Farewell to much more than Best, Charlton and Shankly

Players, fans, a whole town. For them, Saturday sees the last game at a proper old school football ground - one that has witnessed the kinds of highs and lows which put the modern "crisis" of a bad 20 minutes in the Premier League into perspective.

Borough Park has been the home of Workington Reds for 89 years.

That nine decades peaked in Division Three (now League One), but the club has suffered and celebrated in a way familiar to so many non-league stalwarts.

This is a home of English football in all its raw beauty. A place where legends honed their skills, celebrities paid return visits and, most of all, life and football just got on with it.

About 2,000 fans are expected to gather to say their goodbyes to the old ground.

Workington rose to and fell out of the Football League there, while Bill Shankly and Keith Birkenshaw cut their managerial teeth in the Borough Park dugout.

And, occasionally, fancy dans from the top flight got to tread the hallowed (or hollowed) turf.

Club historian Steve Durham, 72, first became interested in the Reds in 1963 and has a lifetime worth of experiences here.

"It's very mixed emotions," he says ahead of the final match.

"Obviously, you can take the history and the memories with you but it's been home for so long.

"You do get attached to it in a funny sort of a way."

Like many Reds' supporters, he has been through the gamut of emotions over the decades.

"When I started in the early 60s, we played the Carlisle United match that would draw 18,000 people here - it's difficult to comprehend now."

But there had been an even bigger draw. FA Cup 3rd round, 1958, the Busby Babes of Manchester United just a month before the horror of the Munich Disaster.

Borough Park welcomed 21,000 people that day - roughly the population of the entire town today and a far cry from the 800 average gate reached this season.

It took just five minutes for Clive Colbridge to put the Reds in front, the romance of the cup alive on the cold Irish Sea coast.

That lead lasted until 10 minutes into the second half when a quickfire Dennis Viollet hat-trick saw reality triumph, but what a day.

"And then there were the dark days after 1977," says Durham.

"We dropped out of the Football League, became non-league, semi-professional, and for nearly three decades we struggled."

Several publicity stunts were pulled to bring some money through the turnstiles in those difficult years.

Bobby Charlton, who had been at Borough Park in the Manchester United team during the famous FA Cup match, returned to guest for Workington in 1978.

As a 40-year-old, he played for the Reds in a match against the recently formed Fort Lauderdale Strikers – an American team that attracted stars such as George Best.

The latter also pulled on a Reds shirt in 1986, guesting for the team in a friendly against a Lancashire Football League XI.

Crowds coming to watch games were below 250 at the time, but about 3,500 people turned out to watch a football legend.

Durham recalls: "It was a struggle to keep the club going. It's only in the last couple of decades where we've been on the up."

But with men's and women's football attracting ever more interest and support, the facilities at Borough Park could no longer cope with demand.

"Unfortunately, as much as there's so much history here, the building's well past its sell-by date and we need to move on for future generations," Durham admits.

A new stadium will be built to replace Borough Park and be a shared home for the football club and Workington Town RLFC, as well as housing community facilities.

"The time is right, you know, we've got to make that move."

Saturday's fixture against Leek Town will be a celebration, Durham says, with old players invited to do a lap of honour for the last game here.

"Last week we were under a bit of pressure because we were in danger of getting relegated, but because we won at Warrington, there's no pressure on this game.

"We can relax and say goodbye to Borough Park."

And as the stadium's end nears, it has become a magnet for ground hoppers getting a last - and maybe first - look at the old relic.

"We've had three or four groups of Dutch fans that have come across to visit the ground," Durham says.

"And throughout this season we've had people from the length and breadth of the country."

He says Saturday will be emotional for many, with the ground prepped for demolition and Workington's skyline about to change for good.

"From a personal point of view it will be sad to go, but I'm in favour of the move and I think it's got to be done."

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