Almondvale Stadium (Livingston FC)

I’VE GOT A BOOK OUT. Sorry, I was going to try and be less blatant with the plugging. That didn’t work, did it? But you can buy it on Amazon and it is about football, so it’s sort of related. I’ll tell you more about it instead of an update on Woodhorn Lane this week, so scroll down to the bottom if you’d like more info. Anyway, let’s have a look at a football stadium north of the border.

“Woah Andy,” I hear you say, “I thought you said you’d lost all your photos from Scotland?!” I’ve got a couple of grounds that have been rescued from the phone that died, but I visited Livingston’s ground on a separate occasion and it was lovely too. Its official title is The Energy Assets Arena, which is absolutely horrible, but that’s one of very few negatives about this one.

First off, I have to say – there’s absolutely loads of places you can peak inside. It’s absolutely brilliant. There’s a hill behind one of the goals allowing a decent view into it and plenty of the exits have gaps that you can see into. It means that for the casual tourist you’ll get a cracking idea of what the stadium is like inside and out and so it’s absolutely maximum marks on that front.

It also scores well in the mental vandalism scale. One drawing of a golf green with “hole in two” went over my head, as did the reference to the Japan Four. Hopefully neither are offensive, as they both seem bonkers enough to both score points and merit inclusion. There’s also a massive spiral staircase, which was brilliant and made me love it. I can only think of Oxford’s Kassam Stadium as an example of another, although I’m happy to be corrected.

The only other negatives are the office block in one corner of the ground. It made it look a bit, well, I don’t know. But I’m not a massive fan of things being built into stadiums, although there are exceptions. This wasn’t one of those. There was also a fairly naff piece of artwork outside. It was nice that it wasn’t a statue, but still, it wasn’t my favourite sculpture. But hey, let’s not get bogged down in any sort of art critique, this is a blog dedicated to football grounds. And for the passing tourist there’s plenty to see here. Top marks.

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Book Information

I’VE WRITTEN A BOOK! As it says on the tin really. I’ve done a book. It’s about me and my friend Mark Tearney, who spent last year following the FA Cup. We picked a game at the beginning of the competition in the Extra Preliminary Round and followed the winner into the next round, then the winner of that game into the next round, the plan being to do it all the way to Wembley. Did we make it? You’ll have to read it to find out. You can buy it for the bargain price of £2.99 from Amazon or Kobo and hopefully a few other places by the end of next week. Cheers.