Politicians have TWO WEEKS to save Hampden
AUDIBLE within Glasgow’s City Chambers this week was the clanging sound of a penny dropping. Hampden, the home of Scottish football, is edging towards the scrapyard. And politicians have two weeks to save it.
Threats by the Scottish FA to leave the home of the national game are hardly new. They’ve been coming for years.
But Glasgow’s city fathers were guilty of a common miscalculation. They thought the SFA board were bluffing. That the governing body were engaged in a negotiating ploy to subsidise the upkeep of Hampden via the public purse and, when that failed, would stay put.
The realisation cup finals and internationals could actually move to Parkhead, Ibrox, Murrayfield and Aberdeen, then, has come as a hell of a jolt.
Belatedly, Labour councillor Archie Graham has launched a campaign to save Hampden.
Councillor Graham claims the loss of the national stadium would be an ‘absolute hammer blow’ for Glasgow. Glasgow Life, the body which oversees the city’s cultural interests, has commissioned an economic impact study into the costs of losing the old place. The Labour Group will back a resolution to save Hampden on December 14 and hope to attract the support of the ruling SNP group and other parties. Good luck with that.
Cathcart’s SNP MSP James Dornan claims the economic impact of losing Hampden would be ‘huge.’ Yet, so far, the Scottish Government have turned a deaf ear to SFA pleas for public cash to help sustain the National Stadium.
There’s a risk now that the politicians are not only doing too little. They’re doing it too late.
The SFA board plan to reach a decision on whether to stay or go within a fortnight. Insiders now rate the chances of quitting the arena, which has housed Scottish football in its current form since 1903, at 60/40.
Surveys commissioned by the governing body can’t guarantee that an ageing, crumbling stadium will last 20 years without costly repairs. SFA chief Stewart Regan claims it will take ‘many millions of pounds’ to maintain a venue owned by Queen’s Park, an amateur club with no visible means of doing the work themselves. All of which leaves one option. Taxpayers’ money.
Listen, if Hampden hosted opera or dangled Spitfires from the roof, politicians would be throwing tens of millions at the place. Glasgow Council has already agreed to meet half of the £66million bill for a revamp of the Burrell Collection. The Heritage Lottery Fund will meet a huge chunk of the rest.
Glasgow’s Riverside Museum cost £74m, while, in Dundee, the Scottish Government and lottery money is subsidising the cost of the new £80m V&A Museum.
Hampden is not publicly owned, of course. And football is not the Arts. Regarded as a low rent, working-class pursuit for oiks and bigoted pond life, the Scottish Government would rather put supporters in jail for singing sectarian songs than give them something decent to sing about.
Understandably, some think Hampden has already seen enough taxpayers’ money. That the SFA have a cheek holding the public purse to ransom.
Granted £59m for a half-baked, awful redevelopment of the South Stand 20 years ago, Hampden Park Ltd were given more cash for the Commonwealth Games. UEFA also stumped up for improvements to the concourse of the North Stand in time for the Euro 2020 finals. And the place is still not fit for purpose.
When it comes to the future of Hampden, the response of supporters veers between a shrug and outright hostility. The stands behind the goal are too far from the pitch. Views are poor. ScotRail don’t lay on enough trains on matchdays.
Supporters clubs have to park their buses half a mile away. Public cash is tight and Hampden needs more than a lick of paint to represent half-decent value for money. But the British Isles hasn’t spent recent years shutting down national stadiums. Quite the opposite.
Vast sums of public cash went on the new Wembley, the Millennium Stadium in Wales and the Aviva in Dublin. Northern Ireland’s devolved administration put up £26m for the recent redevelopment of Windsor Park in Belfast.
All of which raises a question. If MSPs and local councillors think Hampden is an iconic, historic and important economic asset to Glasgow and Scotland, what do they plan to do about it?
The politicians might want to see evidence of a vision; a plan for a new Hampden. But what they want most is to avoid the historic home of Scottish football becoming an empty, weed-strewn white elephant like Cathkin Park. And only one thing can stop that now. Cold-hard cash.