This was the East Stand at the Olympic Stadium on Wednesday night with 20,000 Rugby fans packed in for the first Rugby World Cup match between France and Romania. The official attendance was 50,600.
Now just imagine 20,000 Hammers fans on the first day of the 2016/2017 season singing bubbles as the Irons coming running out to the pitch.
With a crowd like this in the Olympic Stadium week in, week out who would care what the colour the seats were or what West Ham branding was or wasn’t in place. Those Hammers fans who went tonight said that the atmosphere was fantastic under the new enclosed roof.
Yes, there were some who still moaned by pointing out the distance from the front row to the actual pitch lines and those who complained about the gaps between the lower stand and upper stands behind the goals, but most of those who griped were watching on TV from home.
All in all, the East Stand full of 20,000 people looks amazing and it would be fitting to name it the Billy Bonds stand as this petition below suggests!
I still like ‘THE BOLEYN WALL”
Looks superb so glad my ticket is all sorted for it!! Going over there next month for one game so can’t wait to check out my seat
Who’s that French bloke in my seat?
BB petition signed. I got tingles just looking at it.
I watched the match on tv and recorded it so I could look more at the stadium.
It was very impressive!
50,000 west ham supporters every week will make it even more impressive.
I was there also, not in the east stand but in C block 118 , I took some photo’s on my iphone also not sure how to upload them, to give you an idea I was almost directly on the try line France were attacking in the first half. I will get the negative stuff out of the way first, for me the Stadium from my seat looked a mess and all the poor design flaws are laid bare, in terms of rows I wasn’t that high up I was a block above the concourse between the retractable seats, what I could see were the empty seats that can’t be used at the front and back, there were also what can only be described as big holes where retractable seats are built over the permanent seats for the athletics (not sure why they can’t put a temporary floor over those huge spaces and put corporate boxes in), the concourse means that even though in theory I am not that high up the stand I was probably 90 -100 metres from the pitch, the big screens that they have behind the goals to show the TMO etc are another waste of space in what should be prime seating, in the redesign they should have just removed them and built seats in that space which would generate revenue, I left the game after 65 minutes so probably 20 minutes before it finished with stoppages and the walk to stratford overground/tube/dlr took around 15 minutes walking very fast with a decent amount of footfall, if you left at the end of the game I would imagine you would have to at the very least double that which could be a real pain as its a pretty lengthy walk, there are a lot of stewards on this walk and for teh rugby at leat they had stop and go plaquards so they can hold people prior to entering the tube station, I wasn’t held up by this but if you were it could add again considerable time to the journey. If like me you could go to Hackney Wick, it is an option but on our train there was no space to get on by the time the train left Straford and the passengers that tried to board the train at Hackney Wick couldn’t. On the plus points, the matchdat staff and stewards were all really good, for Rugby anyway you could get beer inside the stadium which was great, the quality of food inside the stadium was what you would expect perhaps slightly better than average and the toilets were good, the view despite being that far from the pitch was also good, considering the weirdly disjointed feeling of the stadium build and the seperation of not being that close to the action, the atmosphere was also good and the acoustics are exceptional so from a noise perspective it is something else and perhaps the disjointedness of fans from other fans means that when a chant starts up in the lower part of the stadium it takes a while for the other fans to hear it which means you kind of end up with a cacophany of sound which builds as more and more take up the chant, last night it was Allez Le Bleu but next season it can be come on you claret and blues. Its hard to judge a place when it is hosting a different sport and the fans are also a different breed but overall I think we can definitely create an atmosphere at the games and as you walk into the Stadium it is very impressive from the outside, it has kerb appeal as they would say in the property game, its just a shame their interior designers were absolutely woeful.
Really good unbiased review by West Ham Fan No 32. Found it really informative.
I’m really excited and looking forward to the move, but feel the issues raised are better addressed than swept under the carpet. COYI.
Thanks Eug, one other thing I forgot to mention although possibly the catering and certainly the programmes might have different pricing, for a programme the price was £10 and for a hotdog and a bottle of heineken it was £10.50, hopefully the prices might be less for football matches, they also had fairground type vendors selling pop corn and candy floss, I didn’t make a note of the price and stalls that had pick’n.mix which was £2.50 per 100g of sweets.
I had my doubts, but last night took so many of those away! with the way Slaven is changing the club we can fill those extra seats, yes it will be sad to leave The Boleyn, we are part of a community which is close knit, Green Street on match days is electric, but we could not develop the ground any more? what is so important is the club Must keep the heritage we have had for so long, we are an East End Club, not London for marketing purposes, we are the Hammers or the Irons!
Looks great atmosphere will be electric and the ground will be full,
Things change and as fans we have to change with them,
For years we have played good football but only been on the fringes now as future league champions ( this year ) and with the best ground in London it’s all upbeat,
Can’t wait to visit,
The East Stand should be the Boleyn Wall. It has a nice ring to it, with the phonetic similarity to the Berlin Wall, it keeps a constant reminder of our heritage and it is a bit more original than simply naming a stand after a former player/manager (don’t get me wrong, I like Billy Bonds, but it wouldn’t hurt to have something original in there.
I reckon the stand will be named after a sponsor maybe, but among fans we can obviously call it what we like.
I don’t like “the Boleyn wall” it’s not a wall it’s a football stand, I’d go for Bonzo or maybe something else Boleyn related but I’m not liking the “wall” bit. You are prob right though HH it’ll be the Ann Summers stand or something
Ann Summers not big enough, it’ll be a global brand with some financial clout.
For the big concourse they could call it the Boleyn Alley maybe 😉 ?
It’s all very nice!! But a bit sad losing the Boleyn..