Victoria Road (stadium)

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Victoria Road (once known as The Glyn Hopkin Stadium for sponsorship reasons), is a multi-use stadium in Dagenham, England. It is currently used mostly for association football matches and is the home ground of Dagenham & Redbridge F.C.. The stadium has a capacity of 6,000 people.

Victoria Road has existed as a football ground since 1917, when the Sterling Works side, whose factory was situated alongside, used it. It was not fully enclosed until the summer of 1955, when Briggs Sports moved out to Rush Green Road, and Dagenham FC moved from the Arena. During that summer they levelled and re-seeded the pitch, and removed the stones from the playing surface. They then extended the banking and the terracing. The only cover was a tiny wooden stand, which was steep and narrow, and had a few rows of seating, on the far side of the ground.

The main stand was built that autumn and was opened on 7th January 1956 by JW Bowers who was then, the chairman of the Essex County FA. The first match was an Essex Senior Cup tie with Harwich & Parkeston and the score was 6-0 - the Dagenham line up for that game was Skinner, Hutson, Cresswell, Warrior, Knight, Constable,Brooks, Bridge, Cullen, Newman, Lunn. Goalscorers were Warrier, Bridge,Newman and a hat trick from Cullen. It was reported that the new stand had a capacity of 800.

During the summer of 1956, the turnstile block at the Victoria Road side of the ground was added, and the men's toilets situated at the Victoria Road end were also built. In the summer of 1958, the cover over the far side was erected, at a cost of £1400 - a substantial sum in those days.

The first floodlight match at Victoria Road was Dagenham v Woodford in the FA Youth Cup on 26th September 1957 and the first senior match was friendly against Rainham Town on 19 March 1958.

The attendance record was set in 1967 with the visit of Reading F.C. in the FA Cup when 7200 crammed into the ground.

Although the ground was regularly maintained, not a lot changed 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 wooden stand was now starting to look it’s age and the Club decided it was time to demolish it and brought in Bill O'Neil from Atcost to design and build a new purpose built one. The new 800-seater, which brings the Clubs seating capacity to over a thousand, was used for the first time for the Essex Senior Cup final against Canvey Island on August 4th 2001, just 12 weeks after the old stand saw it’s last game.

The Club continue to improve the facilities and summer 2001 also constructed new turnstile blocks and replaced the eight floodlights which used to sit on the sides of the ground with four corner ones.

In October 2001, Bass Brewers PLC, agreed a record breaking £150,000 sponsorship of the new stand, now named the Carling Stand. This provided the funds for the improvements to continue and a number of crush barriers were installed in 2002, which helped ease the flow of spectators around the ground along with a new walkway behind the covered terrace. Also constructed was a new turnstile block at the Bury Road end of the ground.

Whilst the Dagenham & Redbridge record attendance is 5949, set against Ipswich Town in January 2002, these improvements have enabled the ground to meet football league status and the capacity is now 6078.

The ground has been chosen to host some important matches over the past few years including a Women’s Full international match between England and Sweden, A Womens FA Cup semi final, UEFA Youth International matches involving England, San Marino and Cyprus and San Marino, various County and League Cup finals and an FAXI against a Ryman League representative side. Premiership West Ham United also hire the ground on a seasonal basis to play their reserve matches.