early 20s, meaning I am old enough to be his dad!
He informed me that as they had contacted Leicester City and found out I was a season ticket holder, I would not receive any tickets and would therefore get a full refund.
In many respects you have to admire Bournemouth’s policy, they make pain staking efforts to keep outsiders out of home areas. However the policy is flawed as I mentioned to our young friend.
I accepted his explanation, felt he/the club were slightly insulting me as they were suggesting by the refusal that we could not behave ourselves.
I then asked if instead I could buy 2 tickets for the next home verses Burnley, but mentioned as a ground hopper I would probably be on Burnley’s database as well.
I had the expected reply, that I must order my tickets therefore from Turf Moor!
What a lot of nonsense, the lad sadly had no answer.
I'm not having a go at the young lad; he was just trying to do his job in accordance with his employers.
I was curious about a football clubs privacy policy so phoned Leicester City on Thursday requesting the ticket office managers name and e mail address. As I had meetings during the day I thought I would email him in the evening.
45 mins later I received a phone call from Scott at LCFC. Although I had not revealed who I was and what my question was, he had my number and knew all about the issues of the last 48 hours.
Immediately he had all the answers, he had spoken to Bournemouth and 2 tickets were made available to me, in the away end with the disabled supporters, all I had to do was pay cash at the Bournemouth ticket office on arrival. I was somewhat surprised, but this time pleasantly. The two clubs must have had several conversations about me!
I phoned Ross with the good news but only ten mins later he phoned me back, the company post had arrived and 2 tickets for Saturdays game at Bournemouth! Unbelievable, 12 hours ago we had none and now we had four tickets!
I felt it right to go with Scott's offer, the club had obviously thought about the situation and assisted me. Bournemouth do have a refund policy so on arrival at a blustery Dean Court, sorry Goldsands Stadium on Saturday, I picked up 2 tickets and paid, Ross returned 2 tickets and was refunded.
What a ridiculous scenario, just to watch a football match in England's second tier. As I see it, it is quite simple, if you sit in a home area you know what is required, you sit quietly, don’t wear replica shirts and you politely applaud where necessary and one thing you don't do is jump up if your team score. If you do, several orange jacketed idiots (stewards) will quickly remove you to the waiting police who will issue you with a public order offence, a fine and probably some sort of football ground ban.
Ground hoppers beware; if you visit Bournemouth and wish to sit down in the home area make sure you are not on the data base of the opponents even though you may not support them.
I wonder if Bournemouth will honour me with a position on their database. I have previously been to a home game at the original Dean Court in 1989 and the re-configured form vs Stockport County in 2004, where a young Ricky Lambert played for the visitors. I wonder whatever happened to him!!

And onto the day of the match! We left Leicestershire at around 8am heading down the M1 where we were concerned on the fate of the game.

With a horrendous downpour during the week building up to the game, an inspection was necessary at 9am which meant we decided to stop at Watford Gap so we can find out if our trip to Dean Court was still on or would a detour to Fratton Park or Priestfield Stadium be necessary.

Thankfully Radio Leicester reported the game to be on BUT the pitch and weather was going to be closely monitored. With this in mind, we decided to take the gamble on Bournemouth.

We came off the M1 at Junction 15A and made the journey down the A43, M40 and A34.

Our only stop of the day was Salisbury City who play at the Raymond McEnhill Stadium which proved difficult to get to with both routes to the ground being flooded!

We first tried going down Tanner Lane in Winterbourne before going through Ford (we didn’t hold our hopes going through there!) where inevitably we were tasked to go through a ford deeper than usual yet other cars successfully went through the opposite direction so we decided to follow the trend.

We successfully reached the other side of the flooded River Bourne and made it to Salisbury City FC.

With their ground holding 5,000 supporters, their recent history has been quite successful.

According to Wikipedia, Salisbury have gained back-to-back promotions in recent years, first to the Conference South in the 2005–06 season by finishing top of the Southern League Premier Division, followed by winning the play-off final in the 2006–07 season to participate in the Conference Premier in 2007–08. Even though they played the 2010–11 season in the Southern League Premier Division after being demoted from the Conference Premier at the end of the 2009–10 season, they still managed to win promotion to the Conference South for the 2011–12 season in the first season following their demotion which saw the club spend two seasons in the Conference South before winning promotion to the Conference Premier via the play-offs in the 2012–13 season.

