New Everton Stadium - Hill Dickinson Stadium


Was very loud. Sat near the away corner in the north stand just behind the goal, you could see the Brighton fans look at each when we got going.

Have to say after being at test events, that was something else yesterday just another level that I was not expecting.

Also maybe softened a little towards the previous owner and chairmen but as they let's look forwards...
 
Good to know. I thought there was no parking nearby?
Plenty of parking as long as you are prepared to pay.

We were spoilt at GP as lots of free parking, unfortunately it upset the locals as we were using their spaces.

There are thousands of parking spaces in and around the Liver Building area and the Mercedes.

I drove from Kirkby as I heard issues with the trains and only got held up for 5 minutes on Stanley Road otherwise clear.
 

Not sure if I’m just on a high from the win but from the way we attacked with players like Grealish and Ndiaye, the visceral roar of the crowd when we scored and just the general feel of the day it truly feels like the start of a new era. Don’t get me wrong we’ll all miss Goodison tremendously but HDS feels like the catalyst for change we’ve needed to break the cycle of mediocrity.
 

Not sure if I’m just on a high from the win but from the way we attacked with players like Grealish and Ndiaye, the visceral roar of the crowd when we scored and just the general feel of the day it truly feels like the start of a new era. Don’t get me wrong we’ll all miss Goodison tremendously but HDS feels like the catalyst for change we’ve needed to break the cycle of mediocrity.
I’m away this month and gutted to miss the first couple but watching from afar it really felt like home already. It was all very Everton. Getting the first win out the way (and an Everton player with the first goal) was important too.

The new players are also really encouraging.

Feel good factor all round. Excited for the next games which is something we’ve not had much of recently.
 
Did anybody venture to the Western Terrace?
As @barneygumble said, it's lovely. It's very open with a lot of space and great views. In the winter, I doubt it'll be a place people will hang around for long.

In the nicer weather, however, I think the club could roll out a beer stalls and whatnot, and you'd get quite a few people admiring the view.

We spent about 5-10 minutes sitting on the steps and ambling around, and my son was mesmerised.
 

As the old song goes, Everton are a football club that know well their historynow, finally, the future is here. If Goodison Park was a temple to Everton’s rich and storied past, Hill Dickinson Stadium represents something long desired for the future, a great leap forward in their ambition to host a world-class football team. In truth, it is much needed.Proud though Evertonians are of their club’s sleeping giant status, the club have too long traded on the former glories chronicled in songs of the Glwadys Street end.Here, on a sun-drenched afternoon on the banks of the River Mersey, change and optimism was the tune of the day – and the architect Dan Meis’s 52,000-seat stadium, a sleek, stylish construction of glass and steel feels like the right place to harness that spirit.
It is a long time to spend in one place, 133 years. Perhaps it was the sheer newness of it all that had fans ambling at half speed, seemingly awestruck up Regent Road, the site of their new ground, stopping for family selfies and to take videos for social media.More likely it was the stadium itself, which seems to rise out of the river when approached from the nearby Eldonian Village estate, that gave early arrivals their moment for pause.
Its roof, a flowing arch of polished steel, glints like a swallow’s wing in the early afternoon sunlight. A successful season cannot be guaranteed by the move into their new home – as Everton’s opening defeat at Leeds showed – but there is undoubtedly a feeling of joy around this place.
Inside, families swept around the spacious concourse which flows around the stadium almost in homage to the rolling river behind. It is a marked departure from the visceral experience of navigating entry to Goodison – a weekly ritual of charting a course through a crush of people meandering out of narrow streets, dodging chip wrappers, parked cars and plastic pint glasses along the way. Although the experience on Sunday wasn’t faultless, with some fans complaining of long queues for the bar and bottlenecks in busy areas.But of course the true test of Hill Dickinson Stadium’s suitability would be what happened inside. With 10 minutes to kick-off came evidence of one thing the designers had thought about very carefully. As a booming sound system dialled up, nervous energy in the stands soon became a simmering anticipation. Acoustics is not a word which often comes up in conversations among football fans – Evertonians may rightly be more concerned with their lack of full-backs than a world-class PA system – but the way Hill Dickinson Stadium retains the thrum of fan excitement invoked a physical response here.There She Goes, the 90s indie song by the scouser band the La’s, is now a fan anthem after it became part of Goodison Park’s swan song. Here it was the first song roared in unison by the packed stadium in full voice. It is magnificent – a bittersweet goodbye turned soundtrack for the future, exactly what the occasion called for.
And then, as kick-off approached, this roomy, comfortable feat of 21st-century design felt all of a sudden very familiar – old school, even. The Evertonians went through the usual pre-match routine of songs, before the old battle cry went up. A roar for Z-Cars bolstered by the 10,000 or so extra voices all this modernity can accommodate.Those who knew Goodison will know that its silences could be as deafening as its crescendos – the clattering of wooden seats announcing an early half-time pint after a disappointing start. How those moments of disillusion play out in this new, more sanitary environment, we will have to wait to find out.The determination of the home fans to turn their European-style bowl into a bear pit meant the atmosphere buzzed throughout an at times patchy Everton performance. Their game effort was rewarded when Jack Grealish, surely a cult-hero in the making, set up the first goal of this new era – finding Iliman Ndiaye, whose finish induced the kind roar which would test the mettle of any roof.That outpouring of elation and relief, which are often the same thing where Everton are concerned, were only matched when Jordan Pickford – a cult hero firmly established – saved a penalty which all but guaranteed a victorious start to life by the river.
Here was a thoroughly Everton afternoon. Not perfect, by any means. But a step forward, willed into being by the support of a faithful blue army of fans who finally got their moment in the sun.
They may no longer reside among the terrace houses of L4 but they are, as another of those old songs says, the Goodison gang. A new postcode does not appear to have changed that.
That’s a brilliant homage to the ground, the fans and our history.

Respectful mentions of the roar and our fantastic new anthem “There She Goes”: fabulous piece of writing.
 

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