AFC Goole's Victoria Pleasure

One of the more unusually named grounds I have been to during my life has been Goole's Victoria Pleasure. It's an interesting choice of words for a ground that, putting it nicely, isn't a pleasure. At least it's reasonably close.

Back in the days of Peter Jackson being in charge of Lincoln City, the Imps would have several friendlies away to Yorkshire based teams. First of all came Farsley Celtic .... then came Goole. I had heard of Goole, mainly because they played in the same division as Lincoln United and when I saw it was only around an hour's drive from Lincoln, I decided it was worth the trip.

The journey was quite easy enough, heading up the A15 and along motorways before getting into Goole. From what I recall the ground is quite close to the motorway, so finding the ground was relatively easy and finding parking was even easier. The ground is based in the middle of a housing estate (much like Sincil Bank) and therefore parking was relatively easy, including being able to park right out of the turnstiles. Unfortunately there didn't seem to be a lot to do around the ground.

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Upon entering the ground you realise it also has an athletics track around the pitch, although strangely this track only has four lanes, meaning that the view from any of the standing areas was quite reasonable. You enter the ground from behind one of the goals, but much like it's opposite, there isn't actually a stand here, instead there is only a standing area.

The stand to your left is a pitch left stand, the left hand side (whilst looking at it) is standing, whereas the final 1/3 was a seated section. All along this stand were not only several stantions, but there was also the floodlights and therefore it was very hard to find a place to stand without having at least one pole blocking your view of the pitch.

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The stand opposite that one is a small terraced stand that could probably only hold around 300 at the very most, and that assuming it was completely full. Although I didn't view the game from this stand, I did stand in it for a few minutes and the view was ok, but was unrestricted, unlike it's opposite.

That was about it for the ground, there didn't appear to be any Goole fans actually there, so there was no atmosphere whatsoever. There appeared to be no real opportunity or space to create a decent atmosphere, so all in all it was a pretty quiet day.

There was actually very little to write about for the rest of the ground and in all fairness, it wasn't a good day out. Thankfully getting away was quite easy due to it's location, but the chances of me coming here for a random game is very, very slim to say the least.