MATCH PREVIEW: Borough Park farewell
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
All roads lead to Borough Park on Saturday as Reds bring down the curtain on their thirty-ninth season of Northern Premier League football.
And, after eighty-nine years as our spiritual home, we say a fond farewell to Borough Park – our home since 1937 – with a 2,000 crowd expected for the 794th and final NPL encounter at the soon to be demolished stadium.
It will be a great opportunity to say a big thank-you to Billy Barr, his staff and the team for completing our version of ‘The Great Escape’. Thanks to that incredible 3-2 victory at Warrington Town last week, Reds will remain a Step 3 club next term, with our fortieth season as members of the League kicking off at Derwent Park, the home of our good neighbours, Workington Town RLFC.
An emotional, strange day for sure but one for celebrating and reflecting on a huge chunk of our history. We will take our personal memories of the iconic stadium with us and look forward to creating decades of the same at the new facility on the same site.
The match-day programme (£3) will include a ‘timeline’ of the Borough Park years.
Our former players will be a big part of the Farewell to Borough Park celebrations and over fifty Reds’ ‘old boys’ will complete one final lap of honour of the pitch, half an hour before kick-off on Saturday.
Prior to that, they will be treated to lunch at a local venue.
Amidst all of the celebrations, nostalgia, hand shakes and farewells, we have a football match (3pm) taking place and, as a club, we must remember to pay the utmost respect to Leek Town, the match officials and the League as a priority.
Leek, have enjoyed a superb end to the season and six wins in their last seven outings has take them to the top of the form table and a potential top eight finish.
When we met at Harrison Park back in November, the outcome was an entertaining 2-2 draw. The same scoreline on Saturday would be a fitting end to the season for both clubs but, I suspect, Reds and Town will be hoping to go into the summer break on the back of a hard-earned victory.
Reds, with 43 points securing survival, could finish 16th, 17th or 18th whilst three of the clubs below us are hoping for a final day reprieve from relegation.
Sadly, Stocksbridge Park Steels have already been demoted.
And when all the dust has settled on the afternoon’s football, supporters can hang around for a few hours to support our own players at the ‘end-of-season’ presentations in The ‘Billy Barr’ Bar.
A wonderful day in prospect.
