BUCKING THE TREND

I could blather on about the FA Trophy and indeed if I had gone to Buxton FC which was my original plan, thwarted by the weather, I would have seen a 5-1 for the home team and would have been over excited by the rarified atmosphere being at the highest (in altitude) ground in England; Silverlands stands 304 metres about sea level. Founded in 1877 the club tops Tow Law Town (299.9m) and AFC Emley , Wakefield (184m). As you will have read in a previous blog, the Hawthorns is the highest professional stadium in the English football league. http://baileyfootballblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/from-highest-to-lowest-its-all-up-or.html

The link below will take you to some of the higst and lowest and most beautiful stadia in the country.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2411492/Top-10-beautiful-football-grounds.html

You will see the Eidi Stadium on the Faroes, where you will be battered on both sides by sea winds off the Atlantic and Arbroath's Gayfield Park is reputedly the stadium closest to the sea in Europe. The Prospects Stadium on Canvey Islands is the lowest, although Grimsby Town is the lowest in ther FLeague.

The players at the Ottmar Hitzfeld Stadium on Zermatt, Switzerland is carved into the mountain side and playes get to the ground by cable car at over 2000 metres, claimed to be the highest in Europe,

The Estadio Daniel Alcides Carrion at Cerro de Pasco in Peru stands at 4380 metres, the highest in the world. The high altitude stadium controversy arose in 2007 when nations complained about the unfair advantage gained by teams playing above 2500 metres was rescinded a year later and FIFA announced guidelines for teams to arrive a certain number of days before a match at 3000m to acclimatise. No doubt Sep Blatter will have had the final word. Only the national stadium at La Paz Peru (3500m) comes "outside" that ruling.

Bramall Lane opened in 1855, is the oldest surviving stadium still hosting professional games and the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow is the first stadium to install artificial turf approved by FIFA, to counteract the Russian winters. I wonder who paid?