Wednesday, August 02, 2017

FOOTBALL FANS TO MAKE BRIGG A REFRESHMENT STOP




The imminent arrival of the new 2017-18 Football League season will mean we can expect fans of away teams to drop by for a pie and a pint in Brigg on their journey to matches at Hull City and possibly Grimsby Town, too.
Pictured here are some Aston Villa followers outside the Woolpack in Brigg town centre four years ago en route to Hull and also (below) coaches which brought Barnsley fans here during 2011.
Villa will be visiting Hull on Saturday, March 31, 2018, while the Tigers host Barnsley on Saturday, February 17.
Brigg pubs and fast food eateries make careful note of both dates. (We don’t expect there’s any need to inform the police).
Hull City, who have some followers in the Brigg area, visit Villa for the opening game of the season this Saturday, August 5 – Horse Fair Day.









Back in the early 1970s we made a few trips to watch Hull City play at their old Boothferry Park ground. More like expeditions than trips, as you had to get a bus from Brigg to New Holland, then take the Humber Ferry over to Hull Corporation Pier.
A walk followed to Paragon station, where shuttle trains ran every few minutes to take supporters the short distance to Boothferry Park which had its own halt.
You got off the train and the turnstiles were just the other side of the platform.
Past matches between Leeds and Grimsby Town at Blundell Park, when they were both in the old Second Division, saw many fans of the Yorkshire club calling in Brigg.
The best remembered came one August during the early 1980s, when they took a shine to the Black Bull.
Also pictured here from the archive the Rev David Benson – a railway-loving cleric we met some years ago – is a picture of Boothferry Park station, Hull, in the 1960s.
They called a halt to using the halt some time before the Tigers moved to their current stadium.


2 comments:

Ken Harrison said...

When the AV fans arrived, they also visited the Black Bull...the rear beer garden was swarming..they were a friendly lot...

Ken Harrison said...

Some totally obscure info....Aston Villa ground in near Speghetti Junction/A38 going in North Birmingham..on the M6.....
On the 31st January, 1916 that area and parts of nearby Walsall were bombed on 2 separate occasions by German Naval Zeppelins....the same night the Scunny was bombed by Zeppelin L13.
Told you it was obscure...take it, or leave it, but it remains a bit of history.
(ps the Zeppelin crews thought they were bombing Liverpool. Records indicate that the skippers thought that the icy, glistening open cast coal mines were the River Mersey....now were talking about great teams...come on Liverpool....( and the Toffees)..