August 21st, 2005

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Sports
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How Not to Build a Football Stadium

I just watched the BBC’s Match of the Day highlights (download them here) for this week’s football (soccer for the North Americans) matches. One such match saw Newcastle and Westham play to that cruelest of results, the 0-0 draw. The match took place at St. James Park in Newscastle.

Throughout the highlights (which are curiously extensive for a North American sports fan), I was struck by something. The stadium has a large overhang above two sides. It’s composed of a lattice of white piping and glass, and, as far as I can tell, is designed to protect the punters from the rain. However, on the odd sunny day in England, the sunlight pours through the thing.

What’s the result? A dense grid of shadows that reaches most of the way across the pitch. It makes watching the game difficult, as the players dash in and out of the light. What kind of stupid idea was this? Couldn’t they design an opaque roof, like everybody else? Clearly the architectural team lacked any serious football fans.

Comments: 2 Responses so far

Chris Cheetham
August 22nd, 2005
7:57 am

This is’nt uncommon. I don’t know if you got highlights of the Community Shield a couple of weeks ago when Arsenal played Chelsea. The game was played at the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff, where theres a retractable rooof. Through out the match due to the angle of the sun in relation to the stadium, half the pitch was in dazzling sun light, the other in the shade. The result was that watching the game on television the poor guy on the camera or who ever was responsible for brightness had a miserable afternoon because as soon as the ball passed from the top half of the pitch to the bottom half (the sunlight split lengthways down the pitch) you could see nothing for a couple of seconds whilst the camera was adjusted for the darker/brighter light. It made following the game difficult, where as shutting the roof may have been a shame on a rare sunny day, though it would have made the match a lot easier to follow.

I agree though watching Newcastle and West Ham was a bit weird with that checkers board shadow on the pitch

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harp
August 22nd, 2005
10:46 am

the more amazing thing is that Cardiff’s pretty new (unlike old stadiums like St James from pre-TV days…heck, people didn’t even sit until after the horror of Hillsborough for the most part) and you’d think they’d consider the TV coverage for when they’d put the thing up.

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