Don Valley Stadium (Sheffield)

Don Valley Stadium was the north of England's premier athletics venue, as well as being home to several sports teams, from its opening in 1991 until it closed in 2013.

The reason for The Don Valley Stadium receiving a page on this blog is because of the Booth's families' demands in terms of rent from Rotherham United FC to stay in their Millmoor home. The club decamped to the DVS at the start of the 2008-09 season while a new site was found and developed back in Rotherham.

 










The Don Valley Stadium was designed by the local council and was built by RM Douglas Construction. It was completed in 1990 in readiness for the 1991 World Student Games at a cost of £29M as part of a complex for sports with a capacity of 25,000.

It had been hoped that Sheffield would win the bid for the 1992 Commonwealth Games but lost out to Manchester. It was also hoped both Sheffield United and Wednesday would move in to an extended 45,000 capacity stadium.

The Don Valley staged American Football, Sheffield Eagles Rugby League matches and concerts as well as numerous athletics meetings until it gave haven to Rotherham United FC. The Millers moved out of the stadium in May 2012 to take up home at their new New York Stadium.

Sadly for the city of Sheffield, it was decided that Don Valley Stadium would be shut down owing to government austerity measures, despite a fight from many local athletes including Olympic gold medalist Jessica Ennis-Hill. Events would be transferred up the road to a smaller arena at Woodbourn Road. Sheffield Eagles announced that they would return to Owlerton Stadium for the 2014 rugby league season.

Demolition started at Don Valley in December 2014

My visit

Wednesday 20th July 2011

I was in South Yorkshire after watching my team Scarborough Athletic play at Goole in a pre season friendly the previous evening. I had been to Millmoor for a look at the old place before taking a bus to Meadowhall. I then caught the Supertram to the Arena/Don Valley Stadium stop.

The Arena had several sponsorship names with an indoor capacity of 13,500. It held the gymnastics at the Student Games before staging concerts, boxing and Sheffield Steelers ice hockey games amongst other events. 

 









Directly ahead across a large square was Ice Sheffield with two Olympic size rinks and a seating capacity of 1,500 which was the training venue for ice hockey and skating.

Sheffield really was blessed with some tremendous facilities which had replaced the old industrial wastelands and I turned left through a lovely parkland walk towards the crowning glory of the complex. It really did remind me of being somewhere like Germany with the tram and superb facilities and landscape.

I got outside the impressive stadium and had to walk all the way around to Worksop Road where the gate was open to the vast car park. There were signs of The Millers' tenancy with signs pointing to the away fans entrance and ground regulation notices. A temporary souvenir stand also stood on the car park. I made my way to the reception as there didn't seem to be any open gates.

 

The lady behind the counter gave me a warm welcome and rang the duty manager when I asked if I could go inside to take some pictures. I had to fill in and sign a disclaimer to say they would not be used for commercial use. Once I'd done that the friendly staff told me to go where I wanted apart from the pitch!

I was sent down the tunnel in the corner which was used as access for setting up events. It immediately became clear that the pitch was several metres below normal ground level to form a natural bowl and to keep the wind out.

A bottom tier of seats ran all the way around the track, which had ten lanes in the home straight. Three quarters of these seats were in the open until the Main Stand side which held 10,000. This had a strange canopy type roof like the one on the Mound Stand at Lord's Cricket Ground. The stand also had an extra deep tier of covered seats and had all the VIP facilities. At each end of this stand was an additional separate block. The one at Meadowhall End was home to away fans. Behind the open end was the Student Games torch and the Sheffield End had a huge electric scoreboard at the back. Only the Main Stand was used for Rotherham United matches.

 










I wandered around taking several shots before going back to the reception to thank the staff. I walked back to the tram stop and within a few minutes my transport arrived to take me out to Hillsborough.

Football in an athletics stadium is not ideal, but the Don Valley was a pretty good venue. I had hoped that the operators, Sheffield International Venues found enough uses to keep the stadium in regular use once The Millers move out, but it was not to be.