Testing, testing

Everton 1 Bolton 0
Bramley Moore test event

Well, that was an interesting day. 
I was lucky enough to get one of the 25,000 tickets for today's second test event at Bramley Moore Stadium. Given some of the transport issues from the 1st test event and knowing that football car parks wouldn't necessarily be up and running yet, I decided to try something different, getting the ferry over from Seacombe to the Pier Head, walking through the morning's half marathon finishers, and up the dock road to the new stadium. 

It really is impressive and there were loads of fans spendibg time walking round the outside taking it all in, and taking pictures, before heading inside. I was in the Upper South stand and the first thing you notice is the steepness, and how on top of the pitch you still feel*...and the lack of pillars. Back inside the stand itself I had a doughnut with views back towards the city*.

The match itself was a friendly between the under 21s and Bolton's 'B' team and was interesting enough but the real anticipation was knowing that at some point in the second there was going to be an evacuation (for the safety certificate), it was just a question of when. The when came on 65 minutes with the ref blowing the final whistle and the announcement being made, not long after Kingsford Boayke had scored to make it 1-0. The evacuation seemed to go off without a hitch. 

The only criticism is that it needs some Everton-ising to make it feel more like home, although I'm sure that will come before the new season. I can't wait for a proper match in there.