Retracing steps down the famous old Bradford Park Avenue

In these days of countless sanitised and soulless arenas, there is gratitude among those who had the fortune to regularly visit this much-loved former home of Bradford (Park Avenue), alongside a silent lament at its sad and untimely demise.

Avenue’s last home match in their final season in the Football League in 1969-70 – before being replaced by Cambridge United – saw them lose 5-0 at home to a Scunthorpe United side featuring a young Kevin Keegan just over half-a-century ago on April 4, 1970 in front of just 2,563 spectators.

It was an unceremonious farewell for a proud club whose home was inimitable and considered by many, certainly back in the day at least, to be superior to the old Valley Parade across the city.

The creative brain of Archibald Leitch produced a masterpiece in the shape of its double-sided grandstand between the football and adjoining cricket pitch which Yorkshire CCC graced.

The roof was covered in Welsh slate and had three gables on each side. The two at the ends featured the shield from the Bradford coat of arms and the one in the centre had a clock on the cricket side and huge golden BFC letters on the football side.

For those whose sporting clocks were coordinated by the football and cricket seasons, it was a theatre of dreams with Park Avenue one of three venues used for county cricket and football with Bramall Lane and Northampton’s County Ground.

Among those caught in its spell was club vice-president and sports commentator John Helm.

Life was never quite the same again after the youngster feasted his eyes on Hutton, Miller, Lindwall and Harvey when Yorkshire hosted Australia in 1953, with Helm’s senses further enhanced when he saw Avenue take the field for the first time.

For Avenue’s golden era, you must go back earlier to the 1940s when the ‘Clown Prince of Soccer’ in Len Shackleton dined out on opponents with disdain.

War may be associated with austerity and rationing, but Shackleton provided a festival of goals in the Wartime League before enjoying further riches.

A time of plenty also arrived when Avenue recorded their all-time highest crowd, with 32,800 attending their War Cup tie with Blackpool in 1944.

A bumper gathering of 30,000 would see Avenue – FA Cup quarter-finalists in 1945-46 – host Manchester United in a Cup replay in 1949, a decade when the club’s knock-out prowess became legion courtesy of feted wins at Maine Road and Highbury.

Future England manager Ron Greenwood would launch his career at Avenue, where Johnny Downie, Billy Elliott and Jimmy Stephen also made their names before big-money moves.

After dropping out of the second division in 1949-50, Avenue were not to return, but plenty of characters continued to emerge out of the dressing rooms from its revered Doll’s House – similar in design to the famous ‘cottage’ at Fulham’s home.

Sat between the grandstand and the open Canterbury Avenue terrace, it also housed baths, a referee’s room, refreshment facilities and a committee room.

In contrast to that Victorian feel, the Horton Park End – preserve of the Avenue faithful – was in keeping with the Kop terraces across the land.

In the Fifties, Alvan Williams, a vicar’s son reputedly in possession of the hardest shot in football – as injured goalkeepers will attest – and Whelan Ward, whose theatrical ability to earn penalties preceded him, helped keep fans entertained. Local boy Jeff Suddards provided the class.

Avenue’s final decade in the league would begin with promotion in 1960-61 under that hunk of Scottish granite, the incomparable Jimmy Scoular.

It ended in tears and demotion after propping up Division Four for three successive seasons,

But there were brief spells of illumination, with plenty of goals at both ends usually guaranteed.

A crowd of 17,422 saw Avenue produce a stirring show before going down 3-2 to Czechoslovakia to mark the opening of the club’s floodlights on October 3, 1961.

Seven of that Czech side would play in the World Cup final nine months later against Brazil.

For those in the green and white of Avenue – who changed back from red, amber and black by order of the board after the ignominy of applying for re-election in 1955-56 – it was dazzling inside-forward Ian Gibson who set the pulses racing.

The teenager would soon be sold to Middlesbrough, with the stage set for Kevin Hector – a gifted Leeds lad blessed with an innate ability to find space in the box to provide a last hurrah.

It was another striker in Jim Fryatt, a bald, moustachioed figure renowned for his prodigious aerial ability, who netted after four seconds against visiting Tranmere in April, 1964. It remains a league record.

But it was Hector’s surfeit of goals which provided the abiding memories, with Bobby Ham also pitching in with his fair share.

Hector reached a century of league goals at the age of 21 years and 156 years – just Jimmy Greaves and Dixie Dean had achieved the feat at a younger age – and finished the 1965-66 season as top-scorer in all four divisions with a staggering 44 goals.

He was sold to Derby in August, 1966 and his departure was the day the music died for Avenue and the beginning of the end.

It was another natural-born goal-scorer in Allan Clarke who proved the headline act in the club’s last home occasion of substance, netting twice in an FA Cup win for Fulham in early 1967.

Clarke would become one of football’s biggest names in the Seventies. In haunting contrast, it was a decade when Avenue descended into oblivion with their home resembling the equivalent of a ghost ship.

The demolition of the grandstand and Doll’s House in 1980 was the final painful cut – two relics whose preservation would have surely proved football’s gain, not just Avenue’s.

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