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.
The proposed stadium was certainly impressive, if you like that sort of thing. Portsmouth had commissioned architects Herzog & de Meuron, who wowed with Munich’s Allianz Arena and Beijing’s Bird Nest. Artistic impressions showed lots of glass on the outside, fashioned into an uneven boomerang shape that represented a ship, apparently.
The cost was astonishing, an estimated £600m. The stadium itself would be a 36,000 all-seater, but there would be new homes, restaurants, offices and other leisure facilities. The project was announced in 2007 and Portsmouth’s hierarchy at the time believed that they would be playing at the naval dockyards by 2011.
There should have been regret, even then. The project would, evidently, cause Portsmouth to leave their home of 108 years. A joint venture with Sellar Property Group would mean the demolition of Fratton Park to make way for 750 new homes.
By 2007, English football was coming to the end of its suburban obsession, the vast expansion project that largely involved knocking down inner-city stadiums to build flats or office blocks and replacing them with out-of-town havens of plastic.
Football club owners wanted to make more money out of the average matchgoing supporter (replacing them if that’s what it took). That new age of fan expected a little more comfort. Tradition tended to come down the list.
Between 2001 and 2005, a new stadium became the must-have fashion accessory for upward-thinking provincial clubs: Southampton, Leicester City, Hull City, Derby County, Swansea City, Coventry City. All but one had the suffix “City” and that went beyond coincidence. These were clubs whose grounds sat on valuable real estate land.
The cost of reconstruction was deemed ludicrous compared to starting again on the edge of the city.
Portsmouth were late to the party because they were the possessors of new money. Progress had stalled after promotion to the top flight in 2003 because Harry Redknapp had fallen out with Milan Mandaric and left – Pompey finished 13th, 16th and 17th in their first three seasons. Then Redknapp was tempted back in December 2005, Mandaric sold the club to Alexandre Gaydamak and Portsmouth embarked upon a period of outrageous spending.
Between June 2006 and August 2008 alone, Portsmouth signed 28 players on permanent deals for transfer fees of around £90m and were known as handsome payers to both players and their agents. The proposed stadium was Gaydamak’s ultimate statement of intent to make Portsmouth one of the most glamorous clubs outside of London.
Portsmouth 3-1 Stoke City (Wednesday 22 January)
- Game no.: 59/92
- Miles: 356
- Cumulative miles: 10,026
- Total goals seen: 168
- The one thing I’ll remember in May: It isn’t every ground in the Football League that you hear a bell constantly ringing during the game.
You know the story by now. Portsmouth became the cautionary tale of their era, broken in two by a combination of owner who wanted to authorise the purchase of players (and then grew weary of the financial drain), a manager who was more than happy to buy them and a global financial crisis that was timed perfectly to create a perfect storm of economic calamity.
Portsmouth almost lost everything. By October 2009, they were being chased across town by HMRC for a tax bill reported at £10m, players were being unpaid, they had experienced two takeovers in 44 days, had sold £80m-worth of players and still owed tens of millions to other creditors.
Portsmouth would eventually be deducted 29 points in three instalments. They tumbled into the second tier and quickly realised that there was no floor thick enough to stop the fall.
And the new stadium? Well, no. In October 2007, only two years before the true extent of the mess was being revealed, former chief executive Peter Storrie made a statement that contained no caveats to his apparent statements of fact. His last line was the only technically accurate element, although probably not how he meant it:
“This will be the most spectacular stadium, set against the backdrop of the harbour and the English Channel befitting the club’s history. Portsmouth is moving into a new dawn with the backing of owner Alexandre Gaydamak and these are very exciting times for the club both on and off the field.”
As you wander up to Fratton Park these days, it’s impossible not to think about what might have been and what – as a neutral – you are glad never was.
I’m not saying that it was worth the financial apocalypse, the months spent worrying about whether the club would go under and the years spent trying to even get close to where they once were (and I’d never expect supporters to agree with that) to avoid that new stadium. But I’m not not saying it.
Fratton Park is one of English football’s great grounds. On a midweek evening it simultaneously seems to glow orange around its base and throws white light into the sky.
It is the ground that Luton Town probably wish Kenilworth Road could be, the same network of impossibly narrow passageways by terraced houses that make you feel like an excited kid looking for a hiding place but with slightly more room and significantly more seats.
Fratton’s piece de resistance is the entrance to the South Stand on Frogmore Road with its mock Tudor facade. In football and football grounds, uniqueness is the most persuasive factor in beauty. On the other side is an Archibald Leitch masterpiece. To uniqueness, add heritage.
During the pain of the worst times, when Portsmouth played six league seasons across four divisions and didn’t finish in the top half once, Fratton Park was a sanctuary for supporters.
At first, it was the place where they could compare war stories about what they had heard about the impending crisis. Then it was the only thing left and as such a hub for communal – and community – action to save the club from liquidation through a fan takeover.
During the years of that fan ownership, before the decision was made to trust a new private owner (itself a sign of healing), Fratton was church because their club still existed and was theirs.
Ask anyone then if they wish that they had access to high-end restaurants and a leisure complex near a new stadium. I don’t know if the proposed stadium would have made life harder or easier during the collapse. I do know that the connections between supporters and club would have been different.
Since the takeover in 2017, there have been no proposed plans to build a new stadium on the naval dockyards, Horsea Island or anywhere else.
Instead Portsmouth have invested £20m in the redevelopment and redecoration of Fratton Park. There is a new all-seater Milton End.
Both the North and the South stands have been improved. There is now safe standing in the Fratton End. The hospitality lounges have been overhauled and a new fan zone constructed.
This season, Portsmouth will almost certainly record their highest average home attendance for 57 years. That is partly because they are back on an even keel and back in the Championship and partly because of how Fratton Park has been enlarged and improved.
“Without that work being carried out, we were told we were heading towards a 10-11,000 maximum capacity as the stadium was becoming more and more unsafe with poorly decaying concrete and systems,” chief executive Andy Cullen told The News.
“It was dangerous. The £20m investment into Fratton Park shows we have responded to that challenge, which is fantastic. We have benefited from that investment, but we’ve also been really, really fortunate to have continued loyal and passionate support from the city and wider community.”
It’s important to say that this work has both changed Fratton Park, and hasn’t. The facilities have clearly been improved and that has been the club’s deliberate focus, even over on-pitch investment (John Mousinho probably has the lowest squad cost of any Championship manager this season).
But nobody is trying to invent the wheel here. Nobody is trying to build a stadium like a glass ship. The noise is still the same and so is the sense that you are walking up to a site of footballing heritage.
What’s the point otherwise? Lose that and you might as well move.
There is an appreciation that, almost two decades ago, the supposed guardians of a football club risked its future and almost moved it away from its home. That won’t happen again. The biggest change that supporters want now is a bridge from the train station to the ground.
I wonder if that represents a shift in general, an antidote to that suburban dash of the 2000s. As so much of the elite football experience becomes homogenised, sensible owners of clubs with assets of cultural heritage are realising that they possess something that is impossible to replicate and would be stupid to lose.
Fratton Park will always be embedded in the community here: literally between Carisbrooke Road and Specks Lane, emotionally amongst those who never wanted to leave and probably never will.
It played a significant role in Portsmouth’s recovery because of what it represented. It is one of English football’s greats because of how it still is, where it stands and what it isn’t.
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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