Origins

Celebrating 120 years of the Grecians – The St Sidwell’sUnited story

St Sidwell’s United played their first two seasons (1901/2 and 1902/3) at a ground generally referred to as Pinhoe Road, although sometimes reports just said Mount Pleasant.  It was a sloping pitch roughly in the area in which Monks Road is situated.

Looking up the slope on Monks Road – likely site of our first ground.

As this is our club’s first-ever ground, we are keen to establish exactly where it was. Frustratingly we don’t have any maps showing the location. Neither do we have any photographs of the pitch or even of a St Sidwell’s team. We know photographs were taken of local clubs at the time – so they must be out there somewhere!

It’s likely, although not conclusive, that St Sidwell’s played on the same sloping pitch at Pinhoe Road that was used by Exeter Wesleyan United and Exeter Athletic during the 1900/1 season.  It may well have been on land owned by the Countess Dowager of Morley.  There’s a Morley Road off Monks Road.

The only detailed information we have on the ground comes from Sid Thomas when reminiscing in the Football Express in 1939.Referring to St Sidwell’s United, he wrote: ‘This little team operated at first in a field on which Monks-road has since been built. In those days there were very few houses on that side of Mount Pleasant, and the whole of the land down to the bottom of Pinhoe-road was entirely unbuilt upon.’

‘I remember well that we tried to take a gate in those days and had a sentry- box placed at the entrance to the ground. Result of the first game was that something like 9d was collected. You will see that “gates” were a sore point even in those days, but I saw the time arrive when amateur Soccer drew thousands to its matches.’

Even so, there were signs that association football was growing in popularity. For St Sidwell’s second league game of their first season at home to St David’s, the Evening Post reported that it ‘drew a good gate’. And their next home match against St John’s Athletic was in front of a ‘fair number of spectators’.

It’s also from these newspaper reports that we can glean more about the ground.  The most prominent feature was the slope. There were regular mentions, for example, about sides having to ‘play up the hill’. It seems most likely that the slope ran west to east, down towards the Polsloe Bridge area.

This would tie in with the issue of the sun – a problem to this day at St James’ Park which is on a similar axis to the PinhoeRoad ground.  Indeed, when St Sidwell’s played the second half up the slope in their very first match against Dawlish, according to one report: ‘The home team had to face the sun but continued to hold their own.’  And hold their own they did for two seasons before the move to St James’ Park.