Last Match At Bank Street
Manchester United Before Old Trafford
Last Match At Bank Street
For those of us who are relatively new to the world of football history, little historical facts like this prove fascinating.
Old Trafford opened in February 1910. This means, of course, that Manchester United originally played at a different park.
This is commonly referred to as Bank Street, though older books I’ve seen call it Clayton, after the name of the district of Manchester it was located in.
There are actually a few pictures of the old stadium, such as this from 1907:
Bank Street goes back to the old Newton Heath FC days — and, if you claim to remember those days, you’re simply a liar. It was in 1893 when Newton Heath first occupied Bank Street.
The stadium allegedly seated 50,000 or so. I presume that it was similar to the old wooden ballparks in use by baseball (and American football) clubs in the United States at the time. The 50,000 total likely included standing room, and the park was almost certainly a rickety wooden structure.
The most famous match at the old grounds took place on March 9, 1895, when Netwon Heath played host to Walsall Town:
However, the pitch was in awful shape, causing the match to be declared void and replayed at a later date:
The match was replayed about a month later — but Newton Heath won again, this time 9-0. And the mythical 14-0 scoreline remains the highest win in the history of Manchester United.
The final match at Bank Street came on January 22, 1910 — and it seems that everybody knew it was the finale:
It seems that the park was in pretty bad shape by that time:
And, just like that, the end had come for Bank Street, in a pretty anticlimactic fashion.