Saturday 27th May 2023 ko 13:30

International U18 Friendly

ESTUDIANTES LDN 4 (Djalo 9 Karuchok 63 Own Goal 70 Calvo 71)

PHOENIX RISING (USA) 5 (20 25 39 78 80)

Att 74 at Westway Stadium, Kensington & Chelsea

Free Entry

If you’ve been following this blog closely for the last few years you may have spotted that I’d been hankering after the Westway Stadium. Part of it was all those years either driving or taking the coach along the A40 from Oxford into central London by Shepherds Bush, and part of it was just how unusual a ground it is.

You’d never see anything like the Westway built these days and that’s no bad thing. The elevated roadway was built as part of the ill-fated “Ringways” Project from 1962 to 1970 from Paddington to North Kensington. It cut through swathes of working-class housing, but towards the North Kensington end, and underneath the Westway junction there was enough space to build the Westway Sports and Fitness Centre. There’s a climbing wall, mini pitches, a leisure centre, and the stadium, and the vast majority it all is underneath the A40.

It’s been used as a backdrop, the cover of The Jam’s “This Is The Modern World” album was photographed here. The film “Breaking Glass” that made a star of Hazel O’Connor, saw the riot scene filmed here, and both Hawkwind and the Pink Fairies played open-air gigs here. 

But you can’t properly take in a visit here without referencing the Grenfell Tower tragedy. The fire happened in 2017, and yet the shrouded tower still stands, partly a memorial to the 72 that are known to have been lost, but no one knows for sure who was there on the 14th June 2017. That is a large reason why the tower hasn’t been demolished, if you don’t know who was there, how can you tell who was lost?

I do recommend travelling here via Ladbroke Grove tube station and walking underneath the road. You’ll wonder as I did how on earth somewhere as well-to-do as Kensington & Chelsea have areas this deprived? But don’t see this strip of “Underneath the road” as a place bereft of hope, it’s a long way from that, and enjoy the arts installations, the studio, cafe, and community centre too. 

But let’s talk football. Some many remember the now defunct Fire United Christian FC playing here in 2014 before their stab at the Eastern Counties League based at firstly the New River Stadium  in White Hart Lane then Terence McMillan Stadium in Plaistow. 

Since then the matches have tended to be one-offs, so when this fixture popped up I made a bee-line for it, and what a fixture it was! Estudiantes LDN are an education-based charity working in Haringey. The idea is by linking football to education via Haringey 6th form, you can both educate and involve young people in a positive way. 

And who wouldn’t want to play a touring youth team from a side playing in the American Championship? On the face of it, it hard to predict that two sides from such wildly different backgrounds would combine to produce such a good game, but that’s exactly what happened! Two sides dug deep and produced a game that both British and American alike will remember for a while- yes it was that good!

Afterwards Robyn and I walked to the much nearer Latimer Road tube station. It was slightly counter-intuitive to be taking a Circle line train that had had a terminus (at Hammersmith) but that view of the Grenfell Tower still had the power to make us stop and think. Those who lost their lives there deserve nothing less.