The 50 Greatest Goal Posts of All-Time
In April 2020, while we were all in lockdown, I had a bit of a 'moment'. Now it's time to revisit it.
In April 2020, this country was in a state of tumult. A pandemic was ripping its way through society and we were all under lockdown, unable to leave our homes except for state-mandated exercise and visits to the shop. So I used this time in the most productive way I could; to document arguably the most enduring of my football obsessions over the course of five consecutive days, and now it’s time to revisit those five days in one lump. I make no apologies for this. At a fundamental level, this post is who I am.
No small part of the appeal of football rests in its ephemera. It isn’t just about the matches, the results, and who wins the league titles and the cups. The game is just as much a cultural phenomenon as it is a sport, and most of us take at least a little something more from it than merely the games themselves. Imagine, if you will, that you’re on a train or in a car, and that said train or car passes a playing field or a football stadium. It’s a familiar feeling, that tiny frisson as your synapses are tickled at everything that is suggested to you by merely seeing them in passing, and it can feel the same whether you happen to see the grand arch of Wembley or a lonely looking set of goalposts on a school playing field.
Goalposts matter. They’re the crescendo of the whole point of a game. When a ball hits a goal net, something happens. It’s the culmination of the reason why we’re there to such a point that, even if the ball hits the outside of the side-netting a roar of some description will go up from those whose viewing angle has fooled them into thinking that the ball has actually gone into the goal. They may sit at either end of the pitch, but they’re also its centre-piece. A football pitch without goalposts is just a patch of grass, even if the lines have been marked out. Add three wooden posts, two eight feet high and one eight yards wide, at either end, though, and it becomes something completely different.
And in recent years, it has started to feel as though clubs don’t care very much about them. There are reasons why practicality has come to overtake aesthetics in the modern game (and these will be covered throughout this five-part series), but the end result is the same. Football looks the same wherever you go in the world, these days. The same kit manufacturers churning out the same templates around the globe. Official league match balls which are mutually beneficial for manufacturers and leagues. And the same style of goal post, the box goal, its netting drawn taut, held up by poles sat back from it all, usually with a U-shaped metal bar around the bottom, holding it all down. And in this rush towards global conformity, something has been lost. Something sensual. Something that connects us deeply to how we feel about the game at its basest level.
Firstly, though, an origin story.
The Eton Wall Game, one of the australopithecines to modern football’s homo sapiens, is recorded as far back as 1717 as using a garden door at one end of the pitch and an elm tree marked in white at the other. The different rules used by different public schools in the first half of the nineteenth century couldn’t agree on what width and height they should be, and it took the codification of the game in 1863 to set the dimensions (arbitrarily, so far as anyone is aware) at eight yards wide and eight feet high. It hasn’t changed since. A line of tape was originally strung between the tops of the posts after a member club witnessed a goal being scored which passed between the posts but “quite 90 feet in the air”, and the first recorded use of a solid crossbar was in the Sheffield rules of the game in 1866, although the FA could not permit their use until 1875. A solid crossbar was made mandatory in 1882.
It soon became evident that, with goalposts having adopted this particular shape, something else was needed. With the game being played on pitches with little actual grass on them, with dark brown balls, and frequently in poor light (floodlights wouldn’t even be allowed for competitive matches by the FA fot more than half a century), it could be difficult to judge whether a shot had passed between the posts or wide of them, and the dawning of the professional game after 1885 may have fed the notion that the honesty of players couldn’t be trusted if the referee’s view was obscured or impossible due to the conditions. Adding a net to the goals was the idea of one JA Brodie, an engineer and referee from Liverpool, in 1889. The Football League sanctioned their use in 1889, and the FA agreed to it almost immediately.
And whilst everything else concerned with football has changed over the intervening 130 years, the goal net is almost unique in that it hasn’t changed very much at all. Pitch technology has turned the vast majority of professional pitches into green carpets. Kits have changed from button-up shirts and knickerbockers into leisurewear for the masses. Match balls are no more made of leather, with more durable materials having been used since the early 1980s. Even pitch markings have changed radically as the laws of the game evolved. But the goal net has barely changed. Stanchions of varying types were added over the years, but the modern box net is, if anything, very similar to the design used by many clubs right up until the 1930s, tethered back by rope and poles in order to not get in a goalkeeper’s way.
The “rules”(such as they are).
This series of articles is meant to entertain and tell some interesting stories, so while I, like many of you, have one or two preferred styles, I’ve disregarded that in favour of a few that tell interesting stories, a few that just look plain weird, and a variety from around the world. And whilst I’ve pulled out a top ten that will make up the final piece, I have neither the time nor the inclination to try and rank all 50 of these. The ranking isn’t what matters, no matter how closely we may associate anything football-related with league tables. There is a slightly Anglocentric bias to this list, for the simple reason that this is where I’ve seen the vast majority of matches that I’ve ever watched. That said, barely a third of the total list are from English clubs.
So, then… shall we?
50. Every Sunday League Pitch Ever:
Anybody who has ever walked a dog across a park at half past nine on a Sunday morning during the football season will be more than familiar with the site of someone balanced precariously on the shoulders of another, as though attempting an impersonation of The Anthill Mob without a trench coat, strips of tape in their mouth, wobbling unsteadily from side to side as they attempt to affix a goal net to a rusty crossbar which still has strips of tape from months and years gone by still stuck to it.
This is the goal net in its purest form. No poles holding it up, no stanchions, nothing but a small – and, as the season proceeds, usually diminishing – number of pegs to hold it in place. The Sunday league goalkeeper has a lot on their plate already. Lumps of brick or broken glass in the goalmouth are not, on the whole, something that professionals ever need to worry about. And near the top of that list of additional concerns is the goal net which, particularly on a windy day, may become detached from its mooring and blow across the goal-line, setting yet another trap for the hapless custodian. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this style of setting up a goal is never seen in the professional – or even semi-professional – game.
49. Tynecastle, Edinburgh (mid-1960s to mid-1980s):
Tynecastle, the home of Heart of Midlothian, earns its place on this list for this curved stanchion, which sat in place at their home for around two decades, from the middle of the 1960s until they were replaced by a more familiar-looking D-stanchion in around 1983. Hearts had a slightly iffy patch during the late 1970s, getting relegated from the Scottish Premier League twice and promoted straight back at the first attempt both times, so it’s nice to know that their supporters had something this pleasant to look at during those troubled times.
