30 years at the New Den

Wippa · Jan 30, 2023

TheOneAndOnlyGazza said:
The old place wouldn't be the same anyway if 3 sides had been rebuilt to be all seated

Exactly.

Peckham Lion · Jan 30, 2023

Arthur2shedsJackson said:
We did sort of die. Things have never been the same.

Nothing stands still. Not sure we did sort of die when we're getting bigger crowds now than we would have in the same divsion 30 year ago.

Arthur2shedsJackson said:
I know a lot of people who went to the Sporting Lisbon game and have never been again.

One friendly game and they fucked it off! Strange. I know we're a staunch and stubborn lot but that makes no sense to me. You're giving up a lot more than 90 minutes of football when you fuck Millwall off.

It's a day of being around your own people, from the minute you hit the pub, cafe, p&m shop, it begins. Piss taking, banter with your pals, passion, hope, misery and hope again, a tear up if you're that way inclined, etc. The thought of not having any of that makes me shudder.

Brusselslion · Jan 30, 2023

I've been out of the UK since '94

I accept that the move was inevitable and that we had little choice. Also that there's more than an element of rose-tinted nostalgia, and a lament for lost youth and times past from me and others, but I'm not sure that I'll ever fully accept this "new" place as home.

ringo_the_lion · Jan 30, 2023

Feeling nostalgic is normal for everything in life and rose tinted glasses is never more evident, when a close friend or family member dies you only remember the good times and forget about the fall outs, the fights and arguments you had as you paint them out to being a saint and the best thing to walk the earth, when a favorite pub closes down you reminisce about some great times had in there but forget about the times when you've popped in during the week and it was dead as a dodo with just the pub pisshead in there with his skinny dog boring the pants of you talking absolute bollocks.
The Den was brilliant back then and the new Den is still brilliant at times now.

kinelloz · Jan 30, 2023

Get what you are all saying, but no rose tinted glasses here, I well remember the Newport game with less than 3,000, Grimsby in the cup etc the ground was a shithole and falling apart and there have been some great days at the new place as Wippa said. But, The Den was where I grew up, where my old man took me from when I was 18 months old (he never saw the new place), that can't be replaced for me.

Arthur2shedsJackson · Jan 30, 2023

Peckham Lion said:
Nothing stands still. Not sure we did sort of die when we're getting bigger crowds now than we would have in the same divsion 30 year ago.

One friendly game and they fucked it off! Strange. I know we're a staunch and stubborn lot but that makes no sense to me. You're giving up a lot more than 90 minutes of football when you fuck Millwall off.

It's a day of being around your own people, from the minute you hit the pub, cafe, p&m shop, it begins. Piss taking, banter with your pals, passion, hope, misery and hope again, a tear up if you're that way inclined, etc. The thought of not having any of that makes me shudder.

Yes you are right but most of the pubs have gone and the people i stood on the terraces with haven't been seen for years. I feel like everything i had in my late teens and early twenties has been taken away and not been replaced with anything worth having.

Wippa · Jan 30, 2023

Arthur2shedsJackson said:
Yes you are right but most of the pubs have gone and the people i stood on the terraces with haven't been seen for years. I feel like everything i had in my late teens and early twenties has been taken away and not been replaced with anything worth having.

I’m 48 this year. I still see loads of the old faces from my teens, people who I met 30 plus years ago when we was at the old den. Sure, a few have dropped away over the years, a few are sadly no longer with us, but that would’ve happened if we had moved or not. It’s still Millwall to me.

Lion1964 · Jan 30, 2023

Wippa said:
I’m 48 this year. I still see loads of the old faces from my teens, people who I met 30 plus years ago when we was at the old den. Sure, a few have dropped away over the years, a few are sadly no longer with us, but that would’ve happened if we had moved or not. It’s still Millwall to me.

Interesting thread this with peoples different takes on the move. It actually took me nearly two years to go to a game at the new place.
I didn’t like what the club were becoming at the time, I think it was the yanks who were taking over the running of the stadium and they made a lot of good people redundant and took away their livelihoods including my mother in law who fuckin loved working with Billy at wall.

I remember visiting the Senegal fields site a couple of times during the building process and thinking it’s never going to be the same as the old place. When there was piss all over me trainers in the khazi behind the cbl,falling arse over bollocks on the crumbling terrace in the dark at night games with barely three thousand punters and twenty away fans stuck away in the corner of the ilderton. The players voices echoed around the empty ground not to mention some of the bad times. Fond memories those and hated Reg Burr for taking that away.

Roll on a couple of years and I had to return I was missing my wall fix, but without a lot of my pals who had stopped going. Didn’t really know where to sit tried a few places but didn’t feel right, didn’t seem to bump into anyone anymore for a chat and laugh. I struggled with it.
Now thirty years on uncle Reg is forgiven, without that man’s courage and foresight we would now not exist, of that I am certain.
Now a regular ST holder with my youngest daughter in block 5 , she’s now into her sixth season and knows no different. She loves the place and wouldn’t swap it for anything.
And now to be honest the only thing I would change would be to put back a few of the old pubs. It’s our home hopefully will be for sometime yet.