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Priestfield Stadium (popularly known simply as Priestfield and officially known from 2007 to 2010 as KRBS Priestfield Stadium and from 2011 as MEMS Priestfield Stadium for sponsorship purposes) is a football stadium in Gillingham, Kent. It has been the home of Gillingham Football Club since the club's formation in 1893, and was also the temporary home of Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club for two seasons during the 1990s. The stadium has also hosted women's and youth international matches and from 2013 onwards will play host to London Broncos rugby league matches. The stadium underwent extensive redevelopment during the late 1990s, which has brought its capacity down from nearly 20,000 to a current figure of 11,582. It has four all-seater stands, all constructed since 1997, although one is only of a temporary nature. There are also conference and banqueting facilities and a nightspot named the Blues Rock Café. Despite having invested heavily in its current stadium, Gillingham F.C. has plans to relocate to a new stadium. == History == New Brompton Football Club, the forerunner of Gillingham Football Club, formed in June 1893. At the same time an area of land in Gillingham was acquired by the club's founders, the purchase being funded through an issue of 1,500 £1 shares. Sources differ on whether the stadium was named after the road on which the land stood, Priestfield Road, or whether the road was named after the stadium, although until 1947 the stadium itself was officially named Priestfield Road. A pitch was laid and a pavilion erected,〔 and the first matches at Priestfield were staged on 2 September 1893. New Brompton's reserve team played Grays, followed immediately by the first match for the club's first team, against Woolwich Arsenal's reserves. The admission charge for the two matches was 3d. A newspaper report on the matches noted that the club had recently purchased an additional acre and three-quarters of ground and had accepted a contract for the construction of a stand containing 500 seats. Most spectators stood on terracing, banked earth, or simply along the perimeter of the pitch, as was the case at most football grounds at the time. In order to raise funds to assist with the running of the football club, New Brompton allowed the ground to be used for other events, such as smoking concerts, fêtes, athletics meetings and a ladies' football match. Sheep were allowed to graze on the pitch during the week, a common practice at many grounds at that time. In 1899, a second stand was added along part of the Gordon Road side of the ground, reportedly built by off-duty dock workers in exchange for beer and cigarettes. By 1908, the total number of seats had been increased to 800 and terracing added at the Rainham end of the ground. In 1912, the club's first Supporters' Association was formed, its initial project being to raise the necessary funds to construct terracing at the opposite end of the ground. Two years later the club, which had changed its name to Gillingham F.C. in 1913, secured a bank loan of £1,570 which was used to build a new grandstand, but just a month after it was completed the stand was severely damaged by high winds, which ripped off the roof and twisted most of the ironwork. The club sued the contractors, but it took a further three months for the damage to be repaired. A new attendance record was set in 1924 when an FA Cup match against First Division leaders Cardiff City drew a crowd of 19,472. This record stood until 1948, when 23,002 fans watched Gillingham take on Queens Park Rangers in the FA Cup, with many more turned away.〔 In the same year the club, which had lost its place in the Football League ten years earlier after failing to gain re-election, produced a glossy brochure as part of its bid to be elected back into the league. The facilities at Priestfield were highlighted as one of the club's strengths in the brochure, which listed the ground's capacity as "between 25,000 and 30,000" but stated that plans had been drawn up to increase the capacity to 50,000, with 5,000 seats. The ground underwent its most extensive redevelopment to date in 1955, at a total cost of £28,500. The previously sloping pitch was levelled, the terracing that occupied part of the Gordon Road side of the ground replaced, and new covered accommodation, known as the Stanley Stand, erected between the Rainham End and Gordon Road Stand. The first floodlights were erected in 1963, at a cost of over £14,000, but this was to be the last significant development work at Priestfield for over thirty years.〔 By the early 1980s the capacity of the ground was listed as 22,000, although this was reduced to 19,000 when the Gordon Road Stand was closed for safety reasons.〔 In 1987, a clock was erected at the corner of the Rainham End and the Stanley Stand, dubbed the Lord Sondes Clock in honour of Henry Milles-Lade, 5th Earl Sondes, a member of the club's board of directors. The clock was removed during later stadium redevelopment work and its current whereabouts are unknown. New owner Paul Scally took over at the club in 1995 and soon instigated a programme of redevelopment which completely transformed the formerly run-down ground. The closed stand was replaced with a new Gordon Road Stand in 1997 at a cost of more than £2 million. Two years later the Rainham End terracing was replaced with a new all-seater stand, with the sports centre behind it demolished and replaced with a car park. The main stand on the northern side of the pitch was demolished in 1999, along with a section of away terracing, to be replaced with a new state-of-the-art facility dubbed the Medway Stand, but the work was beset by problems. Due to serious delays with the building of the new stand, the club was forced to spend most of the subsequent season first with that side of the ground completely empty, then later with building work ongoing. Supporters were not able to sit in the new stand until the latter stages of the 1999–2000 season, and even then many of the facilities had not been finished.〔 The stand also caused severe financial problems for the club, as its facilities eventually cost significantly more than the original estimate. The fourth side of the ground was redeveloped in 2003 when the Town End terracing was removed and a temporary stand put in its place, named after the late football commentator and Gillingham supporter Brian Moore. It was hoped that work would begin on a permanent Brian Moore Stand in 2004,〔 but due to talk of relocating the club to a new ground and the club's current financial problems, this has been put on hold. On 1 June 2007, the stadium was officially renamed KRBS Priestfield Stadium as part of a sponsorship deal that lasted three years with the Kent Reliance Building Society. In 2011 another such deal led to the rebranding of the stadium as MEMS Priestfield Stadium. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Priestfield Stadium」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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