48. The Dell, Southampton (late-1970s to early 1990s):
A good number of traditional football grounds were built in central or residential locations and space was at a premium to the extent that the pitchside environment could be very cramped indeed. Clubs in this situation had to make do and mend, meaning that the touchline itself would be no more than a few feet from the crowd and the shallowness of the goals at such grounds (some of which are now departed or have been radically overhauled) meant that goalmouth scrambles would almost invariably end up with someone getting tangled up in the back of the goal.
Space was so cramped at The Dell that, as you can see from the attached video, the nets at the Milton Road end of the ground doubled back on themselves. Quite how this would be dealt with nowadays is a moot point. When Luton Town, who were in the same predicament space-wise, it was said that they had to replace their goals to standard box goals at the end of last season upon promotion into the Championship because those contain the required equipment for goal line technology. The club certainly had to spend £1m on improvements last summer, including shifting the position of the television camera gantry from one side of the ground to the other.
47. Old Trafford, Manchester (1981-1986):
Manchester United had enjoyed a tradition L-stanchion at Old Trafford for years and years, but in the summer of 1981 the netting, which had been of the smaller mesh anti-hooligan variety since the middle of the 1960s, was hung down in front of the stanchions rather than wearing them like an overcoat. Initially, they were hung tautly, and quite close to the goal line, but as though growing with age they pushed back over the intervening years until the summer of 1986, when they were replaced with D-stanchions. These, however, only lasted eight years before being replaced by box goals.
46. Highfield Road, Coventry (1980):
Of course, there was likely a reason why Manchester United started to hang their nets in front of their L-stanchions around this particular time. On the 6th September 1980, Coventry City entertained Crystal Palace at Highfield Road, and there was huge controversy when a long-range shot from Palace’s Clive Allen hit the back L-stanchion of the goal and bounced straight back out. The referee, however, somehow missed the fact that the ball had clearly crossed the line and played on as though nothing had happened.
It wasn’t the first time that this had happened. In 1909, West Bromwich Albion were playing Blackpool, but when a shot bounced out off a tightly-pulled net the referee urged the players to continue. Albion missed promotion that season by 0.0186 on goal average. But in 1980, television cameras were watching. Millions saw it unfold the following day on Match Of The Day. Allen’s disallowed non-goal became known as “The goal that never was”, and several clubs, not wanting to be caught out in the same way, hung their nets down in front of their stanchions. Coventry replaced their L-stanchions with D-stanchions at the end of the 1980/81 season.
45. The Råsunda Stadium, Stockholm (1958):
The nets on the goals at the Råsunda bore witness to the arrival of Pele on the international football scene, and they were of a different design to those used for most of the rest of the tournament. Most of the grounds used in Sweden for the 1958 World Cup finals had a D-support stanchion (1958 was the only tournament at which these were seen), but the national stadium went instead for the more traditional full support L-stanchion, with nets hanging loosely over them which gave them the impression of leaping to their feet as Pele thundered his opening goal of the match. The Råsunda, which was located in Solna, just to the north of Stockholm, was demolished in 2013, with the 50,000 capacity Friends Arena having replaced it.
44. Megyeri úti Stadion, Budapest (1969):
The Inter Cities Fairs Cup is one of the great half-forgotten tournaments of European club football. Set up to promote trade fairs and not organised by UEFA, it was initially only open to teams from cities that hosted trade fairs and where these teams finished in their national league was considered an irrelevance. In order to not interfere with league fixtures it was initially played over the course of three seasons before going annual in 1960, and a London XI, Birmingham City and Leeds United all reached the final before Newcastle United finally became its first English winners in 1969.
Newcastle won their first leg by three goals to nil against the Hungarian side Ujpesti Dozsa, and when the second leg came around in Budapest, there was an omen in the air in that the goal posts at the Megyeri úti Stadion were painted in… black and white stripes. Duly, Newcastle won the second leg, and took the trophy with a 6-2 aggregate win. This, however, was the beginning of the end of an era on two fronts. The Inter Cities Fairs Cup was superseded by the UEFA Cup in 1971, and Newcastle United haven’t won a major trophy since. The stadium was renamed the Szusza Ferenc Stadion in 2003. It’s goal posts, regrettably, are now plain white.
43. Kaftanzoglio Stadium, Thessalonika (1983):
Conditions were not easy for England, when they travelled to Greece to play a European Championship qualifier in Thessalonika in November 1982. There was, predictably, violence amongst the travelling England support before the match, and the pitch at the Kaftanzoglio Stadium was uneven and rain-sodden. Furthermore, had the weather been any better the players might have needed sunglasses, considering the luminous orange goal-netting hanging at each end of the pitch. Curiously, the goals also had not only their bases painted black, but also the junctions between the posts and the crossbar painted the same colour. England, wearing arguably their finest ever kit (the red Admiral kit, as used in the 1982 World Cup finals), won the match three goals to nil, in arguably their best performance of an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to qualify for Euro 84.
42. La Bombonera, Buenos Aires (2019):
There are few major football stadiums in the world as instantly recognisable as La Bombonera, home of Boca Juniors. Formally known as El Estadio Alberto J Armando, it’s known as La Bombonera on account of its unique shape, with one almost flat stand and three steeply banking stands, all combining to create a stadium with a capacity of 54,000. The goal posts there haven’t changed in their style in a very, very long time indeed, with poles used as stanchions creating a box shape which only seems to add to the sense that the crowd are almost literally right on top of the pitch. We don’t pay anywhere near as much attention to South American club football in Europe as we should, but we’ll find out over the course of this series that South Americans seem to have a sharper sense of the aesthetic importance of the goal itself.
41. Estadio El Moninon, Gijon (1982):
They say that the best World Cup is the one held closest to your tenth birthday, so I make no apologies for the 1982 World Cup finals making more than one appearance in this list. El Moninon hosted two of the most notable matches of the group stages of this tournament, one for all the right reasons, one for… not the right reasons. The biggest shock of the first round, Algeria’s 2-1 win against West Germany was played here, but so was a match which has subsequently become known as the “Shame of Gijon”, West Germany’s pedestrian-paced 1-0 win against Austria, a match which ensured that both teams qualified for the second round of the tournament at the expense of Algeria, and that the final rounds of group matches would be played simultaneously in order to prevent a repeat of such shenanigans from 1986 on. El Molinon, whose goal nets were further enhanced by an extra line of cord halfway down, is the oldest professional football stadium in Spain, having first opened in 1908, and remains in use by Sporting Gijon to this day.
