Shrewsbury

Ground: Greenhous Meadow

Visits: 1

Date: 14th April 2017

Match: Shrewsbury - Walsall 1-1 (League 1)

Attendance: 6 801

Good Friday meant an almost full round of matches in the Football League. My choice was to visit Shropshire for Shrewsbury v Rochdale (KO 15.00) and then revisit Edgeley Park for Stockport v Telford (KO 19.45) on my way back to Manchester. From Piccadilly it only took 70 minutes by train to reach Shrewsbury. For some strange reason Arriva Train Wales only put on two coaches and to say the train was overcrowded is an understatement. Boarding at Piccadilly Stefan, Jocke and myself manged to get seats though. In 2007 the new football stadium in Shrewsbury was opened. It is officially called Greenhous Meadow but some simply call it The New Meadow, which of course is a reference to the old ground (Gay Meadow). The ground is all-seated with a total capacity of 9 800. Unfortunately the new ground is located far from the city centre and arriving around 11.40 we had to use a taxi to get to the ground. As we were dropped off we asked the taxi driver to pick us up after the game. As we went to the ticket office we were told the game was all-ticket and we needed a booking history to buy tickets. I can admit my planning had not been extremely thorough for this trip but I had looked at the Shrewsbury website and couldn´t find anything indicating this was an all-ticket game. With a Swedish passport and a big smile Stefan still managed to buy three tickets though and everyone was pleased. Well done Shrewsbury Town for showing common sense! As we visited the club shop the ladies there were quite thrilled we had come all the way from Sweden for this game and gave us some advice where to get something to eat and drink. The advice was to go to the Brooklands pub and once there we could have something to eat and drink. The doorman thought were Walsall fans, who had another entrance to the pub, but when we said we were from Sweden he said we should to sit with the home fans and drink!

Shrewsbury v Walsall is a derby game and a very good attendance was expected. Walsall were given the entire North Stand and the visitors brought 1 144 fans to Shrewsbury this afternoon. In total 6 800 were inside Greenhous Meadow for what was a very important game for the home team. As was the case with Bury last night Shrewsbury are fighting to avoid relegation and needed the three points. It was the visitors who started the better team though and in the 35th minute they took the lead which lead to huge celebrations in the away end. 0-1 at half-time and that was a deserved scoreline. This game was not a good one but still better than the game at Gigg Lane yesterday. Especially the last 20 minutes were entertaining to watch as Shrewsbury went on the attack. The most vocal home fans were in the block to my left, which is next to the away end, and when Shrewsbury managed to score in the 70th minute people around me erupted in massive celebrations. There was an elderly man who ran in front of the stand for 15-20 minutes and encouraged the home fans to sing. He was very intense and at times we thought he would have a heart attack. He made it to the end though and could see the game finish 1-1. A point is better than none at all but still a lot of work left for Shrewsbury in their remaining three games if they want to stay in this league. The atmosphere was quite good and the three Swedish groundhoppers were pleased as they left the ground. We were not so pleased when our taxi driver didn´t show up though. Our train back to Stockport departed at 17.51 and I was convinced we would missed it. At 17.25 we finally found a taxi driver, he had been at the game himself, who drove us to the train station and with 10 minutes to go we made the train.