Doing the 92 is Daniel Storey’s odyssey to every English football league club in a single season. The best way to follow his journey is by subscribing here.
What makes Rotherham United unique is obvious on whichever side of the A630 you park your car on a matchday. Nowhere else in the Football League does the shiny new stadium stand in sight of the old set of floodlights and the old stands, somewhere only the weeds now call home.
Millmoor does still reverberate with occasional noise. Local junior team Wickersley Youth have started to play matches there. Earlier this month, hundreds of supporters filled the old Tivoli End to re-record the club song “Millermen” to raise money for Rotherham Hospice. There were queues to get inside and why not – who knows if you’ll ever get back inside the old home again?
But in the main, Millmoor is a footballing ghost town: peeling red paint, old warning signs, plastic seats gaining dirt, barbed wire. The contrast with the superb New York Stadium is only reinforced by its proximity. By knocking down an old ground, as is customary, the ache at what has been lost eases quickly. Here, everything Millmoor meant still hangs in the air because it still stands.
The transition from old to new, traditional to modern, one era to another, was made easier by what Millmoor came to represent to supporters of Rotherham United. When they left this place for the last time, they had just watched Rotherham achieve their lowest league finish since the mid-1970s. Forced to endure the ignominy of a move to Sheffield, albeit for the greater eventual good, they returned to the city four years later and were still in League Two.
Rotherham United had been owned by the Booth family for 17 years when, in 2004, Ken Booth agreed to sell the club to a group led by supporter Peter Ruchniewicz. The club had a £3m overdraft, an unsustainable wage bill and was coping – as too many others were – with the collapse of ITV Digital. The group were able to buy the club for a pound.
But here’s the kicker. As part of the deal, the Booth family kept Millmoor and the training ground. The club were obliged to pay rent – thought to be around £200,000 a year – and also had the responsibility to maintain the upkeep on the stadium. It was, to be blunt, a catastrophic situation.
The minor miracle is that Rotherham United continued to exist. They are not alone in that uncomfortable boat, but were also record breakers. Between 2006 and 2009, Rotherham United twice entered administration and were docked a total of 37 points for the results of their financial woe.
Rotherham United 4-2 Charlton Athletic (Saturday 18 January)
- Game no.: 57/92
- Miles: 103
- Cumulative miles: 9,632
- Total goals seen: 163
- The one thing I’ll remember in May: Nowhere else in the Football League can you see the old stadium still standing across the road from the new.
Rotherham were saved from liquidation by Tony Stewart; on that point everyone can at least agree. He took over in 2008 when the Millers had minus 17 points in the fourth tier of English football. His aim was threefold: to delegate to effective managers, to bring confidence back into his own town and to release Rotherham United from their stadium stranglehold. The three were, to every supporter, inextricably intertwined.
Less than seven years later, Stewart’s name was being sung raucously at Wembley as Rotherham United celebrated a play-off final victory that took them back to the second tier for the first time since their financial implosion began. Stewart had invested £17m to build the new stadium and everything he had conceived had come to pass. Millmoor was still there; now supporters could focus on its happier memories.
This is all relevant because of what has happened at, and to, Rotherham United since. Over the last eight-and-a-half years, they have suffered four relegations from the Championship and won three promotions from League One. Their last finish higher than 15th in the second tier was in 1982, despite 12 goes at it. Rotherham are a club firmly stuck between two divisions.
Last season at Rotherham was entirely miserable by any measure. Their relegation was confirmed as early as 6 April and they became the fourth club in 20 years to fall below the 30-point mark in the Championship. Having finished 19th the season before, sparking hope of some consolidation, everything fell apart.
Those who come to the New York Stadium every other week avoided the worst of the hurt (although they were still the worst home team in the division). Rotherham United’s away supporters endured one of the most remarkable streaks in English football history. After victory at Sheffield United on 8 November 2022, Rotherham have still not won a Championship away fixture. It is a run of 36 matches that will pause until they go back up.
That 2023-24 experience seemed to have badly affected Rotherham. They started this season, the usual upward curve of re-promotion in this repeated cycle, with four wins in 17 league games. They have still only won twice away from home. There has been a slight recovery since, sparked by a five-match unbeaten run and thumping home victories, but for the first time in over a decade Rotherham United might actually finish in mid-table.
The uncomfortable truth for Rotherham United and those who love them are that the Championship was always, by rights, the exception. In summer 2023, the club broke their transfer record twice and the combined total of those two transfer fees was £1.7m. At the last count, their wage bill was not only the lowest in the Championship but was five times lower than Burnley. It has been the lowest in each of their Championship seasons over the last decade.
For all the misery of last season, the one before it (the 19th-placed finish) was a triumph. In points per million spent on wages, Rotherham topped the division by a streak ahead of Coventry City and Blackpool. Stewart funds the club’s losses, but those operating losses were smaller than any other club in the Championship at the last count. Stewart aims to be sustainable and he will not chase greater success in the pursuit of short-term gain.
That has caused something of a schism among Rotherham United supporters. On the one hand, you have those who are desperate for their club to compete in the Championship and finally make good on Stewart’s original aim. They know that it will take more money, but that doesn’t reduce the desire.
I understand it. It is deeply frustrating seeing your football club stuck in a cycle because that reinforces the lack of control. When football is your escape, it becoming a part of the general tedium is a dispiriting experience. There’s nothing like being told your place to make anger build and you cannot choose to suspend that because that isn’t how emotion works. In simpler terms, the joy of promotion is eroded by the knowledge of what comes next.
But there are other supporters who see their football club from a different view, perhaps one that incorporates the old Millmoor in the front of shot. English football has been littered with northern football clubs who have overreached or been mismanaged to the point of emergency and many of them are of a similar size to Rotherham: Scunthorpe United, Oldham Athletic, Bury.
These supporters are not ignoring the frustrations of bouncing between two divisions and your eventual landing spot far more likely to be lower than higher. But they also appreciate that having an owner who cares about the club, who is prepared to fund losses while attempting to ensure a long-term future, is something to cherish and to let that guide your general mood.
In the meantime, you use a football club for everything it can be. In front of the media seating at the New York Stadium are a group of season ticket holders who all know each other. Before, during and after a 4-2 home win against Charlton Athletic, one that provokes great joy not least because it is the first time Rotherham have scored four in almost two-and-a-half years, they embrace, chat, laugh and bid fond farewell. The group includes family members, friends and old football acquaintances, and ranges in age from roughly six to roughly 86.
There is no right answer here. Nobody’s opinion is wrong and nobody’s is correct. But the conclusion that jumps out to me is that Rotherham United are not broken, but that football is. You either invest lots of money to compete as a smaller-town club and risk your own sustainability, or you play it safer and other clubs who aren’t doing the same thing pass you by. All the while, unsustainability is sold as ambition and caution is sold as cowardice.
Daniel Storey has set himself the goal of visiting all 92 grounds across the Premier League and EFL this season. You can follow his progress via our interactive map and find every article (so far) here
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