40. Stamford Bridge, London (1982):
By the autumn of 1982, Chelsea were in deep trouble. Crowds had fallen to four figures and, whilst the team remained mired in the Second Division and seemed to be sliding towards the Third, the entire club was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. When ITV’s television cameras visited Stamford Bridge for their match against Charlton Athletic on the 23rd October, then, viewers saw a team that was a pale shadow of a decade earlier. And the question of WHAT THE HELL ARE THOSE GOAL POSTS ABOUT, CHELSEA seems like a fair one to ask. These are possibly the closest to a home-made set seen in anything like recent times at a professional club.
Chelsea won this match by three goals to one, but their season didn’t improve a great deal after this and they only narrowly avoided relegation, come the end of it all. And Colin Pates’ thunderous second goal was of such high quality that a view from it filmed from behind the goal were on display for the remainder of the season as part of the opening titles to The Big Match, which is rather like your high school prom picture being one of you wearing a dressing gown and a cigarette hanging out the corner of your mouth, taken at seven o’clock in the morning. If anyone could fill me in on how these came about, I would be enormously grateful.
39. The City Ground, Nottingham (1985):
It’s entirely plausible that the state of Chelsea’s goals during the 1982/83 season is explainable by the club’s desperate financial state at the time. If their previous set got damaged – and considering how much hooliganism there was about at the time, that wouldn’t be completely unsurprising – and they didn’t have the several hundred pounds required for a replacement set, it’s not difficult to imagine the YTS groundsman’s assistant being given a can of white paint, a bag of nails, a hammer and a saw, and being told to get on with it and do his best.
At Nottingham Forest in the 1980s, though, there was a curiosity of similar mystery that can’t be explained by desperate financial circumstances. If you look very closely at the linked video above, you’ll note that the D-stanchions on both goals at The City Ground were different shapes on the two sides. This, it would appear, was a design feature. Either sort of stanchion was in use elsewhere, but this mix and match attitude raises several questions. Could they be a symbol of the breakdown in the relationship between Brian Clough and Peter Taylor? Was this an oblique reference to having won the European Cup twice? (Seems unlikely.) The masses should be told.
38. Nepstadion, Budapest (1981):
Continuing the theme of D-stanchions in unusual predicaments (look, if you replaced “D-stanchions'' with “cats” and put it all on YouTube, it would be racking up millions of views), it’s time to head to Eastern Europe for another England away day, this time to play Hungary in Budapest in a qualification match for the 1982 World Cup. England desperately needed the win, and the scores were tied at 1-1 with time running out when Trevor Brooking, who’d already scored England’s opening goal of the night, struck with a thunderous shot from the right hand side of the penalty area that got thoroughly wedged in the right hnd stanchion of the goal. It was the defining moment of Brooking’s England career, and it also turned out to be something of a swansong for him. This was the last goal he scored for his country, and he made the last of his 47 appearances for his country at the following summer’s finals.
37. Estadio Nacional, Santiago (1962):
“The phones don’t work, taxis are as rare as faithful husbands, a cable to Europe costs an arm and a leg and a letter takes five days to turn up”, and its population as prone to “malnutrition, illiteracy, alcoholism and poverty. Chile is a small, proud and poor country: it has agreed to organise this World Cup in the same way as Mussolini agreed to send our air force to bomb London (they didn’t arrive). The capital city has 700 hotel beds. Entire neighbourhoods are given over to open prostitution. This country and its people are proudly miserable and backwards.”
Fighting words, you might think, and you’d be right. Chile had been devastated by the 1960 Valvidia earthquake, the strongest ever recorded, and it was little short of a miracle that they were even able to host a World Cup finals two years later at all. So it’s understandable if the words of two Italian journalists at the tournament upset the host nation, somewhat, and when the two countries met in a group match, it was predictably fractious. At the Estadio Nacional in Santiago, where the match was played, the groundsman seems to have been torn between what style of goal to go for. At one end, the nets were pulled over the curved (somehow reminiscent of the art deco stylings of the 1920s and 1930s) stanchions as tightly as they could go, whilst at the other they are stretched back like a bride’s wedding train. This venue was, of course, also used for the final between Brazil and Czechoslovakia.
36. St James Park, Exeter (2005):
There’s a lot to be said for longevity. By the start of 2005, Exeter City were starting to clamber out of the most desperate period in the entire history of the club. Relegated into the Football Conference in 2003, Exeter City were rescued by their supporters trust, and in 2004, a Creditors Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) was put in place to reduce the club’s debts. In January 2005, however, came a massive slice of luck when they reached the Third Round of the FA Cup and drew an away match against Manchester United. They made a little over £650,000 in shared gate receipts from this match alone, and when they managed a goalless draw, they made even more money from a home replay that was televised live by the BBC. It seems unlikely that Cristiano Ronaldo, who was playing that night for Manchester United, has seen anything like it since.
But Exeter City had kept the faith with their L-shaped stanchions. It’s likely that the club’s financial position didn’t exactly help matters at the time in terms of updating the club’s equipment, but by 2005 St James Park was something of a throwback in several respects regardless, with houses clearly visible along one side of the ground and a small open terrace at one end. This particular terrace has been replaced with a new one with a roof now and the goals have been replaced with box goals, but St James Park remains one of the most charming grounds in the entire Football League to visit.
35. The Olympic Stadium, Tokyo (1981):
Football is available in ultra high definition these days, with surround sound and very familiar names. It’s a global game. To say that it wasn’t ever thus is becoming something of a cliché these days, but this doesn’t make it any less true. Go back almost forty years, however, and things were somewhat different. Take, for example, the World Club Championship final from December 1981. The grass is a different shade, the horns are ringing loudly in the air, and the commentary is distorted. And there’s Flamengo, featuring some of the best players from a Brazil team that was widely expected to win the World Cup the following summer and wearing shirts with red and navy blue halved sleeves. Football through a filter.
I’ll never get to many of the stadiums in this list. Some of them have already been demolished. But I did make it to the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo, at the end of 2006. It was built for the 1964 Olympic Games, and it didn’t look much as though the toilets had been upgraded since then, either. The goal posts had changed too, of course. Box goals having long since superseded those seen at the end of 1981, when I was a child, the pictures were fuzzy, the horns were discordant, the goals were tidy, and of a South American style.
