The home of Crystal Palace (Selhurst Park (Crystal Palace))

Member Name: Beanie8844

Product:	Selhurst Park (Crystal Palace)
Date:	16/11/08 (207 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good atmosphere, cheapish seats

Disadvantages: old stadium, uncomfortable seats

Selhurst Park is the home ground of Crystal Palace Football Club who currently play their football in the English Championship, the second tier of football after the Premier League. I have visited the stadium on numerous occasions because it is quite close to where I live, the tickets are relatively cheap and when they were in the Premiership a few seasons ago you could see some top quality matches and view some of the best players in the world, great stuff! I'm actually a Millwall supporter and have been with them to away games at selhurst and the atmosphere has been tremendous, generally its quite good at most games with the bulk of the noise coming from the bottom tier of the Holmesdale Road Stand where the more vocal supporters have their season tickets.

Although the capacity is quite impressive for a championship side, 26309 to be precise, the look of the ground is quite bizarre. All four stands are completely different. As already mentioned the Holmesdale Road Stand is the newest and largest stand by quite a margin. It has a large lower tier with a smaller upper tier and is a very impressive looking stand, although it does rather dwarf the rest of the ground, a bit of a shame. This stand is behind the goal. At the other end of the ground is the Croydon Advertiser Family Stand, a really odd looking creation. It was only ever going to be a small stand because it backs directly onto a large supermarket, but the design is rather unique. There are approximately fifteen rows of seating and then at the rear of the stand there are executive boxes, but not the single row as in most stadiums, this stand incorporates two levels of boxes, it is very strange. A good feature of this stand is the hanging television screen which comes down from the roof of the stand, it fairly large and shows replays and the time remaining. On the two remaining sides of the pitch you have the Main Stand (home supporters) and the Arthur Wait Stand (home and away supporters). Both of the stands are really old, the seats are uncomfortable and they really could do with updating.

Pricing of tickets varies depending upon the rating given to the game, either A, B or C. This is a system adopted by a number of clubs across the country and I believe it works well. Category C matches are cheaper than B and A, but are deemed not as entertaining if that makes sense. For example a carling cup tie against another league team would be graded lower than an FA Cup quarter final against premiership opposition. Examples of prices: A £30-£40, B £25-£35, C £20-£30. Concessions are obviously cheaper than this, these are all adult prices.

There are many places where you can purchase food and drinks from inside the stadium and it seems to be cheaper than other grounds I have visited. For example burgers are about £2.00 and chips £1.00, drinks are generally below £1.00. The official programme costs £3.00 and is a good read.

I have enjoyed my trips to Selhurst, the stadium has a unique charm about it (every stand has blue and red seating, the teams colours and many slogans are written using the seating across the stands, although you'll obviously have to get to the ground early to see this) and there is always a good atmosphere and banter between the fans. It would be good if Palace could make it back into the premier league.

Thanks for reading.

Summary: worth a visit if you like your football