No. 90: Britannia Stadium [Stoke City]

Saturday, 12th March 2016
Stoke City v. Southampton [Premier League] 1-2

The last Premier League ground, and more importantly the last time the M6 was a necessary routing,  it was to Stoke to hit the 90 mark this weekend.

The city of Stoke-on-Trent is a unique place - being the only polycentric city in the UK, founded not around one centre of population but as an initially organic conurbation of six separate and still distinct towns. 

Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke, Fenton and Longton are those six 'towns' that make up the city, and perversely, what is thought of as the 'city centre' today is actually Hanley, not Stoke itself - the two respective town halls being just over 2 miles apart.

Jovial Foresters Inn, Hanley. Fuck knows what they were jovial about.

It's all very confusing indeed and took me a while to realise what was happening when I parked up in the City Centre. Or Hanley town centre. This handy map from the visitor centre gives you an idea of how confusing this is.

Lemmy's (Motör)head, RIP.

Hanley, or Stoke-on-Trent city centre, or whatever the fuck it is, isn't really much to write home about and there isn't much to recommend a visit. It's mostly eerily dilapidated old pubs, a few civic buildings and the main shopping high streets of the city, similar to many others in modern Britain (i.e. bland).

I had high hopes for the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery here, but I'm afraid to say although well-intentioned I found it pretty mediocre. There was a Spitfire in there (the aircraft's designer having been from Stoke), which was pretty cool I guess, but the highlight for me was probably the bust of Motörhead's Lemmy, Burslem's finest recently departed musical export. 

Other than that I was struggling to find anything of interest in the City Centre/Hanley. I was just about to jump back into my car and head out to one of the other six towns when I stumbled across Oatie Mostons' Staffordshire Oatcakes van.

Yep, I'd never heard of Staffordshire Oatcakes either, but oatcake supremo Kevin Jones soon explained to me that they were a Stoke institution, and back in the day there would have been an oatcake shop on the corner of every terrace-housed street in the city. 

Oatie Mostons' Kevin Jones & his famous Staffordshire Oatcakes. Yum.

Made of oats, flour and water (and a special ingredient Kevin would not of course impart), the batter mix is griddled on a hot plate like a French crêpe, with your choice of tasty savoury filling, be it cheese, bacon, sausage, egg, mushrooms or any combination of the above. 

I had to try one, of course - and went for the traditional, filled with a generous heaping of crumbly Cheshire cheese from just up the road. Absolutely delicious and makes any trip to Hanley worthwhile - get yourself down to Oatie Mostons for an Oatcake! But don't ask for a free one unless you want a face full of batter.

Still with a few more hours to kill, my cultural radar was in need of finding out a little about what this city is most famous for - the industry that gave rise to Stoke City FC's nickname, The Potters.

If you are not sure what I mean it is the Pottery industry, and you are probably an idiot.

Stoke's skyline was once dominated by the distinctive curved, squat chimneys of the bottle ovens and the dirty smoke they unhealthily belched out, within which hundreds of local factories fired pottery for shipment around the world. 

Even as recently as the 1960's there were still over 2,000 of these bottle ovens in Stoke, but since then they have rapidly left the skyline as the industry declined, with any remaining factories moving to cleaner, more efficient methods of production.

In Longton at the southern reach of the city, is one remaining Victorian pottery factory complete with four bottle oven towers, now preserved as the informative Gladstone Pottery Museum.

Gladstone Pottery Museum, Longton. Well worth a visit.

Now, you may be thinking "But mate, I don't give a fuck about pottery!", and normally I'd agree with you. 

Although I love a good history museum, when it gets to the bit where we are shown the bowls peasants ate their gruel out of or the bedchamber pot Henry VIII did a post-feast dump in - I bore quickly and whizz on by.

But I have to say, to get a real feel for the life of industrial Stoke's population and understand the history of this proud city, this is as fine a place as I could have gone to. 

Pottery Demonstration: Gladstone Museum, Longton.

Although many of the famous names you associate with ceramics also had their bases here in the Potteries, most of the factories made everyday chinaware for the masses and it was far from a glamorous existence working in a place like Gladstone's.

Bottle Oven & Inset: Saggers being loaded.

You can easily spend a fascinating couple of hours here both being treated to some demonstrations on how pottery is made today, but more interestingly learning about the back-breaking work and atrocious conditions people were paid a pittance for to keep the intense fires of these bottle ovens burning at 1,250°C.

Pottery was loaded into handmade clay pots called 'saggers' to protect the pieces during the firing. Men had to carry each 25kg sagger on his head to stack inside the kiln. 

Each firing took 2-3 days to complete and the fireman would attend the oven continuously during this time and use 10-15 tonnes of coal per firing to painstakingly control the process - a bad firing could mean the end of the factory so it was a crucial job in unpleasant conditions.

By far the worst job in the factory though was emptying the oven - a process that took 5 hours in the small, dark, dusty and intensely hot interior of the oven. It was not a healthy employment.

Well over half of the Stoke population would have been employed in the pottery factories in the early 20th Century, with the average age of a worker being just 47. 

Pretty much the only thing a worker might have had to look forward to once he clocked off on a Saturday afternoon was to grab an oatcake and pile through the turnstiles of the Victoria Ground to watch the 'wizard of dribble' mesmerise the crowd.

Hanley-born Stanley Matthews was English football's first true superstar, tearing defences apart with his trademark runs down the wing. He turned out for Stoke for 19 years from 1932-1947 and 1961-1965, with a 14-year soujourn in Blackpool in between where he won an FA Cup medal in a career-defining man of the match performance at the age of 38. 

