Selhurst Park

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Selhurst Park
The Eagles Nest
Full name	Selhurst Park Stadium
Nickname	The Nest, The Great Exhibition, The Palatial Home, The Palace of Fans, La Palace de Crystal, Selhurst Palace, The Crystal Maze
Built	1924
Opened	1924
Capacity	26,309
Home of	Crystal Palace F.C.
Pitch size	110 x 74 yards

Selhurst Park is a football stadium located in the south London suburb of South Norwood in the London Borough of Croydon. It is owned by Simon Jordan, and is the current home ground of Crystal Palace Football Club, a club that Jordan is chairman of. Its present capacity is 26,309.

[edit] History

In 1922 the site, a former brickfield, was bought from the Brighton Railway Company for £2,570. The stadium (designed by Archibald Leitch) was constructed by a Mr Humphreys for around £30,000, and was officially opened by the Lord Mayor of London on 30 August 1924. There was then only one stand (the present Main Stand), but this was unfinished due to industrial action; Crystal Palace played Sheffield Wednesday and lost 1-0 in front of 25,000 fans.

Two years later, in 1926, England played Wales in an international at the stadium. England amateur matches and various other finals were also staged there, as were other sports including boxing, bicycle polo (in the late 1940s) and cricket (in the 1980s). In addition to this, it hosted several games for the 1948 Olympic Games.

In 1953, the stadium's first floodlights were installed (some remain on the Main Stand roof) but were replaced nine years later by floodlights mounted on four pylons in each corner. Real Madrid marked the occasion by playing the first game under the new set of bulbs - a real footballing coup at the time.

The ground remained undeveloped until 1969 when Palace were promoted to Division One for the first time. The Arthur Wait Stand was built, and is named after the club's long-serving chairman, who was a builder by trade and was often seen working on the site himself. The Whitehorse Lane end had a new look with new terracing and brick-built refreshments and toilets along the top.

Due to the Safety of Grounds Act, the Holmesdale Road terrace (or the Kop as it was known) had to be split into three sections for safety reasons and this meant the poor facilities fell in the away part. So new facilities were built at the back of the other two parts. At that time, the Main Stand enclosure was replaced by seating.

In 1983, Palace sold the back of the Whitehorse Lane terrace and large carpark behind to supermarket retailer Sainsbury's for £2m, to help their financial problems and the size of the stand was halved.

Charlton Athletic moved in as temporary tenants in 1986 and became the first league clubs in Britain to agree such a ground-sharing scheme. A year later, the lower half of the Arthur Wait Stand was converted into all-seater. The Whitehorse Lane end then got two rows of executive boxes and later a roof and it was made all-seated.

Charlton moved back to The Valley via West Ham's Upton Park, and Wimbledon F.C. replaced them as tenants in 1991. The Holmesdale terrace was demolished in 1994 and replaced a year later with a two-tiered 8,500 capacity stand. The roof of the main stand was replaced, the previous one having started to leak.

When Mark Goldberg bought Crystal Palace, he bought just the club and Ron Noades retained Selhurst Park. Chairman Simon Jordan took out a 10-year lease on the ground and Noades received rent from Palace. Wimbledon F.C. relocated to Milton Keynes in 2003, their fans already having decamped to the newly established AFC Wimbledon in protest when the old club were given permission by the FA to move in 2002.

Palace chairman Jordan made public his interest in buying Selhurst, and completed the deal for a price of £12m in October 2006, by purchasing the freehold via property firm Structadene in a similar way to his purchase of the Club.

[edit] Records

The record attendance was achieved in 1979, when 51,801 people saw Palace beat Burnley 2-0 to clinch the Second Division Championship.

The ground holds the record for the old Division Four (now League Two) attendance for Palace v Millwall in 1961 when 37,774 turned out.

The ground holds the record for staging the club game watched by the greatest number of people, although almost that entire audience were watching on satellite television in China rather than being physically in the ground; the Crystal Palace debut of Sun Jihai and Fan Zhiyi (who were the first Chinese footballers to play in any of the English Football Leagues), most of the audience being Chinese.

[edit] External links

Selhurst Park at Google Maps.

Football League Championship venues, 2006-2007
Britannia Stadium \| Carrow Road \| Deepdale \| Elland Road The Hawthorns \| Hillsborough \| Home Park \| Kenilworth Road KC Stadium \| Layer Road \| Loftus Road \| Molineux Stadium Ninian Park \| Oakwell Stadium \| Portman Road \| Pride Park Stadium Ricoh Arena \| Roots Hall \| Selhurst Park \| Stadium of Light St Andrews \| St Mary's Stadium \| Turf Moor \| Walkers Stadium