In 1997 Salisbury City moved to a purpose-built stadium at Old Sarum, named after the then chairman. The Raymond McEnhill Stadium's capacity officially stands at 3,500 (although it is technically able to hold 5,000), with covered accommodation for 2,247 fans.

A then record crowd of 2,570 saw the FA Cup first round 2–0 defeat by Hull City in 1998. This figure was beaten twice during the FA Cup run of 2006–07: against Fleetwood Town in the first round proper and then against Nottingham Forest in the second round, with 3,100 attending the 1–1 draw. Salisbury City lost the replay.

The record league attendance figure of 2,677 was set on 28 December 2009 when Salisbury City played Oxford United, drawing 1–1.

A new record was set in the 2012–13 season when Salisbury reached the Conference South play-off final against Dover Athletic, the final being played on home turf. 3,408 attended the match which Salisbury won 3–2 after extra time.

Once we finished in Salisbury, we continued our journey to the South Coast.

With dark clouds lurking and patchy rainfalls, we feared the worst.

We arrived in Bournemouth where it was just about sunny where we drove into the club car park for Adrian to pick up the away end tickets and for myself (Ross) to return the home end tickets.

Adrian sorted out his tickets whilst I went around the ground to photograph the exterior and was even kindly allowed to take photos inside thanks to a kind steward (yes Adrian, a KIND steward) after I told him I was a Bournemouth supporter fearing that if I mentioned I was a Fox I wouldn’t get the opportunity to photograph inside.

Once I took some photos, I returned my tickets and we were all good to park up and get something to eat. With a sigh of relief, we parked on Hayes Avenue close to the ground and walked into Boscombe.

We walked through the shopping area towards the coast and soon found ourselves at Boscombe Pier looking for somewhere to eat. We decided the Harvester on the seafront would be the ideal venue to eat with a good looking £9.99 meal (Feast!) deal which included unlimited salad and drinks and a choice of all sorts of favourites finished with a sundae!

Once we finished, we squeezed out our big leather armchairs and walked back up to Dean Court in the glorious sunshine with not one cloud in the sky!

After admiring the past team photos on a boundary wall behind the East Stand, we went through the turnstiles to a loud rave of City supporters jumping up and down chanting “Jamie Vardy’s having a party! Bring your vodka and your charlie!”

With our tickets showing row A, it suggested we were going to be on the front row and we soon found we were right!

Once we watched the warm ups, we took to our seats where we were sat amongst the Leicester City Disabled Supporters Association where we were asked to display their flag in front of us.

Dean Court is a 12,000 seater stadium which as seen significant redevelopments since 2001.

The ground was completely rebuilt in 2001, with the pitch rotated ninety degrees from its original position. Whilst Dean Court was being rebuilt, Bournemouth were temporarily re-homed at Dorchester Town approximately 30 miles away with both teams being owned by Eddie Mitchell. The stadium was also moved away from adjacent housing. Although it was rebuilt as a three sided stadium, seats were placed on the undeveloped south end in the autumn of 2005.

When the Cherries saw the rise from League 1 into the Championship in 2013, a 2,400 seat stand was built on the undeveloped end of the ground. In July 2013 this stand was named after former club striker Ted MacDougall.

The heavy pitch of Dean Court made it very difficult for the Championship leaders. Bournemouth looked the most threatening in the early stages of the game with Lewis Grabban going closest for the Cherries with a long-range shot. Thanks to some outstanding goalkeeping from Lee Camp the Foxes were denied numerous chances up until 81^st minute.

40 year old striker Kevin Phillips recently signed until the end of the season with a coaching job offered at the end of the season came on replacing David Nugent on 73^rd minute.

With an Anthony Knockaert’s cross from the right to the far left post, headed down by Kevin Phillips and was instantly cleared off the line by a Bournemouth defender which wasn’t enough and was deemed to be over the line according the Assistant Referee which saw the away end erupt with celebrations. This was shortly followed by an unusual celebration by the veteran himself with a zimmer frame and a sore back in front of the 1,300 supporters from the Midlands!

Following the game, the controversial goal saw a mix of opinions yet after seeing highlights both Adrian and I think it was just about over the line. The win saw the Championship leaders extend their lead at the top of the table now ahead by 10 points and now winning their 9^th game in a row!

Following the game, Adrian and I ran out the ground back to the car and were out of Bournemouth in no time. The journey back didn’t take too long and we were back in Leicestershire for 8pm.

A stressful week trying to get tickets paid off with a vital victory and for myself, completing all the Championship grounds for another season!

A really enjoyable afternoon on the south coast!