Neutral Hampden is a national symbol of unity. Surely that has to be worth saving...

÷WITH Hampden’s future at risk and one of its fiercest critics down the years, former Celtic owner Fergus McCann, re-emerging this week to insist there is ‘no valid case’ for its retention, writer and broadcaster ARCHIE MACPHERSON steps forward to offer a passionate defence of the iconic stadium.

With the battalions massing around hampden for what many critics hope could be a final assault on its credibility, it is worth reminding ourselves of the value of permanence.

With its flaws glaringly obvious, in comparison with the other two stadia in Glasgow, it predictably fails to register positively in supporters’ surveys, and invites an unsurprising intervention by Fergus McCann, who clearly is of a mind to champion his own magnificent creation in the east end of the city.

But it is that almost contemptuous disregard for hampden that touches on the very issue that has paradoxically sustained my ultimate support for the stadium, even though, admittedly, it has wavered from time to time.

in 1974, for instance, when the adrenaline was beginning to pump in our veins at the prospect of competing in our first World Cup in 16 years, i was for the utter demolition of this increasing dilapidation and starting from scratch.

i thought, even in a distant way, there was something i could do about it, for at that time i was a member of the Scottish Sports Council.

But at a meeting in the Beach Pavilion in Aberdeen, only weeks before the finals in West Germany, to my astonishment the council looked as if they were about to ignore hampden’s plight.

that was until, as the records should show — remarkably under Any Other Business — i proposed that they send representatives to the World Cup finals to examine their new stadia there.

they consented and came back clearly impressed with the box-like structure in Dortmund. that was one of the designs that was to be examined and, with that model in mind, the bulldozers were poised to move into Mount Florida. But Rangers beat them to it. And this is where the McCann intervention comes in.

his words were like hearing the lyrics of an old song that you can’t get out of your head.

it was an echo of what had bounced around ibrox Stadium on the night of Friday June 7, 1980.

i was at ringside to watch Jim Watt defend his world light-weight title against howard Davis of the USA. We got more than we bargained for. Just before the boxers entered the ring, Rangers passed around leaflets to the media to point out that, with their new stadium in the process of being constructed, there would effectively be no need to spend money to reconstruct hampden.

And that, in fact, we were all now sitting in what effectively would be a new national stadium.

With Alex Fletcher, the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, in a huddle with Rangers that week, the bulldozers barely got as far as Aikenhead Road when the thatcher Government then reneged on their promise to fund the re-development and hampden at that stage was left purely in limbo.

the entrepreneurial zeal of David Murray then, and subsequently McCann, to promote their own institutions as alternatives made perfectly understandable commercial sense — but at the same time still ran counter to the principle of neutrality which hampden has exemplified and which we would dice with at our peril. this is not simply a concept. it is a practical application of common sense that cannot be taken lightly given the political sensitivities in our game.

Of course, i realise that many people are now convinced that the place is an abomination and controlled by folk who should typically arrive at the stadium by hansom cab.

But the antediluvian jibes and the dismissive vox-pops, which seem to be self-perpetuating, ignore the fact that the neutrality of hampden has been one of the most resilient, and, certainly, underestimated factors in the Scottish game.

Perhaps the indifference to it stems in part from the disenchantment with the football as much as the architecture.

Our national side has not qualified for a World Cup since 1998 and the stadium has been central to too many recurring disappointments, whilst from ibrox and Celtic Park over the past decades you could clearly hear the customers getting the bangs for their bucks.

Comparisons at times are odious but they are readily made.

this produced a significant change at hampden. the great urban support for the national side has largely been waylaid by European club football and most patrons attending now are mostly from around other parts of Scotland.

i am sure some of them would be perfectly satisfied about playing these games at either ibrox or Celtic Park.

But the paradox is that they would be helping to pour money into the coffers of these institutions while the majority of supporters of these clubs would be sitting at home watching television.

Yes, rotation of the internationals and cup finals is an accepted practice in other countries.

And i can offer no objection to its occasional use. But such is the homogeneity of our footballing society that it ought to lend itself to a focal point, to a place associated only with national effort.

it would be extraordinary if Scotland were to be the only home country without such a place.

Murrayfield, of course, as an attractive alternative, sits there like a well-off suitor allowing other surrogates to pop the question for it.

Without wishing to cast a slur on that famous fixture, an Old Firm cup final in the capital would be as welcome to the constabulary there as the Ebola virus. Fine stadium, wrong idea.

More importantly, hampden’s backing should be more clearly identified at political level. We have a nationalist government which lays great store on Scottish identity.

Not to show public support for hampden as the national stadium would be, as someone said to me recently, like the Catalans giving up on Barcelona.

hampden is no Camp Nou but is, likewise, a symbol of a unified identity and warrants survival.