TT No.6: Andy Gallon - Sat August 9th 2008; Rotherham United v Lincoln City; Coca-Cola League Two; Res: 1-0; Att: 4,748; Admission: £20; Programme: £2.50 (52pp); FGIF Match Rating: ***

Despite an impressive demonstration of brave faces and bullish talk, Rotherham United's exile in Sheffield will, I suspect, feel interminable. It's bad enough playing within the city boundaries of a loathed neighbour without the additional ignominy of having to use an athletics track. Don Valley Stadium has a few modest attributes but it's not - and never will be - a football ground and for Rotherham fans it's simply no substitute for Millmoor. Assurances - and a £750,000 bond - have been given to the Football League to the effect that within four years United will be rehoused at a new community stadium in Parkgate. The calculation is that 18 months of grinding through the planning process - a sporting version of Jarndyce and Jarndyce - and another 18 months of construction will see the League's deadline met comfortably. Rotherham Borough Council certainly think it's possible because they've underwritten the bond. Until then, the poor Millers have to grit their teeth and get on with it. The alternative to a temporary relocation was the club disappearing into footballing oblivion. Unthinkable. Don Valley Stadium, seating 25,000 and built for the 1991 World Student Games at a cost of £29m, is one of British sport's biggest white elephants. The fact Rotherham were desperate to go there (and, boy, were they desperate) at least gives the venue operators something to do with the place between staging low-key athletics meetings, second rate rugby league matches and the occasional pop concert. It's on the outer edge of seamy Attercliffe, alongside the bottleneck arterial road between the city centre and junction 34 of the M1 in a location which once marked the beating heart of Sheffield's world famous steel industry. All gone now, of course, in a post-Thatcher world and this strip of formerly grim and soot-caked territory has been transformed into a glittering monument to credit crunch-busting consumerism, the religion for the modern age. Where once links and chains were created by forgemasters, there's now a multiscreen cinema, food pubs, an ice rink, burger bars, pizza joints and the retail palace that is Meadowhall - the whole gamut of nonsense designed to make the rich richer, the poor poorer and the fat fatter. Only the main stand at Don Valley is to be used for Millers matches. The eight-lane tartan track is sunk five metres below ground level to give athletes a wind-free environment in which to perform. It means access via the turnstiles and an unremarkable, though bright and cheery, glazed concourse brings the spectator out between the upper and lower seating tiers. These are of the grey plastic tip-up variety, with limited leg room, and this side of the stadium contains 10,000 of them if you take into account the tall, narrow wing stands at each side. The one on the first bend is allocated to visiting supporters. The roof canopy is similar to that at the Olympic Stadium in Munich (okay, I may be exaggerating slightly) and is fashioned from Teflon coated glass fibre. It looks nice but isn't especially good at keeping out the elements. How unpleasant is that going to be come mid-winter? A futuristic control box is suspended from the rafters at the east end. Ladder masts, painted a vivid yellow, poke 12 metres above the roof line and lend a certain individuality to the setting. The other feature of note is the floodlighting system. This uses five colossal gantries the height of your average three-storey house mounted on bulky columns. Think Soviet Union super bowl and you get the picture. The stadium's publicity blurb describes it as the "strongest floodlighting system in the country". I really can't comment because they weren't required on a brightening afternoon of sunshine and showers. The view from the main stand is fine - if you've come to watch track and field. But the football pitch is a long way away, and there's no getting away from this most inescapable of facts. The remainder of the stadium comprises blocks of seats sweeping round in a single semi-circular tier, whose uniformity is broken only by intermittent - and very wide - yellow-painted stairways. Above a grass bank at the west end is an enormous digital scoreboard, which would have been more impressive if it had been operational. The two-tiered grass banking rising high above the east end is topped by a steel 'golf tee' - inside which, presumably, the flame for the aforementioned World Student Games was lit. Trees fringe the uppermost point at each end. Over to the north is the multi-span roof of the English Institute of Sport and beyond one of the many hills on which Sheffield is built. The players emerge from a tunnel at the west end of the main stand, accessing the pitch via green matting placed across the track and running between lines of hurdles. The dugouts, of a roomy perspex design over red metal frames, are positioned either side of the halfway line on the north touchline. There is no signage relating to Rotherham United, though plenty publicising the Sheffield Eagles rugby league team. Maybe that will change in time. The match programme, so predictable in its contents you could almost guess what was coming up before turning each page, fails to get the pulse racing. Will the game? To some extent. The Millers, docked a punitive 17 points this summer for financial misdemeanours, dominate a Lincoln side tipped by many to be a promotion contender. Not on this evidence, I'm afraid. Only Rotherham's poor finishing prevents the Imps from being on the wrong end of a right drubbing in their hosts' first competitive fixture at this unsatisfactory venue. Exasperated Lincoln manager Peter Jackson proves he's got over a throat cancer scare by barking orders at his men, whose efforts are rather less dazzling than their gold and navy halved away strip. The first half is all Rotherham but they have to wait until a minute before the break for man of the match Reuben Reid to make the most of Pablo Mills's pass by muscling aside marker Lee Beevers and slipping a low shot wide of the right hand of the advancing Robert Burch. It's more even after the interval, to the delight of the three blokes next to me. They turn out to be groundhoppers and so cannot give any insight into what life is like as a Millers fan at this difficult time. There's less goalmouth action as the contest wears on. And it feels like that. At this range, you find yourself drifting off periodically. Burch denies Danny Harrison and Reid before Lincoln go close to equalising when Stefan Oakes forces a splendid diving tip over from Andy Warrington with a 25-yard direct free-kick (66). James Kovacs then volleys fractionally wide from one of many long throws by Beevers (84). Yes, John Beck is a distant memory at Sincil Bank and still the Imps are resorting to this form of assault and battery. The mood of the home fans, all gallows humour about having only 14 points to claw back, is upbeat as they depart for the four-mile journey home. Their reverie is quickly soured by the presence outside the turnstiles of Sheffield thugs ready for a rumble. Luckily, the local plod are alive to the situation and head off trouble before it gets started. Suddenly, and I confess thrillingly, I am transported back to the 1970s and 1980s when this sort of thing was a commonplace part of watching football. How sanitised the game has become in this post-hooliganism era. For most groundhoppers, Don Valley Stadium will be a venue to tick off with reluctance. It's not great but, as we know, these trips have to be made. Just be grateful you're not having to spend the next four seasons there.

contributed 10/08/08