The Homes Of Football: Where The Heart Is
by Stuart Roy Clarke – £19.99
Published by The Bluecoat Press 2013
In 2015, the Premier League sold TV rights to broadcast its games for a record £5.14 billion. Yet even with record sums of television money flowing through the national game, the average season ticket price stands at £517.95 – a 1000% price rise in the past 20 years. Many football fans feel the game is slipping away from its working class roots and into hands of the wealthy few. Photographer Stuart Roy Clarke showcases the intimacy of watching the national game in an era just before football descended into a game swimming in money.
Clarke spent 25 years visiting almost 400 grounds in the United Kingdom, from the late 1980s to the mid 2000s. After the Hillsborough Disaster in 1989, he set out to document the design of many of Britain’s old football grounds before the findings of the Taylor Report came into effect. The report exposed the poor safety of many of these grounds, and forced most teams to either leave their original stadiums or replace their standing terraces with seats. Clarke stated that the aim of these photos was “to show the beauty of a nation, even if a lot of what its people say and do is not beautiful. And to show the beauty of football that is ever more a World game. And to keep on showing it.”
While many people find old football grounds ugly and uninviting, Clarke celebrates the unconventional beauty of these structures. A lot have stood since the beginning of the previous century, their walls having absorbed thousands of rapturous noises over almost 150 years of football played. His work includes photographs from the furore of a once majestic Wembley stadium during Euro 96 to a photo of Veetch Park in Swansea during a match bordering three back yards.
However, not only does he celebrate the old structures that have dotted the landscape of Britain for decades, he salutes football fans who filled these places week in and week out. Football is a collective experience. No matter who you are on the outside, once you are in the stands, you’re all the same. His photos show the multitude of emotions that millions of fans experience every week up and down the country, from the sheer joy of a last minute winner to the crushing despair of a loss, to the collective comfort of sharing these experiences with your best friends and family.
Reading The Homes of Football rekindles hope that football will not be lost forever into a world of £90 match day tickets and multi-billion pound TV deals. It showcases an endearing reality that is an irreplaceable part of the national culture.
The Homes Of Football, Where the Heart is is available to purchase in our independent bookshop.
Words by David Williams