Halifax's Shay

Halifax Town is a ground I never got to visit in the league but when we drew them in the Quarter Finals of the LDV Vans Trophy, it became a must. The game had been called off a week earlier due to heavy fog and we knew the winners would face an away trip to Blackpool in the semis. Getting to Halifax seemed tiresome at the time due to the amount of times we’d taken virtually the exact same route throughout the season. However, when we finally arrived at the Shay, it didn’t seem so bad although the Town seemed deserted and the first people we saw were the Lincoln team running onto the pitch.

Halifax’s ground is old school and unfinished. Both terraces behind the goals are MASSIVE can could easily hold around 4,000 at minimum each. The one we were in offered an excellent view of the action, no matter where you were stood. The only problem with the terrace was that despite it had massive space at the back for the burger van and toilets, everything was fairly spread out and seemed to take forever to get from one thing to another.

The stand to our left was unfinished and had been this way for many years. It looked like it was going to be a larger version of Lincoln’s CO-OP stand but it only had 100 or so seats installed and to be honest, no-one can see it being finished anytime in the near future. The final stand was a small hut like stand that rest on a hill. It was fairly nice although all the letters on it, most of which had nothing to do with the football team, made it seem a bit irrelevant. The crowd of only 1,162 with nearly 400 Imps fans didn’t really help the atmosphere which on the whole, was very poor.

Overall, I am unsure about the Shay, if it was completed this would arguably be the best ground in the Conference, however, as I said earlier, I can never see it being completed unfortunately and at this stage in time, I can’t see us playing Halifax in the league again so pictures might be very hard to come by.