Our visit to Derby County is on Boxing Day, with a 1pm kick-off.

Pride Park is two miles to the east of the city centre, and was opened at the start of the 1997/8 season. It was built as part of the City challenge scheme which revitalised a huge patch of ex-industrial wasteland, though before they could start building they had to get rid of a cocktail of chemicals buried underground, as well as some dodgy relics from it's days as an army training ground.

By car you need to come off the M1 at junction 25 and head towards Derby, then take the ring road to the south when you reach the edge of the city and follow signs to 'city centre A6' at the next roundabout. In just over a mile this will bring you to the official 600-space supervised away fans car park on the right next to Wilmorton Tertiary College, which costs £4.

Access to Pride Park from here is via a ten minute walk along a footpath by the river, or beside the new access road which goes up and over the railway line into Pride Park. There is no matchday parking around the stadium for anyone without an official Derby County parking permit, and you might need to avoid the nearby Wyvern Shopping centre (where non shoppers usually get clamped, though I don’t know what it’s like on Boxing Day. The sales might be on.) With it being Boxing Day there are no trains to Derby, so I’ve not bothered to include any directions from the station.

The chances are that none of the pubs near the stadium will be open, but if you're gasping for a pint you could try one of the following...My favourite pub in Derby is the excellent real ale 'Brunswick' in Railway Terrace, which brews its own beers and usually has five of them on tap, along with up to a dozen guest beers. Other possibilities are the 'Alexander Hotel', which is just a bit further on from the Brunswick, and the 'Merry Widows', also on Railway Terrace. These pubs usually have bouncers on a matchday, but you might manage to get in as long as they think you look well-behaved. If you're coming by car you can try the 'Navigation' on London Road (the A6), which you'll see on the right hand side just before you get to the away fans car park. Before some games they serve beer inside the ground, so if we're really lucky you might get the chance to pay over the odds for some of their fizzy lager.

Food-wise there are the Harvester and Old Orleans restaurants on the Pride Park industrial estate, and a bit further afield there is a chippie and a decent café opposite the station, which is a must for connoisseurs of a good ‘All day breakfast’. At all costs avoid the vans just outside the ground, which charge exorbitant prices for chips and horrible plastic burgers. Apparently the pies and pasties inside the ground are quite good, though I've never run the risk buying one myself.

The capacity is 33,597 and away supporters are housed in something called the 'Mansfield Bitter South Stand' behind one of the goals, where the away allocation is usually either 3,000 or 4,800. Unfortunately Leeds have just had another message from Derby that if we stand throughout this game (as we usually do) they might reduce our ticket allocation in future, as the did on the final game in 2006/7, when we were limited to 1,500 tickets. All on spurious 'safety' gorunds, of course.

It’s no surprise that our visit has been designated a ‘Premium Plus’ category game, so tickets cost £31 for adults, with over 60's and under 21's paying £19.50 and under 16's £14.50. Despite this, the Leeds allocation has long since sold out, and Derby currently have only 1500 tickets remaining for home fans. Their official site does mention any restrictions as to who can buy them, so if you live locally and haven’t yet got a ticket, then it might be worth a go.

Pride Park is one of the stadia where away fans aren't allowed to leave freely after the match. We can get into the coaches which are parked right by the away stand or head towards the away fans car park but a line of police blocks the way in the opposite direction, so the fans heading back to the station have to wait for a police escort. The reason they have to do this is that there are always a few local chavs at the end of the east stand nearest the away stand. During the match they spend the whole time trying to provoke us rather than watching the game, and afterwards they gather outside the away end to shout at us from the other side of the line of police.

The stadium has been designed so that an additional tier could be added to three sides of the stadium, which would increase the capacity of Pride Park to around 44,000. But this is unlikely to happen unless the Club become established in the Premier League, so they could be waiting for quite a while.

Some of this rubbish came from www.footballgroundguide.com

Photo: Action Images

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