LET THE HARD WORK

Q&A Hampden may have won the day but Ian Maxwell will have plenty to ponder still

AND now begins.

Hampden Park will remain the home of Scottish football, a victory for most in the game, but even those who cheered loudest in favour of the Mount Florida ground have to admit something rather important: the stadium isn’t great. And that’s being kind.

Too many seats have poor views of the pitch, the rain gets in even if you’re high up in the stand, there are no real tributes outside which would tell you this is a historic place and as for the tone-setting dirge by Ronnie Brown that is Flower O’ Scotland – let’s not even go there.

Ian Maxwell didn’t try to hide from these facts. He knows any attempt to pretend the national football stadium is one of the best around is simply untrue.

Hampden is still the third best football stadium in Glasgow.

Both inside and outside the ground, the SFA must spend some money to make it look like a famous arena, rather than what it has become: an old ground with some seats stuck on the terraces and a main stand with a frontage which resembles an out-oftown call centre.

Here, SportTimes takes a look at what needs to be done...

‘‘ Safe standing is definitely one thing we can look at

the hard work game when they see an energetic side who are working hard, making tackles, having shots, getting up the park and doing all the things you want the team you support to go and do.

There is no doubt [the stadium] needs a bit of work.

It’s 20 years old now in its current form and there are areas of it we need to try and improve. There is no shying away from that.

Whether it is in the seating deck, the hospitality, the kiosks, the Wi-Fi or the floodlights – there are a lot of different things. This gives us a real opportunity to step back, look at the whole Hampden experience and come up with a plan to say there are areas of this we need to attack. We can’t do it all tomorrow. Some will be picked up for Euro 2020 and we can come up with a longer term plan to address the rest.

Safe standing is definitely one thing we can look at. We’ve seen the success of that at Celtic Park.

Within the life cycle of costs we have, there is always going to be a replacement of seats. There’s no reason why some of them can’t be rail seats. I would caveat that by saying it’s not just as simple as that, because of sight lines depending where you are in the stadium.