This season’s trip to beautiful Burnley is on Saturday with a 3pm kick off, and you’ll find Turf Moor about a mile to the east of Burnley town centre.

If you're coming by car you need to leave the M65 at Junction 10 and follow signs for Towneley Hall. This road eventually goes past the ground, where there is a car park designated for away fans at the cricket ground behind the visitors' turnstiles. There is also a big pay and display car park on Centenary Way, next to the Bus Station, although spaces go pretty fast. Otherwise there is plenty of street parking, but it's recommend that you remove any Leeds colours from your car, as there have been problems in the past with damaged motors.

There are two train stations that are in walking distance of Turf Moor, Burnley Central (20 minutes walk from the ground) and Burnley Manchester Road (15 minutes walk). Anyone coming from Leeds will arrive at Manchester Road, as Central station is on the branch line to Colne and is only served by local trains coming from the Blackburn direction.

Leaving Manchester Road station you need to cross the main road towards the cinema, and the ground should be clearly visible in the distance straight ahead. Turn left down the 'Centenary Way' dual carriageway (A682) going downhill towards the ground, and in a few minutes you'll come to a roundabout where you should turn right under the canal bridge into Yorkshire Street (A671). Continue down this road and you will reach Turf Moor on your left, with the away stand being the first one you come to.

A pub which is recommended for away fans is the ‘Talbot’, which is around five minutes walk away from Turf Moor on Church Street (the A682),. You could also try the clubhouse at the Cricket Club (by the away fans car park mentioned above), and the ‘Queen Victoria’ (about a half a mile from the ground heading north on the A6144 Belvedere Road).

The best bet in the town centre is the ‘Bridge Bier Huis’ (and yes, it really is spelt like that) which is in the CAMRA Good Beer Guide and serves real ales and a large selection of bottled beers from around the world. Sadly, there are also pubs that are best avoided, including the Turf Hotel' on Yorkshire Street, 'The Swan' and 'The Yates' in the town centre, and any pub on Brunshaw Road.

The official site has published a message they received from Burnley’s safety officer, which asked us to arrive early because of extra searches of everyone going into the ground. It seems they’re mainly looking for fireworks, and if they find any such items in your possession you’ll feel the full force of their “robust prosecution policy”. But they do “hope you have a great experience at Turf Moor”, however unlikely that is considering the form of the two teams.

The capacity of Turf Moor has been 22,546 since half the ground was rebuilt in the mid 1990's at a total cost of £5.3 million. The two new stands, The Jimmy McIlroy & James Hargreaves stands were built on two large former terraces at one end and one side of the ground, and were completed by September 1996. Away fans are in one of the older and smaller stands, the David Fishwick Stand (formerly the Cricket Field Stand).

The usual allocation is half this end (2,100 seats) but the bigger clubs get the whole end, which amounts to 4,125 seats. The view and legroom are pretty good, although the seats are made from wood. When this stand opened it was the first in the country to have central heating installed with hot pipes under the seats, but they have never been used, even when this area was for home fans!

There are two small stanchions to spoil the view for some, though they are away from the centre of the pitch. There are several snack bars, but they don't usually serve beer to away fans, although the pies are pretty good. The concourse can get really crowded if the away team brings a big following, and the toilets are fairly basic. The best bet is to try to get through to the serving hatches at the opposite end from the turnstiles, which normally have shorter queues.

Tickets for away fans coming to Gold category fixtures (which unfortunately always includes the Leeds match) are now £32 for Adults and £18 for Concessions, with Juniors at £13. They are only on sale until noon tomorrow with none available on the day, though as there were only 100 remaining on Tuesday, the chances are they will be sold out by then anyway.

The club have announced a £20m re-development of Turf Moor. The first phase will involve replacing the David Fishwick Stand with a new 2,500 capacity single tiered stand, which will incorporate some corporate hospitality boxes and a new Cricket Pavilion for the neighbouring Cricket Club. The second phase of the works will include the re-furbishment of the Bob Lord Stand, while away fans will be moved to the lower tier of the Jimmy McIlroy Stand.

So as far as I can see we would get a smaller allocation than we do at present, while the final capacity of 22,000 will be slightly less than it is today. In that case, we can be thankful that the scheme has had to be put on hold due to the current economic climate, though they might be tempted to go through with it if they are in the Premier League next season.

Some of this rubbish came from www.footballgroundguide.com.

Photo: Action Images

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