Stoke City - Britannia Stadium
Stoke City Football Club
Britannia Stadium
Stanley Matthews Way
Stoke On-Trent
ST4 4EG
MY VISITS:
VISIT 1: Stoke City 3-1 Hull City 15/4/17
VISIT 1 TO THE BRITANNIA:
Stoke City 3-1 Hull City
Saturday 15th April 2017
Barclays Premier League
With Gillingham's win over Bristol Rovers on Good Friday, of course it gave me a free Saturday to do some Groundhopping. Originally it was going to be Newcastle vs Leeds with my Dad, but that got moved to Good Friday which buggered up our plans. So after checking the fixtures, Stoke vs Hull was the only one that I hadn't done in the Premier League that were at home that afternoon, so of course it was a no brainer. I pretty much knew how to get there anyway as I had previously visited the ground a couple of years back when Gillingham were playing at Stoke's local rivals Port Vale, so of course I went early and visited the ground with pics below. So, I booked my train tickets and match ticket early as luckily I did as apparently after that, Stoke had sold out their remaining home games for the rest of the season so good job I did. Anyway I set my alarm for 7.40am the night before and I left for Stoke just after 8.15am. I left Euston at 10.50am and arrived into Stoke just before 1pm. Of course, the station to the ground isn't fairly near, but as the weather wasn't too bad, I thought I'd take a stroll to the ground which took around 30-40 mins. The route is fairly scenic as it's along the canal which I thought was decent.
So, after walking the scenic route to The Britannia Stadium, I eventually arrived at around 1.45pm and went straight into the ground and took my seat. I was quite impressed with the ground, and was a great view I thought. The Britannia Stadium holds just under 28,000 but at the moment in this time, they are currently extending the ground. Stoke were heading into the game with 4 straight defeats and without a win in 5 league games, with Stoke's last win against Middlesbrough back in early March with boss Mark Hughes in charge. Hull with Marco Silva as their manager, spent most of his playing career in his home country of Portugal, with Hull as his first English side managed. Hull were heading into the game with 2 wins in their last 6 games, wins against Swansea and West Ham. The game itself wasn't the greatest of games I think, at times the game was very scrappy but Stoke took the lead in the 1st 6 minutes of the game, thanks to a decent enough finish from Marko Arnautovic. From there Stoke didn't really look like scoring again, but Hull equalised to a scrappy goal pretty much from former Sheffield United centre half Harry Maguire. 2 subs from Stoke boss Mark Hughes saw Peter Crouch and Jonathan Walters come on as it was Walters himself that crossed the ball for Crouch to head home to make it 2-1. Xherdan Shaqiri then with 10 minutes to go made it 3-1 with an absolute peach of a goal by striking the ball from 30 yards to put the icing on the cake with a terrific 3-1 win for the Potters. Overally a fairly decent day, ticking off Stoke's Britannia Stadium was my 75th of the current 92. I eventually got home shortly after half 10, so wasn't too bad. A good day in Stoke On-Trent.
Stoke's 3-1 win against Hull.
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