Victoria Road

Sunday, 24 April 2011

Dagenham and Redbridge 0-1 Plymouth Argyle

Aerial shot of Victoria Road (Bing Maps)

Programme - £3.00

Ratings

Overall Ground Quality : 6/10

Ease of getting there : 8/10

Atmosphere : 8/10

Programme : 9/10

View of Action : 6/10

Quality of the game : 6/10

The "football" feeling : 7/10

Chances of coming here for a random game : 1/10

Legroom : N/A

Surrounding area : 5/10

Overall : 56/100

The only entrance to the ground

Carling Stand

The Marcus James Stand

North Stand

Carling Stand

Bury Road End

The Marcus James Stand

'Victoria Road'

Carling Stand

The Marcus James Stand

North Stand

Bury Road End

Dagenham and Redbridge 0-1 Plymouth Argyle

We set off from our Holiday Inn Ipswich at about 8am following our trip to Portman Road which finished Ipswich Town 1-5 Norwich City.
After a short distance down A12, we found ourselves at Colchester United’s ground, Weston Homes Community Stadium which holds 10,084. It cost £14million to construct which was largely paid for by Colchester Borough Council, Colchester United and additional grants.
We arrived in Chelmsford at 9pm visiting Essex CCC’s County Cricket Ground which has a capacity of 6,500 and Chelmsford City who play at the Melbourne Stadium which holds 3,000. The club currently plays at the Melbourne Stadium which is an athletics ground. The club has plans to upgrade the stadium to a 5,000 capacity capable of achieving the necessary 'A' ground grading.
After struggling to find a superstore for breakfast in Chelmsford, we continued our trip down the A12 to out next stop which was Brentwood where we found a Sainsbury's (thanks to the sight of an abandoned trolley!) before arriving at Brentwood Town who play at the Brentwood Centre Arena which holds 1,800. The record gate of recent times stands at 748 for FA Cup 3rd Round Qualifier against Woking on 9 October 2010 exactly 17 years from the first ever game at The Arena.
A short journey up the A129 saw us arrive at Billericay Town who play at New Lodge which holds 3,500.
As we continued across the A127 and then onto B187 towards Hornchurch, Adrian openly revealed that he ate his first Opel Fruits (now Starbust which Adrian didn't know) in Upminster.

Our final stop before Dagenham is AFC Hornchurch who play at Hornchurch Stadium which again holds 3,500. Hornchurch Stadium is also home to an athletics club. The stadium has two stands, the River Side and the East Side. In addition to this, during the 2008-09 season when AFC Hornchurch reached the first round of the FA Cup, a temporary stand was erected at the end nearest the clubhouse.
We arrived at Dagenham and Redbridge at 12:25pm and parked on Bury Lane which is situated off the A1112 behind Victoria Road.

Wikipedia says that ‘although the ground was regularly maintained, it changed little until the arrival of Redbridge Forest in 1990 to ground share. They paid for a new stand to be erected in the corner of the ground to increase the seating capacity and replaced the grass banking with concrete terracing. These improvements brought the ground up to the standard required by the Football Conference. Redbridge Forest and Dagenham merged in July 1992 and the ground improvements have continued right up to the present day. In 1995 they replaced the crumbling pitch perimeter wall with a new brick built one and two years later rebuilt the toilet block at the Victoria Road end of the ground. The club brought in Bill O'Neil from Atcost to design and build a new purpose built stand. The new 800-seater, which brings the seating capacity to over a thousand, was used for the first time for the Essex Senior Cup final against Canvey Island on 4 August 2001, twelve weeks after the old stand was last used. During summer 2001 new turnstile blocks were constructed and the eight floodlights were replaced with four corner ones.’

In 2009, The Marcus James Stand was completed which holds 1,200 spectators increasing the seating capacity to 2,200 at Victoria Road.

The game saw Plymouth Argyle take all three points thanks to a Rory Patterson freekick in the second half, not forgetting being dismissed in the second half for a second bookable offence. The game as a whole only opened up in the second half as the Daggers chased for an equaliser right up until the final whistle.

Tomorrow, I (Ross) will be visiting Swindon Town who take on Notts County