 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Spotland Stadium" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(September 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Crown Oil Arena | |
 Spotland Stadium in 2005 | |
 Interactive map of Spotland Stadium | |
| Former names | St Clement's Playing Fields |
|---|---|
| Location | Sandy Lane Rochdale Greater Manchester OL11 5DR |
| Coordinates | 53°37′15″N2°10′48″W / 53.62083°N 2.18000°W /53.62083; -2.18000 |
| Owner | Rochdale A.F.C. |
| Capacity | 10,249[1] |
| Field size | 115 yd × 74 yd (105 m × 68 m)[2] |
| Surface | Grass |
| Scoreboard | Clough Scoreboard |
| Opened | 1878 |
| Tenants | |
| St Clement's Rugby Club (1878–1897) Rochdale A.F.C. (1896) (1900–1901) Rochdale Town F.C. (1902–1903) Rochdale A.F.C. (1907–present) Rochdale Hornets (1988–present) | |
Spotland Stadium, known as theCrown Oil Arena for sponsorship reasons, is a multi-purpose sports stadium in theSpotland district ofRochdale,Greater Manchester, England, which is home toRochdale Association Football Club and theRochdale Hornets Rugby League Football Club. The venue has a capacity of 10,249.
Spotland was originally known as St Clement's Playing Fields, after the nearby St Clement's Church. Having previously been used for cricket, it became the home of St Clement's Rugby Club in 1878, until they disbanded in 1897. As well as staging local rugby competitions, the ground briefly hosted two short-lived football clubs – the earlierRochdale A.F.C. from 1900 to 1901 andRochdale Town from 1902 to 1903, but both folded. The presentRochdale A.F.C. was then formed to use the ground in 1907, later buying the freehold for £1,700 in 1914. By the time the club joinedthe Football League in 1921, a low wooden grandstand had been built on the south side of the ground, once the location of the cricket pavilion. Also by this time, the name of the surrounding area of the town,Spotland, had been adopted as the ground's name.[3]
In August 2016, Rochdale A.F.C. renamed Spotland Stadium the Crown Oil Arena as part of a sponsorship deal by theBury-based fuel companyCrown Oil.[1][4] In 2018, due to the winter weather the pitch got into such a bad state that a number of games had to be postponed. Subsequently, Rochdale were drawn againstTottenham Hotspur in theFA Cup and the Spurs managerMauricio Pochettino was quoted "not a pitch in a condition to play football" after seeing some pictures leading Rochdale to relay the surface in time for their game.[5][6]
The ground has four stands: the David Kilpatrick Stand (or Main Stand), the Sandy Lane End, the Smith Metals Family Stand (Pearl Street End) and the Reside Estate Agency Stand (the Willbutts Lane Stand). All are fully seated, apart from the Sandy Lane End, which is a small terrace behind one of the goals.
The Main Stand features a statue of a long-standing Rochdale fan, David Clough, situated where he watched matches as a season-ticket holder. He had helped the club raise funds and left £250,000 to the club in his will when he died in 2020. The statue was unveiled in September 2021.[7]
Apart from local football and rugby league, Spotland has in the past been used to host minor nations rugby league matches, such asBritish Amateur Rugby League Association (British Amateur Rugby League Association) matches, and also theNational League Cup finals of 2003 and 2004.
Spotland Stadium was selected as a venue for the2013 Rugby League World Cup hosting a match between Fiji and Ireland. This was the first time that Rochdale has staged an event in a World Cup in any sport and the event was sold out with almost 9,000 people[8] attending. (Note that Spotland Stadium had earlier been used to host the match between Ireland and Moldova in the1995 Emerging Nations tournament which ran alongside that year’s Rugby League World Cup, but this event is not considered to be part of the World Cup proper.)
Authority control databases: Geographic |
|---|