Ayresome Park was an old 26,000 capacity stadium with lots of terrracing and was surrounded by housing, it would be difficult for Middlesbrough to comply with the all seater regulations. So the club decided to leave Ayresome Park in 1995 and move to a new stadium

Middlesbrough, managed by Bryan Robson, returned to the Premier League with a brand new 30,000 stadium (later expanded to 35,000) in 1995. This showed at the time that Middlesbrough, under owner Steve Gibson, wanted to remain in the top flight. They were relegated at the end of the 1996-97 season but returned for the 1998-99 season. They remained in the Premier League until the end of the 2008-09 season and they have not returned since then. The Riverside stadium design was followed by Derby County and to a certain extent by Stoke City soon afterwards. This stadium is not popular with Manchester United’s away support though. This is due to Middlesbrough’s continuous decision since 1999-2000 to give us a massively reduced ticket allocation, due to our fans standing.

I always parked in the centre of Middlesbrough, had food and drink in there, then walked the 15-20 minutes to and from the ground.