Forgotten Fields

On the melancholic beauty of abandoned football pitches...

What is it that attracts us to decay and dereliction? Urban Exploring, or Urbex, is expanding as an interest and is being well documented by its participants. Think about the quantity of images you see of abandoned and dilapidated buildings and installations relative to new and beautiful things. It’s a popular subject of professional photography, a common setting for music videos, an edgy and visually appealing backdrop. This ratio must be significant to say the least. What do you find more evocative and romantic, a photo of a shiny London skyscraper, or a crumbling Scottish castle? There’s something in that sadness, abandonment, ruin, sad but striking; melancholy can be beauty. 

Freelance photographer Simon Bray recognises the appeal, writing that “...as photographers, it’s up to us to document the world around us. In the case of dereliction, it’s important that we capture it while it is still there, to preserve it in time. In the majority of cases, the location will have seen much better days, so in that case, the point of interest is in how and why it has ended up this way.” I would agree that this is the case – the sight of a broken-down building naturally activates our imagination in a way an operational edifice is unlikely to; what happened there? what was it used for? who was there using it? what sounds and smells were present? why was it deserted and allowed to fall into disrepair? In most cases we don’t know, so we invent. Humans are the most curious of creatures; we have to fill any gaps in knowledge, and if we can’t do that with facts, we create a story for ourselves.

For me, it’s not just buildings that pique my interest, but also open spaces and I refer in particular to football pitches. My love (ok, obsession) with the game is such that while out and about absolutely anything related to the game will attract my attention – a set of floodlights glimpsed over or between buildings, an actual stadium, any kind of sports facility. But it isn’t even required to be a well-maintained and in-use amenity; just that flash of a white, perpendicular structure will do it, with net or without. Football happens there in some form, and that’s what makes my heart jump (yes, really, it often jumps). There is another feeling though which is much harder to define, and that is the feeling provoked when I see an abandoned football pitch, somewhere where football used to happen. There is some fantastic imagery out there documenting ‘dead grounds’ – the terraces hidden amongst the trees of Cathkin Park in Glasgow where Third Lanark once played being a particularly striking example. However, because I am only viewing them second-hand they don’t stimulate in me the same feelings I get when I see a disused pitch for real, and I am talking particularly about ones that were never used at anything close to professional level. 

When I see a set of goalposts emerging from an overgrown field, the beauty of dereliction should be there but somehow it is tempered with sadness: this melancholy is not entirely beautiful. But why? Perhaps because unlike with a lot abandoned buildings, you know what happened here, no imagination is required. People played here; it was a place of fun and recreation, and now nobody comes to enjoy it anymore. Why? What made them stop? Was there a club that closed down? Did the local kids grow up and move on, and not have their places filled by a new generation? Could it even be an indication of some societal change in that people simply don’t want to play as much these days? Whatever the reason the sight is sad, to me at least, because people should want to play and use these facilities.

Considering the purely aesthetic appeal of an abandoned pitch though, it should be said that there is at least something of that derelict beauty there. In his book for youngsters, Keeper, Mal Peet captures a delightful description of a pitch in the middle of a jungle slowly being reclaimed by nature: “The woodwork was a silvery grey, and the grain of the wood was open and rough. Weathered, like the timber of old boats left for years on a beach. It shone slightly. The net had the same colour, like cobweb, and thin green plant tendrils grew up the poles that supported it.” ¹ I used this book with a young student during the time I spent teaching English in Italy, and it seems that Italy is a goldmine for such sights. Perhaps this is not surprising given that two things that Italy is particularly famous for are football and old ruins. Sadly I didn’t capture many photos, as I often passed these places on trains, but the images are still there in my mind – goalposts put up between olive groves, at the bottom of cliffs... anywhere where there is a bit of flat ground Italians will try to play football on it. 
 

 

An improvised pitch that I spotted at the foot of the walls of Città Alta, Bergamo

With such a high number of pitches being created it is not surprising then that many get abandoned as people discover better places to play. Thinking this way, maybe seeing a disused pitch should not be such a vision of sadness, but the initial twinge is always still there. On a journey to Naples I saw several overgrown football fields, and of course your eyes are drawn to the goals as the objects that announce the presence of the former playing area. Creeping plants climb the posts, the net and stanchions if present, assimilating the pitch back into nature. One of the pitches I saw on this particular journey had goals that looked so new as to be possibly unused. The posts were brilliant white and the netting was also conspicuously clean, yet the vegetation had already reached the crossbar. This raised even more intrigue: this was obviously a decent facility fairly recently now discarded. Why had it been abandoned? In Italy it’s probably best not to ask. In this case the sadness was infused with a little anger – what a waste of a good ground. 

Whatever all this says about my personal obsession, it cannot be denied that these sights of abandonment are evocative and emotional on some level, and that should be the case for anybody who sees them. Even if you are not a football or sports fan of any kind, you should be able to appreciate the enjoyment it generates, the social aspect, bringing people together. On this basis the unnecessary loss of any pitch should be a cause for sadness, but we can still appreciate the visual appeal of a ground merging back into the landscape from which it was created. Next time you are on a train and spot a lonely set of goalposts being strangled by shrubs, take a moment to imagine the fun that was undoubtedly had there in times past. I know my emotions will always be tweaked by a glimpse of any place where once skills were grown, but now grow only weeds.

    Photo © Copyright Nigel Davies and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence. Available at http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1481044

¹ Peet, Mal (2003). Keeper, London: Walker Books