34. Wankdorfstadion, Bern (1954):
Now, now, now. No chuckling at the back of the class. The Wankdorfstadion played host to one of the most important football matches of the entire 1950s, the 1954 World Cup final between West Germany and Hungary. West Germany was back on the international stage after a period of exile following the Second World War. Hungary had been the golden team of the last four years, the team that had completed the demolition of English pretensions of superiority on the international stage. And Hungary had already beaten West Germany by 8 goals to 3 in a group match.
With Ferenc Puskas injured (but playing regardless), Hungary went 2-0 up before West Germany fought back to win 3-2. It was a result that set in motion the growth of the German team that would see it become one of the most powerful in the international game. And the goalposts at the Wankdorf are notable, with nets tethered down along the side by strips of wood so broad that they could pass for wainscotting, whilst at the back there is a length of metal tubing shaped to pull the nets back from the goal. Austerity goalposts for an age when a whole continent was still recovering from a calamitous war.
33. Brisbane Road, London (2020):
The most recent video you’ll see on this list is from 2020, a League Two match between Leyton Orient and Mansfield Town. On most levels this should look like a fairly standard lower division football match, but there’s something significant about all of this. Brisbane Road was the last hold-out against the tyranny of the box goal in the entire Football League now. The D-stanchion reigned supreme in this little corner of East London until the start of the 2023/24.
32. Ullevi, Gothenburg (1983):
Ullevi is a multi-purpose stadium in Gothenburg with an illustrious history. It was built for the 1958 World Cup finals and hosted seven matches, including a quarter-final and a semi-final, the European Cup Winners Cup final twice, the first leg of a two-legged UEFA Cup final in 1987, the UEFA Cup final itself in 2004, and five matches at Euro 92, including a semi-final and the final itself. On top of this, it also held the first American football match played in Europe between two NFL teams (a pre-season match in 1988), and both the European and World Athletics Championships. In 1985 it almost collapsed under the weight of a Bruce Springsteen concert and had to be reinforced.
It is the 1983 European Cup Winners Cup final between Aberdeen and Real Madrid that really grabs our attention here, though. On a thoroughly rain-sodden night, Aberdeen won their first (and to date only) European trophy on a pitch that was resplendent with silver goal posts at each end. FIFA’s laws of the game now stipulate that goal posts have to be white, but this can’t have been the case 37 years ago. The hosts topped this off with green goal nets, giving the over impression that this match might have been played from a vision of the future imagined by Gerry Anderson.
Situated in the Luz area of Lisbon (all of which makes Sunderland calling their stadium the Stadium of Light a little strange, even though “luz” is the Portuguese word for “light”), Estadio da Luz was the largest stadium in Europe and the third largest in the world at one point, when a 1985 renovation increased its capacity to 120,000 people. It was demolished in 2002, with a replacement being built for Euro 2004, and was the home of one of Europe's most successful teams in the 1960s, with the Benfica team of Eusebio calling it home.
And a big stadium, of course, required big goals. The linked video shows them knocking five goals past Sporting in 1986, and if you can get past the slightly unusual camera angle, which is far closer to one end of the pitch than it is to the other, you can see hulking great L-stanchioned constructions with black painted bases and luminous orange nets.
30. Estadio Olímpico Atahualpa – Quito (1970):
As part of their preparations for the 1970 FIFA World Cup being held in Mexico that summer, the England football team planned to play two friendly matches in South America against Colombia and Ecuador to help them prepare for the high altitudes they would face once the tournament began. What followed, of course, provoked international news headlines, when the England captain Bobby Moore was accused of stealing a bracelet from a jewellery store, a baseless charge which still resulted in Moore in front of a judge, answering the accusations.
The Estadio Olimpico Atahualpa is, at a little over 9,000 feet above sea level, situated at an extremely rarefied altitude, and some degree of oxygen starvation may account for the extraordinary goal posts that greeted the England team when they ran out onto the pitch there. These goalposts, with black bases and multiple stanchions holding the nets back, might be best described as “ornate”, and they didn’t seem to do any harm to England’s performance. A 2-0 win was a solid performance for the tournament ahead.
29. The 1994 World Cup Finals – USA (1994):
Sometimes, goalposts and goal nets can be divisive, and few are more so than those used by the United States of America at their nine venues chosen for the 1994 World Cup finals. On the one hand, they are undoubtedly luxuriant and billowing. On the other, though, the argument has been put forward that they’re almost too much. Too opulent. Showing off. They certainly wobble pleasingly when a shot of sufficient velocity hits them.
But this in itself indicates an inherent vulnerability, and this was demonstrated in the most vivid manner possible during the Quarter Final match between Mexico and Bulgaria, when play came to a halt after one of the stanchions supporting the Mexican goal collapsed under the weight of several players falling into the net at the same time. In this instance a replacement goal enabled the game to continue, but few should have been surprised by this happening. A portent for something similar had been seen during the opening ceremony for the tournament, when Diana Ross’s penalty kick flew wide, only for the goal to explode anyway. A worse penalty kick wouldn’t be seen again throughout the entire tournament until Roberto Baggio asked the whole world to hold his beer in the final.
28. Cairo International Stadium, Cairo (1974):
Cairo International Stadium is the spiritual home of Egyptian football. It was the stadium at which the country won its first ever qualification for the World Cup finals, in 1989. It’s held the final of the African Cup of Nations four times, including last year. It’s hosted numerous derby matches between Al-Ahly and Zamalek. In 1986, over 120,000 fans watched the 1986 African Cup of Nations Final match between Egypt and Cameroon. In 1974, the country held the African Cup of Nations for the first time, but when the hosts were knocked out in the semi-finals by Zaire, the bottom fell out of interest in it.
Just 5,000 people turned out for the final between Zaire and Zambia, and they missed a dramatic final, with two goals in the last four minutes of extra-time forcing a replay. Just 1,000 people turned out for that. All of this was played out in a stadium with huge, voluptuous L-stanchions, stretched in a manner befitting such a huge stadium. The Cairo International Stadium was completely renovated in 2005, ahead of the 2006 African Cup of Nations, and now holds 74,000 people.
27. Molineux, Wolverhampton (1995):
The love of a good goal post doesn’t necessarily have to solely be a visual experience. Sometimes, the sound can be just as important. Molineux had had a form of D-stanchions since the 1930s, but their crowning glory came as the team battled (ultimately unsuccessfully, as things turned out) to get back into the Premier League in the middle of the 1990s. A decent FA Cup run had taken them past Mansfield Town, Sheffield Wednesday and Leicester City, and when they drew 1-1 at Crystal Palace in the quarter-finals, it seemed as though there was a distinct chance that they could reach their first FA Cup semi-final in almost a decade and a half.
