A trip to the ancestral homelands of Mrs Hoppa recently found me in Yorkshire. While there, I took the opportunity to explore some of white rose country's footballing archaeology. First up was Rotherham United's Millmoor.
First things first: the club themselves are not currently in residence here. As most followers of lower league football will know, they have had something of a falling-out with the current owners of the ground, and have for about a year been hiding out at the Don Valley Stadium. And they've not been doing too badly for it, thank you very much. More of that later. I decided to take a look at Millmoor anyway, because it's a ground I've always looked forward to seeing.
The main reason for my interest is the ground's famously gritty setting. Talk of mills and moors may bring to mind images of industrial-revolution Yorkshire, and the textile industry in particular, but down in Rotherham it's industry of an altogether steelier type that dominates. Time was that clattering scrapyards, rumbling railways and looming foundries were a feature of trips to the football all across the country. But in this era of legoland lookalikes, it's rare to find a ground still so firmly and distinctively rooted in the environment and economy that gave birth to it. At Millmoor, locomotives waiting for breaking line up against the backs of the stands, and cranes swing almost over their roofs.
The approach doesn't disappoint the eager visitor. You spot the floodlights from a distance; this itself is something of a throwback nowadays of course. The stark pylons guide you in over the Coronation Bridge, to the left of which the trainspotters among you will spot the old Rotherham Masborough station, once the town's primary halt, now jauntily reinvented as an indian restaurant. Also left is the site of the old Tivoli cinema that gave the popular Tivoli End its name; it's now a car park. To the right, meanwhile, is the ground.
The first thing that strikes you is what good nick the place is in. From up on the bridge you can see that the pitch is immaculate. Standing on the main road behind the Tivoli end, the cream and red livery of the club offices and social suites is still smart and fresh and, save for the boarded-up doors to the bar, things look just as they would at any lower-league ground on a non match day. There aren't many people around, but nor does it feel abandoned. Indeed there are distinct signs of life around the most puzzling element of the ground, the half-built main stand. Rotherham were in the middle of building this when, in 2008, they decided they had no choice but to leave Millmoor in the wake of a protracted dispute with the landlords, former club owners the Booth family. These problems were concurrent with the serious financial difficulties that saw the club docked 17 points for the 2008-09 League Two campaign (a burden they shrugged off nonchalantly, as it transpired, turning the Don Valley into something of a fortress). As a result, the new stand today is no more than a sad skeleton. However on the day I visited there was certainly a degree of activity around it, with vans and tipper trucks moving around and men in overalls and hard hats looking brisk and busy.
So spick and span is Millmoor, in fact, that it looks ready for United to move back in tomorrow. Both the club and the fans, however, present this as a remote prospect for now at least. Debate continues as to if, how and when Rotherham might return from Don Valley to a stadium of their own in the town itself, hopefully in time for the deadline set for them by the league, which expires in three years. All seem keen to stress, however, that this future home is unlikely to be Millmoor. I'm not aware whether the landlords have the same expectation, but they seem to be keeping the place in order, so maybe not. The fans seem divided on whether a return to Millmoor would be a good idea, even in principle. Some feel a new stadium is the best way to obtain the modern facilities needed to attract bigger gates and build a future for the club. Others think that the only practicable way for Rotherham to enjoy a modern stadium is to reoccupy Millmoor and develop it. Myself, I can't help be attracted to the latter view, but maybe I'm a sentimental fool. What is curious is that few of the pro-Millmoor Rotherham fans seem to be using sentiment as their argument in favour of returning. I detect little sense of affection for the place. What a difference 15 years makes - when Millwall moved to the New Den in 1993, their fans accused ambitious, hardworking Chairman Reg Burr of murdering the club by abandoning their unlovely, but beloved, former home at the old Den. Moving to a new ground used to be a time of sadness and regret - albeit tempered by a degree of hope and curiosity - for fans, but now it's simply seen as a straightforward necessity if your club is to compete for the all-important family entertainment dollar. Fans have become more pragmatic, which isn't meant to be a criticism; the world has simply changed and we are all now aware, much more than we were in days gone by, that the game we love to watch is also a highly competitive business.
Whatever the future holds for them, I wish Rotherham United well. Sentimental old fool that I am, I will feel it a little sad if Millmoor, their home since 1907, isn't a part of that future; but that's for them to decide.
I completed my tour of Millmoor by taking a wander down cramped Millmoor Lane, where garages and factories crowd right up to the back of the narrow Millmoor Lane stand, which you access through old-style gates in the high brick wall. Further down this lane, a right turn takes you into a tiny alleyway that forms the only access to the Railway End. The alley was, I assume, once hard up against the embankment of the eponymous railway, which served Rotherham Westgate station, like Masborough now long closed. The trackbed is now occupied by Booth's scrapyards - owned by the family who once owned the club - which use the tracks to roll in trains for breaking. When grounds writer Simon Inglis visited here in 1986, he spotted a number of London Underground trains waiting to meet their maker. Commenting on the Booth family's then-rumoured bid for Rotherham United, he said that, having seen what their machines can do to mighty locomotives, he would fear for the poor football club in their hands. As it happened, the Booths did buy the club, and saved it from looming insolvency in the late eighties. It's beyond me to discern the reasons for the distance that has emerged between Booths and club since 2006, but overall the tale is a cautionary one that highlights the dangers of relying too much on a single benefactor. How many clubs have fallen into this trap? Rotherham, like Darlington and frankly tens of other clubs, need to find a sustainable future where a sugar daddy isn't a prerequisite. Although I'm sure they still wouldn't object if noted supporters the Chuckle Brothers were to throw in some of their hard-won Chucklecash.
Good luck, Rotherham fans. More on the abandoned grounds of Yorkshire is to come: I also visited Scarborough and Doncaster, and my groundhopping consigliere, Sir Robert - who is a connected guy in Hull - has infiltrated what remains of Boothferry Park. Stay tuned.
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