Maine Road 100 – Day 26

It’s day 26 of my posts counting down to the centenary of Maine Road’s opening game. Today – the Control Room. It’s something few ever went in but it was an important part of the stadium’s last couple of decades.

It was erected behind the block between the Main Stand and the North Stand. This was an uncovered section of seats until 1982.

The control room housed the screens monitoring crowd behaviour and the match commander would be sat in there with other staff, police etc. watching the crowd. These images show the control room as it looked during Maine Road’s final season. It had been expanded by then and these photos were taken by Ed Garvey, club photographer, for my book Farewell To Maine Road (though we didn’t use them all).

You’ll notice in the following photo that one of the temporary stands had been constructed behind the control box to cope with demand for tickets. This stand was erected on scaffolding and was squeezed in above the control box and next to the Maine Stand. I never sat in that temporary stand, though I was often in the block below the control room (when it was uncovered it was the cheapest seats in the stadium and I was there when Bobby McDonald went in nets in 1982.

For those unfamiliar with Maine Road this photo may help. This shows number 2, the uncovered section, before it was seated. The control room was roughly to the left of the North Stand roof.

If you’d like to read more on the history of Maine Road, take a look at Farewell To Maine Road, which can be downloaded from this page:

Farewell To Maine Road – Part One

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