1Good morning and welcome to City Football Club.
2I'd like to give you some useful information about your visit to the stadium today
3and then we'll start the tour of the areas of the stadium that are open to visitors.
4I can see lots of children here today,
5so just to let mums and dads know a few things before we start.
6The stadium has lots of stairs and the players' tunnel is very dark.
7Please don't let your children wander off on their own, even for a minute.
8We don't want any accidents or anyone getting frightened.
9Cameras are permitted everywhere and you can take pictures of your child shooting a penalty.
10Assistants are helping to organise this and hopefully the queue won't be too long.
11It's very hot and sunny out on the pitch today.
12You can get food and drink at the cafe
13and I really recommend the healthy lunch boxes for children.
14Also in the cafe, children are invited to do a football themed drawing.
15We'll pick the best one at the end of the afternoon
16so don't forget to put your name and contact details on the back.
17That way if you've left the stadium before then, we'll send your prize,
18but sadly we can't return drawings.
19I'd like to mention some features of the tour.
20We'll start with the 360 cinema experience,
21which has been very popular over the years,
22and then I'll take you to the players' dressing rooms,
23before going outside to the seating area and the pitch.
24I should say, if you'd prefer your visit to be self-guided,
25please collect headphones from the reception,
26and then you can listen to the pre-recorded information at your own speed.
27We've only just introduced this feature and would appreciate your feedback.
28We're thinking of offering tours in other languages in future,
29so if you have any thoughts on that, we'd welcome those too.
30If you plan to return another time, you might like to book one of our VIP tours.
31We've only just started offering these and they can be booked online.
32Now, the stadium you see today was built in 1989
33as part of a 3-year redevelopment project.
34While that project was going on,
35the team had to play its matches at the ground of another club.
36Apart from that, the club has been here on this site since 1870.
37As some of you may know,
38that was the start of a really important decade in the history of football in this country.
39For example, 1870 was also the year that football teams started to include a player whose role it was to guard the goal.
40It's hard to imagine what the game must have been like without someone in that position, isn't it?
41In 1872 and 73,
42many other clubs were established, both here and abroad.
43And the following year, in 1874,
44referees were allowed to send players off if they committed certain offences.
45And also in that year, teams started having to swap ends at half-time.
46One fact I was interested to discover was that in early football games,
47the aim was for the scorer to get the ball between two flag posts
48and later between sticks joined at the top with a piece of tape.
49In 1875, that tape was replaced with the solid crossbar that we're familiar with today.
501877 saw the founding of further new clubs
51and the history books tell us that in the same year,
52all the clubs decided to set a limit of 90 minutes for each match.
53Before that it was a more casual arrangement
54and this sometimes caused huge arguments and sometimes fights during matches
55when one team called the end of the game and the other team wanted to play on to try and score a winning goal.
56By 1878, the number of teams in the Football League increased again.
57In addition, referees started using whistles
58and electric lamps were installed on certain pitches.
59This was a significant change,
60as games could then be played in the evenings all year round.
61In 1880, clubs began to charge fans for admission to games,
62even though players were still amateurs and had other proper jobs.
63That's hard to imagine in the modern professional game
64where top players earn significant sums of money from both playing and commercial activities.