"Kidsgrove Athletic FC - The Novus Stadium"

Kidsgrove is the northern most part of the Stoke-on-Trent / Newcastle-under-Lyme conurbation and is situated right on the county boundary between Staffordshire and Cheshire. The team currently play in the NPL Div 1 west (with near neighbours Newcastle Town), having been promoted from the NWCFL in 2001/02. . Perhaps Kidsgrove most disturbing claim to fame is that Bathpool Park - a stones throw from the ground – was the site of the murder of the heiress Lesley Whittle by Donald Neilson – “the Black Panther” in a case that gripped the nation for 11 months back in 1975.

Location

The Hollinwood Road ground (known now as the Novus Stadium) is located in an entirely residential area, about 20 minutes walk from Kidsgrove station. The town centre is slightly beyond the station, although it contains few shops
There are several pubs in Kidsgrove but none are any closer to the ground than the station, ditto places to eat. To be honest there is probably a greater selection in Newcastle, 5 miles to the south. Parking at the ground is very limited (if not non-existent) although being located in a residential area, there is no problem parking in the nearby streets

View

The ground itself is a tidy little arena, backing on to woodlands and with covered accommodation on all four sides. Entry is via a turnstile towards the corner of the ground with the main stand situated to the left. The stand itself is small, just straddling the halfwayline with about 100 seats. It is, unusually, for this level, cut in half by the players tunnel and access to the other part of the stand and the lefthand end of the ground is by walking round behind the stand.
The far side of the ground also contains a seater stand, slightly bigger than the main stand, whilst the biggest seating area appeared to be in the stand behind the righthand goal. The far end is also a seating area (meaning there are seats on all four sides) but is considerably smaller, the seats mainly confirmed to the area immediately behind the net. Seat in all of the stands gave decent unimpeded views

Facilities

The programme was a decent effort, although colour paper (rather than glossy) but it was fairly good on content

Food & Drink

The clubhouse is located behind the stand and has a small selection of merchandise on sale plus normal bar drinks and snacks. . Snacks and hot food and drink are also available from a snack bar adjacent to the main stand. There was a good variety of food on offer at reasonable prices. I bought some chips with mushy peas which were very nice (to start off with) until near the end when I found a long hair hiding in the bottom of the pile!

Atmosphere

Atmosphere at the ground was reasonable considering the crowd was only 121

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