Goal nets and stanchions
What started off as a random conversation five years ago in a pub has turned into a group of 2,432 members of Facebook, all with quite an obscure thing in common.
I began a conversation about being able to recognise a football ground purely by the goals, either the nets or the stanchions that supported the net to the posts. I wanted to know if my football-supporting friends could do the same. Surprisingly, I was not alone with this!
I then put the theory to the test by creating a group on Facebook and put a few pictures of different goals from times gone by and put a link to it on various football nostalgia pages.
A few people joined the page over the next few days and slowly the group began to gain momentum. I got bored of accepting membership requests from people to join the page, so I recruited some of the existing members to have ‘Administrator privileges’, giving them the ability to accept requests.
In a matter of months the group grew to over 100 people and time and again the same line was being typed up on the page by new members on the site. The usual line would be:
“I thought that I was the only one who thought like this” and my favourite “My mates all thought I was weird but I’m glad there are other football nerds like me out there!”
Five years on and the group is approaching 2,500 members. There are still a few membership requests every day and I can’t see that stopping any time soon!
If you are on Facebook and would like to join the page, click here to go directly to the group. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone!
There are so many different types of goalnet, ranging from the rectangle nets, to thin square holes and even hexagons.
Some clubs have their goalnets in their home colours and it wasn’t unusual to see striped nets for teams whose shirts were more than one colour.
It started to get a bit too full-on when members of the Goalnets and Stanchions page started to mention about how the nets were strung up and the tightness of the net!
Some goals such as Highfield Road (home of Coventry City) had very tight nets in the early 90’s. Darlington’s goalnets were very droopy and a few people referred to this as the nets “sag” and “droop”!
Then there are the stanchions ranging from the poles that stick out behind the goal that hold the net up, to the stanchions fitted to the goalpost.
Stamford Bridge had quite unique goals from the 70’s to mid 90’s and can be seen below:
Crystal Palace were cheated of a perfectly look goal in 1980 when Clive Allen’s free kick came back off the stanchion and bounced back into play. The referee and linesman thought that the ball had hit the crossbar and didn’t allow the goal. Frank Skinner and David Baddiel did a Phoenix from the Flames sketch remembering the incident on their excellent TV programme ‘Fantasy Football League’. There is a video of this is below:
There is a common consensus among the ‘Goal nets & Stanchions’ aficionados that all the different goals in Premier League grounds became the same box-type seen today as a result of Euro ’96.
All of the grounds hosting games at the Euro ’96 Championships changed their goals to being the continental box design. The photo below is of the Wembley goals that were replaced for the 1996 European Championships:
That particular goal design had been used at Wembley for over sixty years and became as well-known as the Twin Towers at the stadium. You could show any fan a photo of a game at Wembley and they would recognise the place just by the famous green stanchions.
Ever since the modern box-style nets have come along, it has taken another form of identity from football. Our clubs now play in generic soulless bowls for stadiums after moving from the iconic grounds where they once played. Arsenal and West Ham are perfect examples of this, having moved from Highbury for the Emirates Stadium and Upton Park for the London Stadium.
There are 2,483 people out there who wish that each ground had their own separate goal design and I’m sure that there are many more people out there who feel the same!
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