Cheltenham Town's Whaddon Road

Whaddon Road has never been an overly happy hunting ground for the Imps. City have regularly suffered defeat on this ground, even to the extent where we were 2-1 up with a minute to go and still lost.

Cheltenham have had a radical overhaul of their away end. What effectively used to be a bus shelter has now changed into a fairly modern, although still fairly strange all-seated stand.

I'm always at a loss as to what to describe when talking about a club's updated ground. Do I talk about the old version which I went to more, or the newer version because that's what people will be visiting? I'll start by talking about what the ground used to be like, and then the newer version later.

Now when you're going to a ground of a team who play with good home form, and are managed by one of your former strikers, you've just sold your only left back to Watford and you're hearing rumours on the coach that your main striker and best goalkeeper are out injured, it doesn't exactly fill you with confidence. All the news started filtering through as we entered Cheltenham and it took many people's attention away from what appeared to be a very nice town.

In terms of getting down to Cheltenham, it's fairly easy despite of the distance, and there seemed to be plenty of parking around the local area. The away end has changed recently but the only one was so small that you could see into the whole ground when sat on a coach.

Throughout the years that changed as the away end developed and the ground turned into one of the surprisingly more pleasent as time went

A quick march down a small road took us to the turnstiles and we were cast into a rundown bus stop. To our left, we had an extremely small terrace with a very low roof and to the right, a marginally larger open terrace and that comprised the away end. There was no chance of getting a decent view unless you were stood right at the front of the stand or had gone into the seating section to the side of the pitch.

We quite literally had to rely on the reactions of Cheltenham fans to see if they'd scored a goal (unless it was high in the net obviously). Again, when the away end changed and developed it became far easier to see what was happening at the other end, although again it proved tricky to see what was happening at the other end of the pitch due to the length of the pitch.

Anyway, continuing on the ground sees us take an anti-clockwise direction and happen upon a seated stand, this however was quite tacky, it was a decent height but the set out of the lettering and it's thinness just made you want to get Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen in to see if he could sort of this mess for a budget of £500.

This stand also partially went to the away fans and our visit in 2005/6 saw City fans with this stand only as the usual away end was being redeveloped. This stand now also constitutes the regular away end. The view from this section is fairly decent and the leg space is fairly good.  

The stand behind the other goal was an average terrace with a low roof and nothing remarkable about the stand. The final stand was an old grandstand with elevated seating and a standing area (not terracing) below it, similar to the former main stand at Morecambe.

Overall the look of the ground was quite nice, with the hills in the background and the rather pleasent surroundings, it is definitely one of the more pictureseque grounds in the lower leagues.

The atmosphere isn't overly impressive and it is quite often a "sing when you're winning" mentality they have. Most of what little noise there is comes from behind the goal but the limited numbers of singers means that when they do manage to sing, you can't make out what they're saying.

As you can see from the away end section, the away end has changed considerably over the years. The new version offers a considerably better view than the terrace did, and the stand offers a chance to create a much better atmosphere.  

There's not a lot to do within the immediate area surrounding the ground. There's a social club around the back of the terraced home stand, but other than that you'd be hard pushed to find anything worth while.

Overall, I have generally enjoyed my visits to Whaddon Road and it's one of those grounds you can only really look forward to visiting when you either haven't been before, or you haven't been for a while.