ExeterGround: St. James´ Park Visits: 1 Date: 2nd January 2012 Match: Exeter - Yeovil 1-1 (League 1) Attendance: 5 912
For day four of this tour I had plenty of matches to choose from. With this Monday being a Bank Holiday all the English leagues had a full round of matches. In the end I decided for Exeter vs Yeovil at St James´ Park. Being kind of a derby I knew there would be a decent crowd at this match. With Exeter being "only" a two hours direct train journey from my base in Cheltenham it was a fairly easy trip as well. Exeter is situated in Devon and the city was founded around year 50 as a Roman city. I knew the city centre of such a historical town would be worth visiting so I set off earlier than I would have otherwise. My train arrived at Exeter St Davids train station by 12.30 and I straight away made my way to the city centre. It was as nice as I had expected (see pictures below) and I can understand why this town is busy during the tourist season.
St James´ Park is situated quite close to the city centre and I was outside the ground by 13.15. The ground has a capacity of 9 200 and is a mixture of new and old (a common theme on this trip!). The old Grandstand has around 600 seats. One odd thing is that the stand is 3/4 to the left of the half-way line. It looked a bit unbalanced from my seat on the opposite side. The impressive home terrace is named after former Exeter and Arsenal hero Cliff Bastin. The away terrace is not that impressive. Only a couple of steps and uncovered. For most matches the visitors get 150 (covered) seats in the Grandstand as well though. My seat was in the Flybe (South) Stand. My ticket was in row J but this was actually row 4, row A was the top row. I have never seen this before. The seat was barely covered but fortunately it only rained for 10 minutes or so during the match. The match itself was only 2 minutes old when Exeter hit the Yeovil bar from close range. For most of the first half Yeovil were the better team though and they deservedly scored the first goal of the match. 1-0 to the visitors at half-time. The second half saw an improved Exeter performance and they created some good chances before eventually equalising. The match ended 1-1, a fair result in my opinion.
The walk back to St Davids station took me just under 20 minutes. It was quite cold by now but thankfully I only had to wait 10 minutes for the warm train taking me back to Cheltenham. Another interesting ground visited by me and combined with the nice city centre Exeter was indeed the correct choice this Bank Holiday Monday.
Clock Tower
Exeter Cathedral
A nice house
Match!
Rear of the Grandstand
Outside St James´ Park
Outside St James´ Park
Yeovil fans outside the ground
St James´ Road End
Grandstand
Cliff Bastin Terrace
Yeovil fans
View of play
Grandstand
Kick-off
View of St James´ Park
Cliff Bastin Terrace
Pano
Pano |