What Was The First Football Pitch To Have A Sports Shelter?

An essential piece of infrastructure for many outdoor team sports is the technical area, also known as the bench or the dugout, which requires a portable sports shelter per team to allow for year-round use in all weather conditions.

It is used in many different sports with varying specifications and names, although the most famous and widely-used dugouts in the United Kingdom are naturally used in association football, the country’s most popular sport by far.

The Laws of the Game, as defined by the International Football Association Board that oversees the sport, defines the space it can take up and the number of people who can be in it at any one time, including the manager, coaching staff and substitute players, but not whether it should have a shelter and how it should look.

Regardless, this touchline feature is one of the most defining parts of the beautiful game, but it took decades until these shelters became standard throughout the sport, and it all started in Aberdeen.

The Shelter Of Pittodrie

One of the oldest football stadiums in the world, Pittodrie Stadium has been the home of Aberdeen FC since 1899 and was developed significantly in 1920 once the team started to see success and increased attendance.

Part of this was to the credit of Donald Colman, a player, player-coach and coach for Aberdeen for many years. When he returned to the Reds in the mid-1920s, he proved to be a highly influential first-team coach (then known as a “trainer”) under manager Paddy Travers.

As a former defender and skilled player, Mr Colman was particularly focused on possession, space and footwork, and wanted to closely check his players' movement and feet.

At the time, coaches and managers sat on a bench near the track, but this was too far away, too high up and was vulnerable to the extremely changeable and variable Aberdeen weather, which had a tendency to ruin his notes.

To this end, he devised the dugout, a sheltered area slightly below the playing surface so he could more easily make notes, whilst also being closer to the action.

Thanks to the success of the club, as well as selling right winger Alex Jackson to Huddersfield Town, the club had the moment to develop this as part of the construction of what would become the Main Stand.

This was popular quickly in Aberdeen, but it rapidly spread throughout Britain due to a home game between Aberdeen and Everton. Once it reached Goodison Park, it spread throughout the English game and later the entire world.

This particular dugout lasted until 1968 when major updates to the Pittodrie led to the creation of a new shelter in its place.

This has since become a pivotal part of the game, extending beyond the dugout and substitute bench to an entire technical area, which was only established in a form recognisable today in 1993 due to alterations to the Laws of the Game.

Other sports also used the concept, including Cricket and Rugby, meaning that the sports shelter is used in the vast majority of outdoor sports played today.