Quote: Hillsborough Lad "It was a terribly designed stadium, and after the World Student Games (what it was built for), there was simply no afterthought as to what on earth the city of Sheffield was going to do with this white elephant.'"
It's a bit unfair to say that Don Valley was "terribly designed" and there was "simply no afterthought what ... Sheffield was going to do". It was designed the way it was because those were the requirements of the World Student Games, with the field events area between the main stand and the finishing straight. The intention was that that it would then be used as the main northern athletics stadium, taking over from Gateshead which had much poorer facilities. Unfortunately that was not the way that the British athletics establishment decided to go, so there was no attempt to build up an athletics fan base which would have justified the 25,000 capacity (again a requirement of the World Student Games). Even though the spectator facilities were good enough to handle 50,000 plus crowds for the Stones etc., it was clearly not an ideal stadium for rugby.
The new proposals are much more realistic, so here's looking forward to a decent run in these qualifiers, a good full time season in 2016, and qualification for Super League in our nice new stadium in 2017.
