VENUE #90 CARLISLE UNITED Brunton Park

BRUNTON PARK

Directions From Railway Station

     The nearest railway station is Carlisle upon exiting the station's main entrance, walk the short distance around the Crescent until reaching Warwick Road. You will be able to see the old Main Stand and the strangely-shaped roofs of the Warwick Road End after walking for about twenty minutes. There are directions to the away supporters' turnstiles above the Carlisle United club shop.

Brunton Park
     Carlisle United were formed in 1904 firstly playing their home games at Milhome bank then later at Devonshire park until Brunton park was built in 1909.  Brunton park has a capacity of 18.202 but the ground has been inspected by Cumbria county council who have deemed certain areas unsafe and so a slightly less capacity of 17,000 is in place at this time.
     In it's heyday Brunton park had a record crowd of 27,500 that was on  the 5th January 1957 when they were drawn against Birmingham City in the 3rd round of the FA cup a match that finished in a 3-3 draw, four days later Birmingham won the replay 4-0 at St. Andrews.
     If you plan to visit this stadium I would suggest you make it soon as Carlisle are planning to move to a 12,000 all seated stadium in the near future and that will be another classical old fashioned ground to bite the dust in the name of progress. 

PIONEER STAND (EAST)

     The Pioneer (East) Stand on one side of the pitch, is a covered all seated stand, which looks quite smart, this stand was opened in 1996.  An unusual aspect of the ground is that the central point of the East Stand, is located just off the half way line. This means that one side of the stand extends past the one goal line, whilst the other side falls short of this. This was due to the fact that the Club were intending to re-build the whole ground and move the pitch a few yards further north, but alas the development funds ran dry.

MAIN STAND

    The other side is an old partly covered (to the rear) Main Stand, which has seating at the back and a terraced paddock to the front. The central part of this stand was built in 1954 and the wings added at a later stage.

WARWICK ROAD END

    The Warwick Road End is a covered terrace that has a peculiar looking roof, which consists of three triangular sections.

PETTERILL END

    The other end, the Petterill End (aka The Waterworks End), is largely a small open terrace, which oddly contains a small section of seating on one side. This end is only used for the bigger games. On one side of this end is a Security Control Box, which also has a small electric scoreboard mounted below it. There is also a video screen situated at the back. The ground also has some strange looking floodlights that don’t have the normal bank of lighting on top of the pylon, but instead have the lights mounted up the side.

HUGHIE McLLMOYLE

    Outside the ground entrance is a statue of former Carlisle favourite Hughie Mcllmoyle, who over three separate spells at the club, scored 91 goals in 189 appearances.

GROUND LAYOUT

Today's Opposition CREWE ALEXANDRA

     It is no secret that I used to be an admirer of this team back in the days of Dario Gradi when the club enjoyed what has been described as the best years of the clubs history.  I can't really do justice with words what the man done for the club taking the team from applying for re-election to the football league every year to a team with promotion ambition.  He was one of the pioneers of the youth academy and has brought some brilliant young talent through the ranks at Crewe and some have gone on to be household names in Premiership football and represent their countries at the very top level. 

     When Dario took to the stands in his new roll of director of football it seemed as though they had found the perfect replacement in Steve Davis although his Crewe side were at the bottom end of the league two table at Christmas the second half of the season couldn't have gone better with the Railwaymen finishing in sixth place and beating Cheltenham 2-0 in the play-off final and earning a place in league one.                            Crewe finished just below mid table in 2012/13 season but managed to win the Johnstone's paint trophy beating Southend 2-0 at Wembley but since that game things haven't gone at all well for the  ex Crewe defender, maybe selling Nick Powell to Manchester United sparked a downslide for the Cheshire team or maybe that the Crewe academy weren't producing the talent that they were during Dario Gradi's reign.  Whatever the reason Crewe avoided relegation by the skin of their teeth for the next two seasons finally succumbing to their fate at the end of last season being relegated to league two weeks before the season's closure.                                                                                       The first season back in league two started well with Crewe reaching the heights of third place in the table in September but then came the trip to Wycombe at the end of the month when Crewe once again showed their frailty and went down 5-1 at Adams Park. Crewe only won two games since that game against Wycombe until the 7th of January when they went to Mansfield and lost 3-0 this was the final straw for Steve Davis who was sacked and another ex player was appointed in the form of David Artell.  This must have been a God send send for the long suffering Crewe fans for Artell has stopped the rot, there have been some set backs like losing 4-0 to Hartlepool and 2-1 at home to Newport but they are showing signs of staying in this league and not ending a long run of English league football history.

CARLISLE UNITED ... 0   CREWE ALEXANDRA ... 2

     On a beautiful sunny day in Cumbria Crewe Alexandra came to Carlisle with ambitions of making their place in league two safe while Carlisle had a dream of at least making the play-offs as their form of lately has deteriorated as once they was looking prime candidates for automatic promotion.

     From the kick off Carlisle came out the traps with gusty causing Crewe some early discomfort and actually had the ball in the back of the net but Jamie Proctor's goal was ruled out for offside. 

     As the half rolled on Crewe slipped out of their shell and began to make a game of it you could see their confidence grow as they pushed for an opening goal their selves as the Cumbrians started to look a little shell shocked.

     Just after the half hour the noisy Crewe supporters had something to bang their drum about as George Cooper played the ball over the Carlisle defence for Callum Cooke who looked suspiciously offside to run on to and sweep the ball past Mark Gillespie for the opening goal.

     Crewe started the second half as they finished the first looking the most likely team and frustration got the better of Snaun Miller five minutes in as he jumped two footed into a tackle with Oliver Turton, the referee took his time but then produced a straight red card to the ex Crewe striker making the Blues task a lot more harder than it was originally.

     The sending off livened Carlisle up a little and began to show the zest they had at the start and they had the ball in the net yet again for the linesman to rule for an infringement against them it really didn't look like their day at all and in the 61st minute came the final nail in their coffin for as they pushed to get the equaliser they left there selves a little thin at the back and Cooper raced passed Luke Joyce on the right and crossed the ball to the back post for Jordan Bowery to tap into an empty net from a couple of yards.

     Cooke should have made it 3-0 in the closing stages but was denied by Gillespie and so the score remained as it did the last time I saw Crewe play at Wembley 2013 in the Johnstone's paint cup final when they beat Southend 2-0. Crewe now look as though they will keep their league two status next season as the gap between them and the drop zone is now 15 points with seven games left, as for Carlisle, they slip out of the play-off places on goal difference to Exeter there is still a chance for them to grab a chance at promotion but they need to turn things around now rather than later.

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