Brisbane Road

Saturday 20 September 2008

Leyton Orient 1-3 Leicester City

Aerial shot of Brisbane Road (Bing Maps)

Ratings

Overall Ground Quality : 7/10

Ease of getting there : 8/10

Atmosphere : 9/10

Programme : 8/10

View of Action : 8/10

Quality of the game : 8/10

The "football" feeling : 7/10

Chances of coming here for a random game : 2/10

Legroom : 7/10

Surrounding area : 5/10

Overall : 69/100

West Stand

North Stand

West Stand

Tommy Johnston Stand

North Stand

East Stand

North Stand

West Stand

Tommy Johnston Stand

The London Skyline

Programme

Leyton Orient 1-3 Leicester City

Leicester City's fortunes had been on the decline for several seasons and eventually this led in 2008 to relegation to the third tier of English football for the first time in the clubs history.
For everyone a new experience, for many, an opportunity for many new stadium visits.
Brisbane Road the home of Leyton Orient turned out to be a good trip for the hordes of City fans that headed south to the capital.
Adrian and I (Ross) went on a full supporters coach from Coalville, leaving mid morning from the usual place, Memorial Square near the Clock Tower.
We headed down the M1 onto the M25, stopping at South Mimms services before entering east London via the M11.
The coach park was another of those industrial park areas, not in use on a Saturday afternoon.
From there we were afforded great views of the being built Olympic Stadium before a relatively short walk through the streets to Brisbane Road.
Brisbane Road is a modern re-development consisting of three new stands, the South stand, West stand and North Stand. The away supporters are allocated in the old East stand. In 1956 a small seated stand was dismantled and replaced with a stand from the decrepit Mitcham Stadium, which with was to be the East Stand at Brisbane Road. In 1962, with Leyton Orient gaining promotion to the First Division, the East Stand was extended to increase the capacity. Something different about Brisbane Road is that all four-corners of the ground have new modern apartment blocks built in with views of the pitch from the balconies of each apartment. Behind the South stand, at the time of our visit, more modern apartment blocks were being built behind the stand also with views of the pitch. Leicester City supporters travelled in their thousands to this game filling the entire East Stand which created a fantastic atmosphere.
We saw young actor Thomas Law (From Irthlingborough in Northants) who played a teenage Peter Beale from Eastenders (Ironically in East London that day too!), a celebrity City supporter!
The game was a good one as a remodelled more confident City side outplayed Orient at times and deservedly ran out 3- 1 winners giving notice of their future intentions for the season.
The goalscorers were Adam Chambers for Orient and Lloyd Dyer, Matty Fryatt and Andy King for the triumphant City.
Our return journey was without incident. We left London reasonably quickly and the convoy of coaches made good time around the motorway links back to Leicestershire.
We were back in Coalville at approx 7:15pm