When the replay came about, though, Wolves found themselves up against a Palace team that really had its shooting boots on. Palace won by four spectacular goals to one at Molineux, and the emphatic nature of the win only seemed underlined by the “CLUNK” sound as both the third and fourth Palace goals smacked against the goal stanchions, the last one getting as wedged there as Trevor Brooking’s shot had for England in Budapest had fourteen years earlier. Wolves were out of the FA Cup, and come the end of the season, they were beaten in the play-offs as well.
26. The Racecourse Ground, Wrexham (1985):
Sometimes, everything comes together at the same time. There is nothing particularly spectacular about the sharply angled D-stanchions of The Racecourse Ground, but their aesthetic fits in perfectly with one of Wales’ best international results of the 1980s, their 3-0 win against Spain in a World Cup qualifier played there in 1985. It’s all there. The Adidas Tango ball. The sumptuous Wales kit. The packed crowd on the terrace behind the goal. And, of course, Mark Hughes delivered a magnificent bicycle kick of a shot which shaved the underside of the crossbar before ending up in the corner of the net. These same posts were also on duty seven years later, of course, when a thunderous Mickey Thomas free-kick helped Wrexham (then bottom of the entire Football League) to knock Arsenal out of the FA Cup.
25. Roker Park, Sunderland (1984):
The thought that you used to be able to identify a stadium is hardly a new one, but the idea that you may have been able to do so without previously having seen them before might just be. Sunderland replaced their goalposts at the start of the 1980s, and the new set probably couldn’t have suited any other club better. This match against Manchester United from 1984 shows them off in their full glory. The small mesh anti-hooligan nets may not have been popular with ground staff (as someone who has had to carry them in the past, trust me when I tell you how much heavier they were than nets with a bigger mesh), but the white here, combined with the red of the stanchions, is undeniably, unmistakably Sunderland. They were removed in 1988, and replaced by an altogether more standard D-stanchion, which remained until Roker Park was demolished upon the construction of the Stadium of Light.
24. St James Park, Newcastle-upon Tyne (likely early 1960s-1996):
Continuity can count for a lot. When English football’s movements toward “continental” style goal frames became a rush, Newcastle United went for something ever so slightly different, and therefore completely distinctive. The stanchions at St James Park were a U shape rather than a D shape. It’s difficult to say exactly when they were introduced – I know for certain that it was between 1956 and 1967, though I’m unable to be any more precise than this – but they were immediately distinctive, and they stayed in place for a considerable amount of time. Sometimes the nets were taut, on other occasions they sagged. Sometimes they were plain white, and on other occasions they were black and white striped. But they were removed for Euro 96, as happened at many other grounds (including Wembley), and they never returned.
23 & 22. Dens Park & Tannadice Park (Dundee) (1986):
Two rivals with grounds so close to each other that they could hurl insults at each other from their respective stands, Dundee and Dundee United both had a strong nets game during the 1980s. Dundee United won the Premier Division of the Scottish League in 1983, reached the semi-finals of the European Cup the following year, and won the UEFA Cup in 1987 with these L-shaped stanchions, with nets in proportion to the club’s home kot of orange and black. Pleasingly, the goals just over the road at Dens Park were the same, but different. Dundee went for a D-stanchion, but with nets that were navy blue with white side-netting. They had a considerably more modest decade than their rivals, but they were involved in one of the more memorable games of the 1980s there when, on the last day of the 1985/86 season, they beat Hearts 2-0 to deny the Edinburgh club their first Scottish league championship since 1960.
21. Cardiff Arms Park, Cardiff (1994):
The home of Welsh rugby since 1881, Cardiff Arms Park went through several iterations before the National Stadium was completed there in 1984, but it took several years before the Welsh national football team started to use it. They finally started to use it regularly from 1990 on, and three years later found themselves going into their final group match in qualification for the 1994 World Cup finals knowing that a win against Romania would send them to the USA. They fell behind following a first half mistake by goalkeeper Neville Southall, but Dean Saunders pulled them level and then, almost straight from the kick-off, a foul on Gary Speed gave them a penalty kick. Paul Bodin stepped up and, in one of the most infamous moments in the history of Welsh football, hit the crossbar. A late goal from Florin Răducioiu put the matter beyond any remaining doubt.
With its facilities already antiquated and the requirement to turn all-seater threatening to drop its capacity to just 34,000, the National Stadium was already showing its age. The 74,000 capacity Millenium Stadium replaced it in 1999. Briefly, though, it was almost a national stadium for the Wales national football team. One of its crossbars, however, has a place in infamy, even if it did top off attractive looking red and white striped small mesh netting. If only, as Wales football supporters likely still occasionally rue, it had been three or four inches higher on that evening in November 1993.
20. Vicarage Road, Watford (1982):
We kick off this evening’s selection in the relatively humble surroundings of the Football League in the early 1980s, in the home counties of England. The meteoric rise of Watford from the Fourth Division to the First was one of the success stories of an otherwise dismal era for football in this country, and it was all accompanied by two of the more remarkable sets of goal posts seen in the country at the time. The D-stanchions on the goal at Vicarage Road were… extraordinary, and one can only wonder at where the instruction to build them that big came from. Were they installed at the behest of Graham Taylor, who arrived at the club from Lincoln City in 1976? Or could they have been the brainchild of chairman Elton John, who was known for being ostentatious, if nothing else? We may never know. All we know for certain is that they were finally replaced by a more conventional D-stanchion in 1985.
19. Bökelberg Stadion, Moenchengladbach (1971):
Some of you may have noted the absence of German venues from this list so far, and there’s a fairly simple reason for this. Germans love a straightforward box net, and have done for as long as there has been professional football in the country. Even box nets can have a story to tell, though. On the 3rd of April 1971, Borussia Moenchengladbach were chasing their second successive Bundesliga title when they welcomed mid-table Werder Bremen to the Bökelberg Stadion. With the scores tied at 1-1, Gladbach striker Herbert Laumen fell into the goal, causing it to collapse. It was established that one of the wooden posts had become rotten over time, and had completely snapped.
