As Bad As Things Got: Bristol Rovers, 16th August 1980

When fire swept through the main stand at Eastville at the start of the 1980/81 season, the stadium's football tenants were suddenly left high and dry.

There were flowerbeds behind the goal there, once.

It is fairly commonly agreed in England that supporters prefer to be closer to the action. There are no pitches in the Premier League surrounded by athletics tracks at present, and even in the world of the Premier League, Tottenham Hotspur’s new stadium was widely praised for how close to it many fans were. It hasn’t ever been thus, though. Brighton & Hove Albion used Withdean for a decade, while Rotherham United also used the athletics track-surrounded Don Valley Stadium for four years.

Athletics isn’t the only sport to have co-existed alongside football, though. Some went to the dogs. Wembley Stadium hosted regular greyhound meets from December 1927 until December 1998. This was so important to their revenue that, even during the 1966 World Cup finals, one match—a match from England’s group, between Uruguay and France—had to be moved to White City Stadium after they refused to reschedule one of their regular meets. In its heyday in the 1940s, crowds of 70,000 were commonplace.