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Display Ground information
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Dean Court has been a League ground
for 88 seasons;
from November 9th, 2001
to
the current day
,
from August 1st, 1923
to
April 29th, 2001
.
Dean Court was the 187th
ground
to be used for a League game.
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Constructed on the site of an old gravel pit, Dean Court was not immediately ready for occupation at the start of the 1910/11 season, so Boscombe FC, having moved from Pokesdown, played their matches at the adjacent King’s Park until December. Even at this point the facilities, which eventually included a 300 seat stand, were not totally ready thus obliging the players to change at an adjacent hotel and access the ground through King’s Park.
Some improvements were undertaken following the club’s election to the Football League in 1923 when Bournemouth & Boscombe Athletic FC, as they had become known, purchased a batch of redundant material and fittings in 1927 from the Empire Exhibition at Wembley enabling them to build a new 3,700 seat main stand on the east side of the ground. The only other pre-WWII improvement was the construction of a covered terrace at the south end in 1936. Following the FA Cup 6th Round tie on March 2nd, 1957 against Manchester United (1-2) at which the attendance record of 28,799 was set, a new cover was installed on the west side of the pitch. The club later purchased additional ground behind the north end with the intention of constructing a new stand and sports centre but having started it, ran out of money leaving just a skeletal construction. This scheme was aborted in 1984, leading to its demolition and replacement with housing and the only other improvement made up to the end of the 1990s was the refurbishment of the main stand.
In 2001 the ground was turned through 90o and re-opened as The Fitness First Stadium with all seated cantilever roofed stands around three sides of the ground (the south end remaining undeveloped). In 2005 a temporary uncovered 1,100 seat stand was installed at the south end and the capacity at the start of the 2007/8 season was 10,700. The pitch size is 112 x 74 yards.
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