Gladbach were expecting the authorities to order the match to be replayed, but instead they awarded a 2-0 win to Bremen and fined Gladbach 1500 marks because they felt that the club should have been checking the condition of the goals and should have been able to fix any problems that occurred. They went on to win the league title by two points from Bayern Munich anyway but Laumen, who won two caps for his country in the late 1960s left the club that summer. His destination? Werder Bremen.
18. Portman Road, Ipswich (1982 & 1994):
The rumour goes, and I have been unable to confirm this definitively, that it was all the Ipswich Town groundsman’s fault. In the summer of 1981, Ipswich replaced their L-stanchion goals with (tiny) D-stanchions, and the following summer, their groundsman had a bright idea. If he could attach a large U-shaped bar to the base of the posts with a hinge, he wouldn’t have to unpeg the netting in order to cut the grass. He could simply lift the entire base instead, and save himself some valuable time. Those bases now exist as standard on all goals. Bars around the base of goals certainly existed prior to this, but building them into the design of the posts? We can’t remember an earlier example.
Spin forward a decade, however, and the rogue Portman Road groundsman seems to have lost his mind. Ipswich had been relegated from the top flight in 1986 after eighteen years, but they were promoted into the first Premier League in the summer of 1993. The tiny D-stanchions had been replaced by this time and the nets were blue rather than white, but the club had something special in store for the top flight supporters making their first visit to Portman Road in six years – two almost entirely superfluous poles added to hold the netting up for no apparent reason whatsoever. Somewhat surprisingly, these monstrosities survived until the club inevitably moved to box goals in the summer of 1996.
17. Azteca Stadium, Mexico City (1971):
Following the success of the 1970 World Cup finals in Mexico, the drinks manufacturers Martini & Rossi poured money into a six team Women’s World Cup to be held in the same country the following year. The tournament was a massive success. Crowds of 80,000 and 100,000 people turned out to watch the host nation’s two group matches against Argentina and England, and their appearance in the final of the competition, where they were finally beaten 3-0 by Denmark, was watched by 115,000 people. Even getting to the final is an achievement that the Mexican men’s team has never managed – they’ve never advanced beyond the quarter-finals. In tune with the clunking sexism of the era, however, the somewhat startling decision was taken to – apparently in order to appeal to women (and we would love to hear the explanation of how this would work in practice) – paint the goalposts in pink and white stripes. Because the girls can’t resist a bit of pink can they, eh, lads?
16. The Empire Stadium, Gzira (1971):
The irony of playing a match between Malta and England at The Empire Stadium is not easily lost. When Malta and England were drawn in the same qualifying group for the 1972 European Championships, Malta had only been independent for seven years, and a lot of tension was expressed that day. Almost 30,000 people crammed into the stadium in February 1971 for a match that many considered would be a walkover for the visitors. England had, after all, reached the quarter-finals of the World Cup in a strong field and might have gone further less than a year earlier.
On the day, though, England laboured to a one-nil win thanks to a goal from Martin Peters, who’d scored a goal in the World Cup final just five years earlier, and when the two sides met again at Wembley three months later, the suggestion that England might run up something approaching a cricket score proved to be somewhat overstated, too. They won five-nil, and Malta put up a second creditable performance against strong opposition.
The Empire Stadium was unlike any other international arena of the era. It had a sandy pitch on a concrete base and fans hanging from just about any viable vantage point and, more significantly to us, it had black and white striped goalposts, as had been seen a couple of years earlier in Hungary when Newcastle United played Ujpest Dozsa in the final of the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. Malta moved into a new stadium, the Ta’ Qali Stadium, in 1981, but The Empire Stadium remains to this day, albeit unused and overgrown.
15. Giants Stadium, New York (1977):
Television coverage of it at the time looked like football beamed in from another planet. A mixture of NTSC cameras – the reason why old American TV shows have that odd, slightly washed-out look on British television sets – and the graininess of old VHS cassettes means that it looks even more other-worldly these days, and that’s before we even touch on the disco-inflected kits, star-spangled match balls and artificial playing surfaces. But the NASL – the North American Soccer League, for the uninitiated – was briefly highly successful, and the jewel in its crown was the New York Cosmos. Sprinkled with stars such as Pele, Franz Beckenbauer and Carlos Alberto, crowds at the Giants Stadium briefly topped 70,000 as the Cosmos peaked in 1977 and 1978.
And the goalposts on the plastic pitch were equally other-worldy, orange nets strung across deep narrow stanchions, all attached to thick posts. Had NASL been more widely broadcast in this country and had it lasted longer – the entire league collapsed under the weight of its financial contradictions in March 1985 – football in this country might have ended up resembling it even more than it did over time, with the introduction of a handful of artificial pitches.
14. Maine Road, Manchester (1977):
Considering the oddities that we’re starting to find as we get higher and higher up this list, you might be forgiven for wondering why a fairly standard set of D-stanchions appear this high up in this list. In fact, if you’ve stuck with this insanity for this long, it’s exactly the sort of question I’d be expecting you to ask. The reason is fairly simple. These are my personal favourites. The set that I would build if I were a groundsman at a football club. And they’re something of a curiosity, as well. Manchester City did away with their L-stanchions in the summer of 1976, but they replaced the nets for the following season with loose-fitting sky blue nets. All very appropriate, considering the colour of the club’s shirts.
So why, then, were they a different colour for that year’s FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Everton? Was this an FA edict from a body concerned that blue nets of any hue might be considered biassed towards Everton? The sky blue nets were still there on the 2nd of April, for the visit of Ipswich Town. But three weeks later they were gone. And they were still gone when Spurs visited Maine Road a couple of weeks later. But by the start of the following season they were back, for the visit of Manchester United. I strongly suspect the involvement of the illuminati.
13. Estadio Jalisco, Guadalajara (1970):
The third largest stadium in Mexico and home of Guadalajara, one of the oldest clubs in the country, the Estadio Jalisco has witnessed more iconic moments than most. It’s hosted fourteen matches in the World Cup finals, including two semi-finals. In 1970, it hosted the group match between England and Brazil as well as Brazil’s quarter and semi-finals matches. And the Jalisco had memorable goals at the time, as well. Black, angled stanchions with the netting pulled down in front of them, all the more impressive because the angles on the stanchions seem to be connected with what look like plumbing bends.
