Walsall blogger Mark Jones muses over 20 years of the ‘new’ stadium as a book chronicling two decades of home is planned.

There’s been a sharp rise in the amount of Saddlers related literature in the last few years. Why the devil not, we are the club that produced Shakespeare and Keates after all.

Recent match programmes have been advertising a book ‘celebrating’ 20 years of the brave new world that was the Bescot Stadium and asking for contributions.

I’ve thought about it, 20 years of playing anywhere will provide plenty of memories – good, bad and indifferent.

Four promotions, three relegations, 10 bosses, six or seven caretakers, thankfully just the one Director of Football/Football Consultant, five shirt sponsors, three badges, about 75 different kits -not forgetting chief executive Roy Whalley and chairman Jeff Bonser of course.

From the lows of the first few dreadful years under Kenny Hibbitt to the highs of the Ray Graydon era, the massive missed opportunity of the Colin Lee years, whatever was going on under Paul Merson through to the now encouraging signs under Chris Hutchings and Martin O’Connor.

You’ve got the greats – O’Connor the player, Jimmy Walker, Andy Rammell, Adrian Viveash and Don Goodman’s hair. Then there’s the Martin Singleton’s, the Martin Lane’s, the Mark Paston’s and seemingly endless foreign trialists.

Brilliant and memorable victories, a disproportionately large number against the Albion and Stoke , and crushing disappointments, from a play-off semi-final to the recent visit of Bristol Rovers, there’s so much to choose from.

But then again I also thought what’s so special about a 20th anniversary? A silver anniversary yes or even a 21st, but 20 years? There must be method in the madness but I can’t see it.

Then I started thinking of what the Banks’s is like on a matchday. The times it’s devoid of atmosphere, the way fans are spread too thinly around the stadium, the trek through the mud that most of us have to make for about 6 months of the season and of course the damned stanchions.

Around 20 years ago there must’ve been a meeting at board level where the approval was given to accept the dull, unimaginative design for Bescot.

Some blinking idiot decided to lumber us with obstructive metal posts and a 12,000 capacity with limited scope to expand. In other words, a carbon copy of Scunthorpe’s Blandford Park.

What has always bugged me is why they went for that size at the time. Granted – save for a relatively short period from about 1999 to 2004 – we’ve hardly packed out the place in two decades, but think about these stats: -

In 1988 the two Bristol City Play-Off home games attracted crowds of over 13,000, in 1987 the F.A. Cup marathon against Watford had two 16,000 sell outs,
and in 1984 – pre-legislation that followed the Bradford fire tragedy – the Liverpool Milk Cup Semi second leg was watched by just under 20,000 fans.

Also prior to moving in to Bescot, the Saddlers had spent just one promotion-winning season in the bottom division in thirty years. Our role models Scunthorpe had spent nearly all of the 1970′s and 1980′s in Division Four.

Hardly aspirational was it?

Some might say what’s done is done, but to me the echoes of this lack of vision and lack of ambition are still being felt today.

The only redeveloped part of the ground offers decent facilities and looks good for sure, but the high roof and the number of fans sitting upstairs has had a negative impact on the noise levels inside the ground as the crowds have dropped in the last few years.

There don’t seem to be any plans, even long term ones, to improve facilities in the rest of the ground and the only place for any future expansion – should we ever need it – would be behind the away end, in the shadow of the advertising board.

So I think I’ll pass on the festivities in 2010- unless of course there are going to be some on the pitch.