Valley Parade is an all-seater football stadium in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. Built in 1886, it was the home of Manningham Rugby Football Club until 1903, when they changed code from rugby football to association football. Bradford City’s first game at Valley Parade came on 5 September 1903 against Gainsborough Trinity, drawing a crowd of 11,000. The stadium underwent few changes until the fatal fire on 11 May 1985, when 56 supporters were killed and at least 265 were injured. It underwent a £2. 6 million redevelopment and was re-opened in December 1986. The record attendance of 39,146 was set in 1911 for an FA Cup tie against Burnley, making it the oldest surviving attendance record at
About Valley Parade in brief
Valley Parade is an all-seater football stadium in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. Built in 1886, it was the home of Manningham Rugby Football Club until 1903, when they changed code from rugby football to association football. Bradford City’s first game at Valley Parade came on 5 September 1903 against Gainsborough Trinity, drawing a crowd of 11,000. The stadium underwent few changes until the fatal fire on 11 May 1985, when 56 supporters were killed and at least 265 were injured. It underwent a £2. 6 million redevelopment and was re-opened in December 1986. The record attendance of 39,146 was set in 1911 for an FA Cup tie against Burnley, making it the oldest surviving attendance record at a Football League ground in the country. The ground underwent significant changes in the 1990s and early 2000s, and now has a capacity of 25,136. It has also been home to Bradford for one season, and Bradford Bulls rugby league side for two seasons, as well as host to a number of England youth team fixtures. It is now owned by former chairman Gordon Gibb’s pension fund, and is known as the Utilita Energy Stadium for sponsorship reasons. The ground was officially opened on 27 September 1886 for a game against Wakefield Trinity which was watched by a capacity crowd, but construction work meant most of Bradford’s early games were away fixtures. On Christmas Day 1888, 12-year old Thomas Coyle was killed at the ground when the barrier under which he was sitting collapsed on him breaking his neck.
The club spent £1,400 appointing designers to oversee the excavation and levelling of the land, and moved a one-year-old stand from Carlisle Road to the highest part of the new ground. The new ground and the road it was built upon both adopted the name of the local area, Valley Parade, a name deriving from the steep hillside below Manningham. The original ground comprised the relocated stand, a 2,000-capacity stepped enclosure with the players’ changing rooms beneath the stand, the playing area, a cinder athletics track and fencing. The playing field was made of ballast, ashes, soil and sods. Bradford City were elected to The Football League’s Division Two the following month. After Bradford City won the Division Two championship in 1907–08, the club hurried through a reconstruction programme of the ground to prepare for the club’s first season in Division One in 1908. On 10 February 1906, Manchester United player Bob Bonthron was attacked as he left the ground for 14 days, ordering the Football Association to switch its changing rooms to the Artillery Barracks for the 1906–07 season. Several supporters faced criminal proceedings for the incident. After City’s 5–1 defeat by Manchester United in 1906, Bonthon was ordered back to the back of the pitch for the next 14 days. In 1908, a 5-300-seat standing area was built in front of the Kop—a standing area in the north of the main stand.
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