12. Camp Nou, Barcelona (1982):
It is one of the rich ironies of the 1982 World Cup that, for all the grandeur and splendour of Camp Nou, one of the most memorable matches of the tournament came elsewhere in the city at La Sarria, the now-demolished home of Espanyol. Cam Nou does, however, leave us with an enduring mystery from this particular tournament. When Belgium defeated Argentina by a goal to nil in the opening match, the nets at the stadium were green and shallow. This stadium, however, was not used for any more group matches (they were all played in Elche and Alicante), and by the time the first match of the second group stage, between Poland and Belgium, was played there, they’d been replaced altogether. So, what happened? Were the nets for the later matches lost in the post? Did the groundsman have a change of aesthetic heart? Did FIFA step in? We may never know.
11. Estadio Monumental, Buenos Aires (1978):
The 1978 World Cup finals were notable for the goal posts and netting being the same at all six of its host stadiums. The stadium held nine matches during this tournament including the final, but almost forty years on a story emerged that wrapped the goal posts there in intrigue. The story had first appeared on the redoubtable In Bed With Maradona and ended up on the Guardian Sports Network. It can be read in full here, and it is an appealing story. A small act of defiance against a despotic junta, a message of resistance sent to a global audience behind the backs of a government that would almost certainly have murdered anyone who made such claims publicly at that time.
There were, however, issues with this story. Firstly, the use of black bases around goal posts was commonplace for years prior to this tournament. Here they are, being used at the same stadium five years earlier, before the junta had even come to power. It’s believed that they were painted on in order to provide some extra contract for strikers to aim it. Some of the groundsman’s other comments don’t ring true either. “The ground staff in Mendoza defied both Fifa and the junta to install “European” Continental D supports. Ezequiel shrugged, like, what can you do. “We’re just not a uniform people,” he repeated.” Mendoza was the venue that played host to Scotland’s 3-2 win over Holland, and they weren’t D-Stanchions, but curiously the bases of the goals there are painted red, which perhaps would have been a more appropriate way to mark the deaths of the disappeared.
More than anything else, though, what stands out is that FIFA didn’t demand D-stanchions in 1974 or 1982, or at any tournament since then. Box goals, as used in West Germany, Spain and all stops since then bar 1994, have been the authorities preferred method of supporting a goal net because, with no metal near the goals, they are considered safer. As mentioned elsewhere in this series, goal line technology requires them. And FIFA didn’t start to come down too hard on uniformity within World Cup venues until Joao Havelange renegotiated commercial terms with sponsors after the 1982 World Cup finals. We have little reason that the writer didn’t report a story that he was told in good faith. We do, however, also believe that there are grounds to believe that he may have been told exactly that: a story.
It could have been just about any year, really, because the goal posts and netting at Highbury say one thing more than anything else: permanence. There was much to admire about Highbury – the beautiful art deco stands, the earliest example of floodlights being built into the roofs of stands – but it was the goalposts, large and stately and with green L-stanchions, completely befitting The Establishment Club – which spoke of the permanence of the club more than anything else. 101 years unbroken in the top flight of English football deserves such a tribute.
And when Arsenal finally did decide to move on in 1990, they did so in the most tasteful way possible, replacing the green stanchions with identical red ones, and draping the nets down in front of them rather than hanging them over the back. These remained in place until the inevitable arrival of box goals, in time for the 1995/96 seasons.
9. Azteca Stadium, Mexico City (1970):
Mexico has done pretty well out of this list, with four positions in total, and two of these are for the same stadium, the Azteca, in Mexico City. But whereas those used for the 1971 Women’s World Cup were included for the sheer tastelessness of being painted in pink and white stripes for a women’s tournament, those used for the men’s World Cup finals the previous year are included for their iconic status. Completed in 1966 for the 1968 Olympic Games and the 1970 World Cup finals, the Azteca is known for its sheer scale. Upon opening, it had a capacity of 107,500, and this was increased to 120,000 within a couple of years, with a stadium record of 119,853 being set in July 1968 for a friendly match between Mexico and Brazil.
It was the 1970 World Cup finals, however, that earned them their place in football folklore. The first World Cup finals to be televised in colour were always likely to be seen this way, even if the vast majority of those watching it at the time would have been doing so on black and white television sets. And the goal net erupting as Carlos Alberto thrashed in Brazil’s fourth goal, one of the most celebrated goals in the history of the game, almost seemed to match the entire world rising to its feet for one of the greatest teams in the history of the game.
8. Stadio Olimpico, Rome (1990):
With the Italian broadcaster RAI shovelling money into buying the best television cameras they could and sumptuous computer graphics by Olivetti, kit manufacturers apparently in a battle to out-do each other to make the most stylish kits they could and venues that had been completely renovated or rebuilt for the event, the 1990 World Cup finals was one of the most aesthetically satisfying of them all. Such a pity, then, that the quality of the football being played was frequently so mediocre, and this was as true in the final in Rome as it was anywhere else.
Italy’s defeat to Argentina in the semi-finals brought to an end a run in the tournament that had enjoyed a sense of scale about it, and the final of the competition very much missed them. The vast, billowing goal nets of the Stadio Olimpico, which rose as though gasping every time the ball hit them certainly did, and the 1990 final between Argentina and West Germany turned out to be worst since they’d been committed to video tape, until Brazil and Italy said “hold my Budweiser” in Pasadena four years later.
7. Estadio Nacional, Lisbon (1967):
There was something very beautiful about the 1967 European Cup final between Celtic and Internazionale. The contrast of the green and white hoops of Celtic with the blue and black stripes of Inter, and that venue. The Estadio Nacional was built along the Jamor ravine, a big open bowl surrounded by trees. There was something Olympian about it. And for all of that it didn’t host clubs football and it certainly wasn’t even the biggest stadium in Lisbon.
Just 45,000 people watched the last stand of Helenio Herreira’s catenaccio against this last unlikely but fully deserving team, all born within twenty miles of Celtic Park but transported on this night into eternity. And the goals, when they came, were scored in goals that reflected the similarities between Portuguese and Brazilian culture, simple supports holding the nets back and big, black nets so large it was possible to believe that a goalkeeper may get lost looking for an errant ball.
6. Goodison Park, Liverpool (1985):
Goodison Park underwent a fairly substantial renovation at the end of the 1970s, replacing its distinctive shape at each end and replacing its L-stanchion goals with D-stanchions. This renovation work, though, gave the ground stands that felt as though they were right on top of the pitch. There was was also more space at one than the other, so Goodison’s goals were for many years pleasingly lop-sided, with the Park End (to the left, for the purposes of TV cameras) further back from the pitch than the Gwladys Street End, meaning that the goal netting, a pleasingly deep shade of dark blue, could be pulled back at one end, but remained squashed in the narrow space between the goal-line and the terraces at the other.
