Whatmichaelsays

Welcome to Wakefield: Now go home, we’re closing

I don’t mean for this blog to become a list of crap towns and cities in the UK but unfortunately, following sport often means visiting places that fall into that category.

And so on to Wakefield, for it was time for Leeds Rhinos’ annual Super League trip to Belle Vue a venue that inexplicably manages to obtain a safety certificate and change it’s name ever other week. From the original name of Belle Vue, it became the Atlantic Solutions Stadium (although the abrevation “ASS” was a more apt description) and today it is known as the Hearwell Stadium - presumably not an endorsement of the echoy PA system.

Wakefield was recently shamed as the worst city in the UK for sporting provision and from the facilities that their only professional sporting play out of, it’s not hard to see why. Plans for a new stadium have been and gone and so it appears as if the club’s Super League licence will expire before a brick is laid.

The current stadium is a complete wreck. At one end is the North Bank, a hill filled in with poor quality concreate, riddled of cracks and weeds. At the other end of the ground is collection of portakabins, stacked up in the style of a Benidorm apartment complex. Along one touchline is the main stand and opposite that, just a paved-over footpath and a bar that manages to run out of beer every time the crowd is in excess of 6,000 people.

The city itself is no better.

I’ve always been sceptical over Wakefield’s city status. For me, cities should have a vibrancy, some character, something different. Wakefield doesn’t have any of those things. For when the cathedral clock strikes 5pm, shop shutters slam to the floor as if it were some well rehersed security alert and the main throughfare throughout the city centre turns silent.

Come to the bottom of the recently block-paved Westgate, yet another part of the UK that has allowed itself to become a clone of every other city centre High Street, and you enter Kirkgate; a concreate jungle that takes you back to the Soviet era. Walking down Kirkgate, you need to remind yourself that you aren’t watching in monochrome. It’s just grey, grey, grey, grey and a bit more grey.

One of the few positives about Wakefield is that, for Leeds at least, it has always been the source of two Super League points. Up to now, Wakefield have never beaten Leeds at Belle Vue in the summer era and this year was no exception. OK, so it took a comeback from 30-16 down with 10 minutes to go and a last second winner, but a win is a win.