Derby County F.C. - Stadium

Stadium

See The Racecourse Ground, The Baseball Ground and Pride Park Stadium.

As an offshoot of Derbyshire County Cricket Club, Derby County’s first home stadium was County Cricket Ground, also known as the Racecourse Ground, where the club played it’s league and FA Cup matches between 1884 and 1895. Although the ground itself was good enough to hold the first FA Cup final match outside of London, when Blackburn Rovers beat W.B.A. 2–0 in the 1886 FA Cup final Replay and a full England International, disputes over fixture clashed between the football and cricket clubs meant that when the opportunity to play at Sir Francis Ley’s Baseball Ground arose, the club accepted.

Commonly referred to amongst supporters as “The BBG”, the club moved to The Baseball Ground in 1895 and remained there for the next 102 years, despite opportunities to move in the 1920s and 1940s. Derby had already played there, a 1–0 win over Sunderland during the 1891–92 season, as an alternate venue after a fixture clash at The County Ground. At its peak during the late 1960s, the ground could hold around 42,000 – the club’s record attendance achieved following the opening of the Ley Stand with a 41,826 crowd watching a 5–0 defeat of Tottenham Hotspur on 20 September 1969. From this peak, the continued addition of seating saw the capacity drop over the next 15 years to 26,500 in 1985. Following the Taylor Report in 1989, and the legal requirement for all seater stadia, the ground’s capacity dwindled to just 18,500 by the mid-1990s, not enough for the then ambitious second tier club. Despite initially hoping to rebuild the Baseball Ground to hold 26,000 spectators, and rejecting the offer of two sites elsewhere in Derby, then-Chairman Lionel Pickering announced in February 1996 the intention to move to a new, purpose built stadium at the newly regenerated Pride Park, with the last ever first team game at the Baseball Ground being in May 1997, a 1–3 home defeat to Arsenal, though it continued to host reserve games until 2003. Derby's new ground, named Pride Park Stadium, was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 18 July, with a friendly against Sampdoria following on 4 August.

Derby hold the unique distinction of being the only club to have had three home grounds host full England internationals. England beat Ireland 9–0 at The Racecourse Ground in 1895, beat Ireland again, 2–1, at The Baseball Ground in 1911 and, most recently, Pride Park hosted England's 4–0 win over Mexico in May 2001.