Rock Ferry Merseyside hotels:

In the wake of the Hillsborough Disaster, by 1991 it had at last got through to everyone that Prenton Park as we knew it was coming to the end of its days. Whatever else had happened to re-vamp it, the chairman and directors had to tackle the job of converting it to an all-seater stadium. Initial plans for a 20,000 capacity stadium (announced pre-Hillsborough) were shelved and scaled down in the light of cost and the need to meet the Taylor Report's 1995 deadline. Little could those who were amongst the 14,962 at the last game on 15 May 1994, against Leicester City in the play-offs, have imagined what would happen to Prenton Park over the next nine months. Although the plans had been well publicised and the subject of close consultation with Wirral MBC and our neighbours, there can be no-one who has not been amazed by the scale and quality of what has risen out of the Tranmere clay. Some kept a close eye on each stage of the works, from the dismantling of the Borough Road roof, the dramatic felling of the Cowshed, on 15 June 1994, and the levelling of the Kop to the erection of the towering new stands at each end of the pitch, and regularly shook their heads about the first phase, the Borough Road and the Paddock stands, being ready for the first home game on 20 August, against Swindon Town. Oh ye of little faith! Of course, it was ready and a completely new pitch to go with it - one that would, at last, help Rovers footballing style and not hinder it. A more sombre note was struck on 9 September when the cremated remains of the incomparable Harold Bell, and his team-mate Lloyd Iceton, who had died in July, were scattered on the new turf in a moving ceremony attended by family and surviving team-mates together with some of today's directors, staff and players. The Cowshed came next and was opened to paying customers for the Coca Cola Cup tie against Norwich City on 26 October to be followed by the lower half of the Kop Stand for the Endsleigh League game v Stoke City on 17 December. The final phase came with the full opening of the Kop stand when Reading were the visitors on 18 February. The transformation of Prenton Park into an all-seater stadium, with a capacity of 16,578, was completed at a cost of £3m, including £1.9m support from the Football Trust. Travelling Roverites have already discovered that, with new-found pride and no little justification, they can now indulge themselves in that traditional witty ditty about the shortcomings of distant stadia. Let's make sure that, by filling Prenton Park week after week, visiting fans at Prenton Park will not find just cause to remind us that we are supposed to be at home! We can be forgiven if, as a final indulgence, we have one last glance back to our past and ponder what James McGaul, the Father of Tranmere Rovers, and all those who were there on 9 March, 1912, would make of Prenton Park now. I wonder what word they had in those days for "gobsmacked"?