And Goodison Park could be a bear-pit, when a big match was being played. Loud, noisy and cramped, it will be very sorely missed should it go, and it has been suggested that this is inevitable for years, although the current health crisis and the possible financial downturn that all of football may well take as a result of this might make the construction of a shiny new stadium less appealing than it has been for many, many years. The Goodison goals saw perhaps the last great Everton team, the league champions of 1985 and 1987, and they’re the highest ranked English club on this list.
5. Estadio La Corregidora, Querétaro (1986):
Ask people of a certain age to recall their memories of the 1986 World Cup finals, and their eyes will glaze over, and somewhere close to the tops of many people’s recollections of the tournament will be the huge box goals that were used throughout it by all of the host cities. These were goals big enough to park a camper van in. They looked thoroughly modern and befitting of a tournament of the stature of a World Cup finals. There haven’t, as you may well have noticed, been many box goals in this entire top fifty, but Mexico 86’s make the top five.
Picking any one set was always going to be difficult, because they looked virtually identical at every different venue, so we’ve gone with the Estadio La Corregidora in Querétaro, purely for the novelty of them having orange nets attached, rather than the white ones used everywhere else. Estadio La Corregidora was built in 1984 for these finals, and opened the following year. It hosted all three of West Germany’s group matches, against Denmark, Uruguay and Scotland (still arguably the most fatal Group of Death ever seen in a World Cup finals), as well as the second round match between Denmark and Spain, where Denmark took a lead but then fell to pieces, losing by five goals to one, with Emilio Butragueno scoring four of Spain’s goals.
4. Wembley Stadium, London (1966):
England’s most iconic goalposts, and quite literally the venue of one of the World Cup’s greatest controversies. These stately posts were installed at Wembley shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, and remained in place until they had to be replaced for the 1996 European Championships. Over the intervening five and a half decades, though they took a familiar place at the heart of the English game. They were there when Hungary overturned England by six goals to three in 1953 and finally exposed the lie of English superiority on the international stage once and for all. They were there when England won the World Cup in 1966, through several European Cup finals (including the 1968 final, which saw Manchester United become the first English club to win the competition) and, of course, through dozens of FA Cup finals.
The small matter of Geoff Hurst’s second goal in the 1966 World Cup final can hardly be overlooked, of course. Might a goal have been clearer had a different shape been used? Possibly, and few seriously believe these days that the whole of the ball crossed the whole of the goal line. Always pulled tight at the site, they went through varying degrees of bagginess over the years, before finding themselves stretched tighter and tighter throughout the 1980s and 1990s. When they went for Euro 96 and never came back, a small piece of the heritage of football in this country disappeared with them.
3. Parc des Princes, Paris (and elsewhere), 1986:
France makes its first and only appearance in this list, but it’s at the rarefied height of the number three position. After winning the European Championships in 1984 and reaching the semi-finals of the 1986 World Cup, the French national team tailed off suddenly, failing to qualify for the next two successive World Cups – they wouldn’t play in another World Cup finals match until their opening match as hosts in 1998 – and only one of the next two European Championships, in Sweden in 1992, where they (along with England) failed to get out of the group stage.
In the aftermath of the 1984 European Championships, the businessman Jean-Claude Darmon was brought in to modernise the French game, which had been lagging behind other countries both in terms of attendances and commercial revenues for some time. One of Darmon’s bright ideas was to weave the three stripes of Adidas into goal nets, but after complaints from rival sportswear manufacturers Puma, FIFA confirmed that they considered the goal nets to be part of the fixtures of the pitch and refused to allow it. Still, though, from the summer of 1986 nets started to appear on Ligue Un goals with the word “BUT” (the French word for “GOAL”) printed across them in a scream bubble (a jagged speech bubble.) They only lasted one season and they didn’t appear at every Ligue Un stadium, but nothing like them has been seen before or since.
2. Maracanã Stadium, Rio de Janeiro (2019):
The Maracana Stadium is probably the most famous football stadium on the planet, so it’s probably unsurprising that it should feature highly on this list, despite the ongoing fact that television coverage of South American football, both club and international, remains disgracefully slight in the UK and Europe. The Maracana had a distinctly Brazilian style of goal posts for many, many years, only subtly changing from the 1950 World Cup final on, but there was a fear that this style of goal would fade from view after the FIFA-introduced box goals that were installed across the country for the 2014 World Cup finals.
Some Brazilian grounds have since chosen the path of least resistance and kept this design, but others haven’t and the Maracana has since returned to a style that satisfies the desire of the governing bodies for goals that are free deo any form of attachments with the desire of the Brazilian game to do its own thing. The above clip, from last year, shows how this compromise has been reached. Hexagonal netting held back by support poles, but still distinctly Brazilian in their look. When a ball hits this net, it stays in it.
1. Hampden Park, Glasgow (1903-1987):
On the 12th of May 1976, Saint-Etienne met Bayern Munich in the European Cup final at Hampden Park in Glasgow. A shot from Dominique Bathenay and a Jacques Santini header the woodwork at Hampden in that final, but Bayern Munich won by a goal to nil. In October 2013, Saint-Etienne bought the goal posts, which had previously been stored in the Scottish Football Museum at the stadium. Saint-Etienne and their supporters had long believed that the square shape of the goalposts at Hampden Park, while most other clubs had circular or elliptical ones, had cost their club the European Cup. Such are the narrow margins at the top of the game.
The square posts of Hampden Park had been in place since 1903, and they stayed there until 1987. They were in place in 1960, when Real Madrid danced past Eintracht Frankfurt with a 7-3 that made a mockery of England and Scotland teams who had blamed a dreary game shortly beforehands on an unplayable pitch. They were there when a crowd of 149,415 saw Scotland play England there in 1937. They were there when A crowd of 136,505, a record for any match in UEFA competition, saw Celtic beat Leeds United 2–1 (3–1 on aggregate) to get through to the 1970 European Cup Final.
And they were beautiful. Vast, curved stanchions that seemed to go on forever and, at various points the nets were either stretched tight or hanging loose over them. But in 1987, they had to go. New rules outlawed square posts, and after 84 years they had to come down. But they were lovely while they lasted, and they fully deserve their place at the top of this list.