Villa Park

The most impressive structure in Aston is Villa Park, the football stadium of Aston Villa, the premier league football club in Aston, which proudly displays its year of establishment: 1874. The football club does very well and ranks momentarily fourth in the premier league table.

Villa Park has a capacity of 42,640 seats and due to the fact that it is often filled to capacity there are plans to expand the number of seats up to 50,000. In contrast, the neighbourhood of Aston counts only 27,000 inhabitants, which means that on match days Aston is flooded with people outnumbering by far the local population. They all flock to Villa Park changing temporarily the character of the neighbourhood: from mostly Asian to predominantly white. It is indeed conspicuous that most of the fans of Aston Villa come from outside the neighbourhood and belong to the white section of English society.

So far I have attended only two matches of Aston Villa. The first was prompted by a promotional offer of Aston Villa trying to bring more local people into the stadium. Tickets for Aston residents were reduced from £20 or 30 pounds to just £5 pounds and it worked. In the section Mark and I had our seats, there were many Asian people. In fact, we learned about the promotional offer from our Bangladeshi neighbours. No reductions were offered for the second game and this showed as well: Asian people were conspicuously absent. Apparently, the normal prices of the tickets are too much for the local residents who suffer from low income and high unemployment. My impression is that they would like to be counted among the fans but that sadly the cost of the tickets is prohibitive.

It was quite an experience to attend the two matches. One was a win and the other a draw, but in both cases the crowd was fantastic from the beginning to the end, moving as one in urging the players on to go all out and win the game. The shouting, singing, waving and wailing approached ritual proportions. Indeed, football has often been compared with a religious ritual taking place on the "holy ground" of the stadium and uniting people of all walks of life around the heroes in the centre, the modern-day saints. Whatever is true of this comparison football has surely the capacity to build up and to break down community relations. Hopefully, in the case of Aston Villa, the club succeeds in building up an inclusive community, not just of those living outside Aston but foremost of the residents themselves. It is in line of the club's intention to be committed to equality.

Ton