"Great location"

If any club ever needed a new ground, it was Rotherham United. Locked out of their old Milmoor home, they played at the awful Don Valley Stadium in neighbouring Sheffield for 4 years before finally building the impressive New York Stadium.

Now I'm not usually a fan of new grounds, but compared to Don Valley, the NYS is very hard not to like. Yes, it's one of those identikit, Ikea-type stadiums that you've seen before, but it's more or less in the middle of the town, not miles away from anywhere like most other new builds.

Location

Rarely for a new build, the New York Stadium is in a pretty good location, 5 minutes walk from the town centre and train station and actually nearer than the old Milmoor ground whose floodlights you can see as you walk to the ground.

The only issue is the stadium's surroundings - it's almost completely enclosed by a dual carriageway on one side and the river Don on the other, meaning you can only actually enter and exit the ground from the north side. So if you've parked to the south of the river (like we did) you've actually got a much longer walk than you were expecting!

View

The view from the away end is fantastic - the steep banking means that the shorter gentleman (like myself) will have no problem seeing the action, even with a big 6-foot+ lurch stood in front of them.

Food & Drink

Beer was served to away fans which was a surprise. Rotherham v Sheff Utd isn't the most hostile of derbies (with most fans saving their mutual hatred for Sheffield Wednesday), but as the clubs are separated by only a few miles, the sight of alcohol behind the bar was a very pleasant surprise.

Police & Stewards

South Yorkshire's "finest" can be funny buggers at the best of times, but they went a bit OTT at the NYS. There's never been a massive rivalry between United and Rotherham but our exit away from the ground involved being herded like cattle with mesh fencing separating the fans... Until you got out onto the one road outside the stadium where you were free to mix again. Seemed a little over the top!

Also, strangely we saw more home fans being chucked out than away fans - a big surprise.

Atmosphere

This is gong to sound like sour grapes, but I was quite disappointed with the atmosphere at the NYS. I've been twice now, once for a friendly and once for a league match. The friendly doesn't count for atmosphere cos no-one really cares, but the league game was very quiet until Rotherham scored. Once they took the lead it got a little louder, but before that it was on par with Doncaster (ie, it was non-existent)!

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