Winter Sports - Football


The Shay Stadium


It takes two to tango - in Halifax


Dual-use, council-run stadium ‘The Shay’ sits in the famous Calderdale Valley, and the quirks of its turfcare requirements derive from an oddly varied history. The ground upon which it lies has, at times, been a speedway track, a landfill site, a man-made hill to support a road, and the starting point of an unfinished First World War railway tunnel. Jake Barrow reports


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alderdale Metropolitan Borough Council recently spent £19 million on a local landmark, the half‐mile‐away and 300‐year‐old Piece Hall. The hall is one of the grandest buildings one could expect to see in this country. It is one of those, as exist in Durham or Lincoln for example, which would probably be world‐famous, had they been built in a major world city.


To fail the duty of its maintenance, then, would have been a misstep. But the decision‐makers came through with perhaps the town’s most important investment of recent times.


And the council has also been forward‐ thinking enough, and willing enough to invest, to take on the running of The Shay, and save it from potential ownership limbo on at least three occasions.


The last of these was in 2008, meaning the stadium is approaching the decennial of its current ownership. It is operated instead by The Shay Stadium Trust, a not‐for‐profit organisation which was founded to run the venue on the council’s behalf. Head Groundsman Graham ‘Ozzy’ Osbourne, however, has been around since long before this current tenancy. In fact, the 52‐year‐old first arrived at The


PC DECEMBER/JANUARY 2018 I 41


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