GROUNDS FOR DELIGHT

Football grounds were different places in the days when queues at turnstiles were inevitable and brass bands played on the pitch. Old and out-of-date most of them certainly were, but each had characteristics and traditions of their own.
For example, it always seemed to be cold every time we - meaning Norwich City - were at Crystal Palace's Selhurst Park. I can recall trying to report on matches there when my fingers were so stiff I couldn't hold a pen, let alone dial a phone number. At St Mirren, though, if the game drifted into a less than interesting phase, you could always watch planes taking off from a nearby airport. At Carlisle, it was sheep, on the distant hillsides. 
In the non-League world, a fascinating local tradition was invariably vocalised at the Carter's Park home of Holbeach United, where every time the ball was ballooned over the touchline the home fans, in unison, would bellow, 'Billingborough!' Quite why they did this was a mystery. Certainly at the time - in the 1950s - no-one could remember the reason. But it probably related to some long-forgotten pre-War match when Billingborough were the visitors.
I recall lots of other delights. At the old Wembley, with its rattling, roof-high Press gantry, it was the half-time cup of hot Bovril; and at Ashton Gate, for a Bristol City match, it was police horses at the pitch-side. Portsmouth's Fratton Park seemed to relish a constant shortage of Press telephones, while Charlton's Valley ground boasted the longest gents' outdoor urinal I had ever seen.
At Oxford, I watched as a giant, jovial and largely friendly policeman picked up a troublesome youngster by the scruff of his neck and the seat of his pants and casually, and really quite daintily, dropped him over a surrounding wall and on to the pavement outside.
Bramall Lane (Sheffield United) charmingly, had only three sides of stands/terraces, and they employed boys to fetch the ball back on the fourth open side. Rotherham had the noisiest loudspeakers I had ever heard, inevitably positioned close to the Pres benches, and the phones; while Hillsborough (Sheffield Wednesday) had the first floodlights I ever saw, and the first electronic scoreboard.
Walsall boasted a brick wall (the Laundry End) behind one of the goals; while Turf Moor (Burnley), which plainly did not like journalists, relegated the scribes to a Press box awkwardly positioned behind one of the goals. You needed good eyesight, or a pair of binoculars.
Another place I recall was Wolverhampton Wanderers' historic old ground, Molineux. Arriving at the Pressbox one was met by a charming elderly gentleman who, I assumed, was the Press steward. Anyway, he fussed around, checked my credentials, showed me to my seat, and sorted out a telephone. And he did this for all the arrivals. When the match kicked-off, however, he himself down, pulled out a notebook, and began to record incidents in the game. 'Who do you represent?' I asked during a quiet moment. 'The Smethwick Telephone,' he said by way of explanation. 
Even the old wooden stands at Carrow Road, home of Norwich City, had distinguishing marks. In the main stand, which was fitted throughout with bench seats, a roaring trade was done with small, green cushions, whereby for a small fee fans could available themselves of a little additional comfort. Then it was discovered that the cushions, if flung with the correct wrist action, would float and glide gracefully on to the pitch. One particular match raised the ire of the fans to such an extent that hundreds of these cushions rained on to the pitch like a green cloud.
But Carrow Road had another great charm. In those days the nearby river Wensum was still very much a working river, and sea-going vessels were still plying their trade. If the omens and the tide were right on a Saturday, then 30,000 fans would pour out of the ground at the final whistle and move like a living flood towards the river and the city, only to find that the swing bridge was open and a boat was coming in to Read's mill. Sometimes it would take ten minutes for the masts of the slow and stately vessel to pass the bridge, but eventually the bridge would close, and the human tide would move once more.