THE ATMOSPHERE WAS ELECTRIFYING

Memories of City's iconic first home Maine Road... and the Kippax

- SIMON BAJKOWSKI

IT WAS like a rollercoaster, but it was like going down that rollercoaster hill for 90 minutes where everybody just cheers - it was insane! Maine Road brings up many different memories for many different people, but it is hard to get away from the emotions. As Shaun Wright-Phillips brilliantly puts it above, football matches at City's former home were regularly breathless, exhilarating, and noisy.

The only sounds coming out of it now are from the children who play in the houses that now stand where the football stadium used to be, with the site in Moss Side demolished as the Blues moved north and east to the Etihad in 2003.

It is impossible to silence 80 years of history though, and even as Pep Guardiola and the current squad take the club to new heights the feelings and emotions from Maine Road still live on.

It would be unheard of now to think of tens of thousands of fans standing across the length of the pitch, and it was strikingly uncommon even before seating became the norm in football stadiums.

That made the Kippax all the more special though, a wall of sound and passion that ran from one goal to the other. Having grown up watching his dad play at Selhurst Park and Highbury, then going to Nottingham Forest as a young boy, Wright-Phillips was used to historic grounds - but instantly fell in love with Maine Road.

"I don't know how they did it but however they sat everybody the noise and atmosphere was electrifying. It was like every time you came onto the pitch before the start of the game you had goosebumps from the amount of noise," he told the Manchester Evening News. "No matter how tired you were, because of the fans you always managed to get out that extra shot or run or tackle.

"I will always remember the game we were 3-0 down away to Spurs and Joey [Barton] gets sent off and the away fans were louder than everyone at White Hart Lane.