The 1970s English football experience was a gloomy, downbeat affair and we’ve encountered no photographic series that captures its essence as perfectly as this one by the renowned photojournalist Martin Parr.
Shot at The Shay ground in Halifax in 1975 and 1978, these pictures cast into sharp relief just how different a sport football was to attend four decades ago. The makeshift terracing, the scattered debris, the disintegrating catering van; there’s a keen sense of the decline and decay that had taken hold of the national game.
As with all the best pictures the joy is in the minor detail. We particularly love the image of the seven older men standing in something akin to a line – close enough together to create some semblance of a crowd, but not quite close enough together to have to talk to each other. Very Yorkshire!
I visited this ground in September 1997, the season Halifax won the Conference. At that time the ground was little changed from in these photos, although large areas were condemned and disused. Later that season comprehensive redevelopment began and only the old Manchester City stand remains from those days.
played there in the 70s for Exeter . no hot water.