Matthews is still the oldest player to represent his country, and was still playing top-flight football for Stoke at the age of 50 before finally retiring quite obviously the club's greatest-ever player. 

Sir Stanley Matthews Statue, Britannia Stadium, Stoke.

The statue of him at the Britannia is one of the finest of any sporting statues I've seen, featuring three representations of Matthews through his career, from teenager in the 1930s, to England international, to his last days at Stoke in the 1960s. A wonderful tribute.

Stoke City's 28,000 all-seater Britannia Stadium opened in 1997 to replace the old Victoria Ground (at that point the oldest ground in the football league), and sits on the southern edge of the city, in between the towns of Fenton and Stoke.

Q-Railings (Main) Stand, Britannia Stadium, Stoke.

It's an impressive ground, and would be a claimant to being one of the most impressive grounds to have hosted third tier football - Stoke being relegated to what was then Division Two (now League One, but before both the old Division Three - confusing, isn't it?) in 1998, in their first season at the Britannia.

Built just before the 'bowl' stadia frenzy took hold, the Britannia has a little bit more character with two stand-alone cantilevered stands, including the main one I was in.

The main home end behind the goal (Boothen End) is connected in the corner to the DPD (East) Stand. The other stands were built some distance from the pitch and from each other (a regulation at the time of construction, which demanded that an ambulance could be driven around the entirety of the outside of the pitch). So I can't see much need for them to fill in the other three corners anytime soon, even though they do fill up the ground most games.

Stoke spent 4 seasons impressing away fans used to rickety old terraces with their new ground before finally being promoted via the play-offs in 2002. It seems strange to think of Stoke spending time so recently outside of the top flight - only the most hardened Port Vale fan would have to admit that since their promotion in 2008, Stoke have become a well-established Premier League side.

Looking towards The Boothen End. Nello in his seat in foreground.

With Stoke finishing in 9th place in each of the last two seasons, I certainly felt a level of expectation had been dropped below for the Potters fans when they started poorly against Southampton this afternoon.

The travelling Saints fans, who had themselves recently experienced time in the third tier of course, were in fine voice throughout and had much to shout about - their side seemed to be the only one in it for the first 45 minutes in a game that both needed to win to stay in the pack chasing for European football next season.

Looking towards the South Stand, Britannia Stadium, Stoke.

The visitors were deservedly 2-0 up going into the break, thanks to a brace from Graziano Pellè, who had his name ringing around the ground whilst the home fans bemoaned the apparent lack of movement, desire and speed of the Stoke players. I had to agree.

At half-time, there was a lovely moment as Stoke's legendary fan and former kit-man Neil 'Nello' Baldwin was presented with a shirt for his 70th birthday which he celebrates this week. Nello was already a local legend for the time he spent in the home dug-out during Lou Macari's time as manager in the 1990s.

Neil 'Nello' Baldwin: Stoke City Fan Legend and subject of 'Marvellous'.

Macari said of Nello that he was "the best signing I ever made". Baldwin, a registered clown, won over players and fans alike with antics such as dressing up as a chicken or a Mutant Ninja Turtle whilst taking his place on the bench, or for his role in an infamous 'unveiling' of Macari's new Scottish striker on an end of season video.

Nello became more widely known thanks to a BAFTA-winning BBC biographical film about his life made in 2014 called Marvellous, starring Toby Jones, and featuring a cameo from Baldwin himself. It's a heart-warming, funny and bitter-sweet joy to watch and one of the best football films I've ever seen. Highly recommended.

It turned out Nello was sat just two rows in front of me, and I spent much of the 2nd half smiling and thinking how wonderful it was that a city and a football club took this sweet man with learning difficulties to their hearts.

DPD (East) Stand, Britannia Stadium, Stoke.

Stoke turned up the heat a little in that 2nd half and showed what the atmosphere could be like in the stadium. Lanky Austrian striker Arnautovic netted on 52 minutes after a strong period of play for Stoke, and dominated possession from there until the final whistle.

Sadly for the home fans though, possession means nothing when a team like Southampton turn up and orchestrate a perfect counter-attacking game plan - and the best chance for a fourth goal of the game fell to the visitors as they hit the crossbar late on. Despite looking like a fightback might be in the offing, Stoke were deservedly beaten in the end from a team that simply executed better and seemed to want it more.

A rare first half Stoke Attack.

So Southampton jump two places above Stoke into 7th, and will be hoping to push on and sneak into the Europa League places. Stoke now sit 9th - level with their record Premier League finishes the last two seasons.

If they end up staying there, it may be treading water and perhaps for a club with such a proud history you can understand the ambition to do better. Perhaps, though, if they stood back and looked at the big picture, they'd remember that in the last 20 years they've spent a fair chunk of it nowhere near the Premier League. Yet today, Stoke City stand proudly as the 9th best side in England.

The Potters may just be 'pottering' around in the top flight. But there are 83 other clubs out there in the Premier and Football League that would snap their hands off for that sort of stability.

Plus, they don't have to carry saggers on their fucking heads into a 1,250°C furnace anymore, like their granddads might have done. 

OK so their granddads also got to watch Stanley Matthews. But I'd still take Xherdan Shaqiri and mid-table meandering over saggers and Matthews, any day.

NEXT UP: No. 91 - Barnet's The Hive! Sat 19th March.