Depressing end as Scarborough bid farewell to beloved Theatre of Chips

My local team were not just facing relegation but staring down the barrel of extinction.

Nothing had been decided, but I knew there was a very good chance Scarborough v Leigh Genesis would be the final match at the McCain Stadium.

Debts were lapping around the £2.5m mark, and with relegation into the Northern Premier League looming, it seemed unlikely they could fight against the tide much longer.

The Seadogs wanted to sell their ground to pay off debts, but Scarborough Borough Council would not lift the covenant restricting it to sporting use until the club built another elsewhere in the town. Without selling up, they could not afford it.

If the club was going to limp on, it needed my ticket money. More likely, it was a chance to say goodbye.

To claim I was a Scarborough fan would be disrespectful to those who put the hours in on the terraces and miles in on the road following a team whose “No battle, no victory” motto doubled as a match report in the bad times.

When I was forming my allegiances there was no automatic route from non-league to Football League, and that was reflected in the media coverage those outside the 92 got – at least in the places I was looking.

During the 1986-87 season, the first where that pathway was cleared, I really became aware of my hometown team and began attending matches at what was then the Athletic Ground, but I would later come to know as the “Theatre of Chips”, courtesy of the ground-breaking sponsorship deal then-chairman Geoffrey Richmond struck in the ground’s 90th year. Richmond’s decision to scrap concessions for children meant my dad refused to take me and my brother when we were too young to be trusted to go on our own.

Before it came to that I sat in the main stand, as a teenager I stood in the “Cow Shed” opposite, and now I was sat in the Seamer Road End, one of two neat stands built at either end in the Football League days with money the club could not afford.

I had lived away for eight years by then and cannot remember when my previous visit was, but this one was depressing.

Only in the last few years had the Shed roof finally been whitewashed, stopping me pointing out the bit a Wolverhampton Wanderers fan fell through in 1987.

The pitch I played on a few times before Boro games was desperately in need of watering, each bounce of the ball puffing up dust like a Mumbai Test pitch.

Seats ripped out of the away end had not been replaced.

The footballers were a long way from the days of Neil Warnock, Craig Short, Kevin Blackwell, Neil Thompson et al.

Boro gave hope, leading for around 50 minutes through Jimmy Beadle’s header, only for Kevin Rapley to convert a late penalty to make it 1-1.

Relegation was confirmed, but the club never took its place in the 2007-08 Northern Premier League, by then succeeded by a phoenix club which has since returned to that level.

In 2008 the council bought the ground from the liquidators but it would be three years before the bulldozers moved in, six more until a Lidl opened on the site.

By then, work was nearing completion on Scarborough Athletic’s new home after ten years ground-sharing at Bridlington. Finally, football was back but the Theatre of Chips has gone forever.

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