Brentford may no longer play at the fantastic Griffin Park, but it still manages to steal the hearts of football fans. A visit to one of London's loveliest clubs will not disappoint either.
We'll be honest: some more than others, but we've been in love with London's Brentford for years. A little brick in a large city where the big clubs only get bigger and bigger, for years running anonymously on the fringes of the English football pyramid, but with a great stadium, the classic Griffin Park. But nothing in the world stays the same, a new stadium was built and the well-run Brentford have now even been promoted to the Premier League, and so the Bees are back at the highest level for the first time since 1947.
The capacity of the new Brentford Community Stadium may say something about the club's ambitions, and how unexpectedly fast it all happened. The stadium, which will open in 2020, is one and a half times as big as Griffin Park, but with 17,250 seats it is of course the smallest stadium in the Premier League. Although it is questionable whether it could have been bigger, given the stadium's location, sandwiched between two railway lines and the busy M4 flyover.
From the outside, the stadium looks a bit cheap, with a lot of grey and few references to the club. But what is not, may yet come. The stadium is surprisingly nice on the inside due to the asymmetry (mainly due to lack of space) and the sloping roof in the corners next to the main stand, giving you a view outside. The downside is that they have made a blunder here, as all the seats are the colours of the rainbow, which should have always have been kitted out in red and white, in the Brentford motif.
While the move from Griffin Park a mile away to the new location is in a sense a resignation to the past, it's a bit of a return to old ground. Barely 200 meters away, the club was founded in 1889, in the Oxford & Cambridge Pub. At the Kew Bridge, the old location, now houses restaurant The Stable. Due to the corona crisis, the new stadium remained empty for months, but The Stable is now a popular stopover on the way to the stadium.
For years Griffin Park, home to Brentford FC since 1904, was arguably London's most beautiful stadium. The floodlights towered over the neighbourhood, the stadium was situated between the back gardens and only from Braemar Road could you really see that football was being played here. However, the stadium was unsuitable for high-level football, so Brentford had wanted to move for years. Subsequently, the legendary stadium had an inglorious end: no legendary farewell match with crying fans in the stands and a legendary last goal, but a stadium kept empty due to the corona crisis. Soon after, the bulldozer came along and now there is nothing left of that fine, Griffin Park.
Griffin Park was known to football fans for having pubs on all four corners of the stadium, each with its own peculiarities and crowd. Unfortunately, one has already disappeared, The Princess Royal, but the other three can still be visited.
Most famous is The Griffin (pictured), the pub on the corner of Braemar Road and Brook Road South that gave the stadium its name, and in the early years even served as a dressing room for Brentford games. The pub is still very popular on match days.
A little further on Brook Road South, at the intersection with New Road, is The Brook pub, the most modern of the four. This replaced the ancient Royal Oak and has now become a trendy bar. Walk up New Road and at the end is The New Inn, an Irish pub that has been here for over 150 years.
Whilst in the Championship you could stand for only fifteen pounds behind the goal at Griffin Park without too much effort, that is very different now. Due to the big opponents coming to Brentford every other week, season tickets sold flew off the shelves and there are few tickets left for single sale in the small stadium. The chance of selling to non-members seems to be nil in the Premier League, so if you really want to go to Brentford this season, it is best to become a member of the Bees. A membership costs 40 pounds (per year), but if you find that too much, you will have to wait for a friendly.
The Brentford Community Stadium is located right next to Kew Bridge train station. From Waterloo Station, which is located in the centre of the city, it takes about half an hour by train to get to the stadium.
Images: Shutterstock
