What is going on with Sheffield Wednesday's North Stand at Hillsborough? | OneFootball

As if things couldn't get any worse for Sheffield Wednesday, the North Stand at Hillsborough may not be open for the start of the Championship season.

As if things haven't been bad enough for Sheffield Wednesday, there are now issues with the North Stand at Hillsborough which mean that it might not be open for the new season.

This has been a disastrous summer for Sheffield Wednesday, with confusion over who their head coach will be for the start of the new season, a player drain as a result of wages not being paid on time, and takeover talk which seems to have stalled. After finishing 12th in the Championship at the end of the 2024-25 season, hopes of repeating such a performance are starting to fade without a ball having been kicked.

And the news keeps getting worse and worse, with reports now suggesting that the North Stand at Hillsborough may not be open in time for the start of the new season due to safety concerns. If the club is not able to remedy these issues soon, there is a possibility that the club could have to start the new season with a reduced capacity and with season ticket holders displaced elsewhere around the stadium.

The roof of the North Stand at Hillsborough is corroding

The BBC have reported that the North Stand may not be open in time for the new season because "extensive corrosion" has been found in its roof. Because of this, Sheffield City Council's safety advisory group have advised that until this remedial work has been carried out, the authority will not be "in a position to approve the continuance of the existing general safety certificate". It was also revealed that the club was aware of this, as they requested that their first League match of the season be played away from home.

This causes more than a minor headache for the club. The North Stand has a capacity of 9,255, and closing it will reduce the capacity to just over 30,000. In addition to this, while the numbers involved aren't known, there will be fans who've bought season tickets for that part of the ground, and if Wednesday are to play home matches at Hillsborough with the stand closed, those fans will have to be situated somewhere else in the ground.

The North Stand at Hillsborough was the height of modernity 65 years ago

Hillsborough's North Stand was built during the 1960-61 season, and was widely considered to be the height of modernity at the time, with a cantilever roof ensuring no restricted views for those sitting in it. It was the second cantilever roof to be built in an English ground after one was completed at Scunthorpe United's Old Show Ground in 1958.

Almost six and a half decades on, it is clearly showing signs of its advanced age. It is very clear that Sheffield Wednesday cannot afford enormous development work at Hillsborough, but there have been complaints for years about the lack of investment into the ground from supporters, and the news to be coming out over this feels very much like a vindication of those who made those complaints. The club promised "significant" investment in infrastructure as recently as May.

But perhaps more than anything else, it is the symbolism that hangs heaviest in the air. The condition of the North Stand at Hillsborough feels like an extremely visible metaphor for the condition of Sheffield Wednesday at the moment in a broader sense, and this will be all the more obvious should it be empty when they kick off their 2025-26 home campaign.