Kaalheide sports park

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Gemeentelijk Sportpark Kerkrade
Kaalheide
Gemeentelijk Sportpark Kerkrade
Gemeentelijk Sportpark Kerkrade
Data
place Spekholzerheide Kerkrade , the Netherlands
NetherlandsNetherlands
Coordinates 50 ° 51 '39.3 "  N , 6 ° 2' 19.3"  E Coordinates: 50 ° 51 '39.3 "  N , 6 ° 2' 19.3"  E
owner Kerkrade municipality
start of building 1946
opening 1952
surface Natural grass
capacity 14,000 seats
playing area 105 × 68 m
Societies)
  • Juliana (Kerkrade, 1952–1954)
  • Rapid '54 (Heerlen, 1954)
  • Rapid JC (Heerlen, 1954–1962)
  • Roda JC (Kerkrade, 1962-2000)

The municipal sports park Kerkrade ('Kaalheide') ( Dutch Gemeentelijk Sportpark Kerkrade ['Kaalheide'] ) is a football stadium with an athletics facility in the Spekholzerheide district of the Dutch city ​​of Kerkrade . It was put into operation in the early 1950s and held up to 25,000 spectators. The audience capacity was later reduced to 14,000 due to stricter safety regulations.

history

Construction work on the stadium began in 1946. Former members of the NSB , as prisoners, were obliged to remove the former rubble dump and excavate the site after the war. The teams of the sports club Juliana from Spekholzerheide were the first users of the sports park from 1952. When the club fell behind with rents two years later, the city administration expelled the site and the newly founded professional club Rapid'54 from Heerlen moved into the Kaalheide sports park. After the merger of the KNVB with the professional association NBVB, Rapid'54 merged with Juliana to form Rapid Juliana Combinatie , Rapid JC for short , which was based in Kaalheide as a first division team until 1962 and won the Dutch championship in the 1955/56 season.

After the renewed merger in 1962 - from Rapid JC and Roda Sport was created Roda JC - the club initially remained in the Eerste Divisie and until 1971 in the third division in the stadium. Even after being promoted to the Eerste Divisie in 1971 and to the Eredivisie in 1973 , Roda JC played his home games here - on August 8, 1975, for the first time under floodlights, with a friendly game Rodas against Liverpool FC in front of 17,000 spectators (final score: 1: 1) was put into operation. From the end of the 1970s, the seating capacity was expanded from the original 650 to 2000.

In the 1999/2000 season, Roda JC said goodbye to Kaalheide, where the club had twice played quarter-finals in the European Cup Winners' Cup . The last match was on May 14, 2000, the 3-2 league win against AZ Alkmaar . Roda JC has since played in the newly built Parkstad Limburg Stadium . The Kaalheide sports park initially continued to serve as a training ground for the Roda professionals and for football matches for other teams in the club; it was also home to the Achilles-Top athletes . In the winter of 2000, the bucket seats from the Kaalheide sports park were donated to the befriended soccer club Alemannia Aachen for Tivoli . The main stand was renovated in 2004; the covered standing room was demolished in 2005 due to the poor condition of the roof.

literature

  • Ferry Reurink: Het stadioncomplex. All terreinen was in Nederland betaald voetbal is speeld , De Arbeiderspers / Het Sporthuis, Amsterdam / Antwerpen 2007, ISBN 978-90-295-6474-8 , p. 340 ff.

Web links