THE long ROAD BACK FROM RUIN

After over 50 years since they ceased to be, Third Lanark aim to rise again...

IT is the summer of ’67. Two boys tire of the red ash at Holyrood Secondary School on the south side of Glasgow and decide to venture to a new playing field.

‘It was planned,’ says the younger. ‘We had a Bobby Moore ball, size five. We pushed it through the hole in the fence and went in after it. If anyone asked us what we were doing we would just tell them we had come in to get our ball.

‘The grass was slightly long but it was still a proper football pitch. You could still get into the pavilion and I would stand on the balcony surveying everything in front of me. It was still Cathkin Park.’

This vista surely did not include leading the campaign to bring professional football back to the abandoned, forlorn stadium. But these boyhood trips to the home of Third Lanark have gradually caused an adult vision to come into focus.

The eight-year-old boy in the pavilion was Pat McGeady, who now devotes most of his spare time to helping Third Lanark regain a significant foothold in Scottish football in his role as director of the club. His older brother and Cathkin playmate is John, who went on to play senior football for Sheffield United, keeping a certain Jimmy Johnstone out of the side, and fathering Aiden, of whom one may have heard.

The south side boys have remained close but Pat has walked a singular path in middle age. ‘My wife would say I am obsessed,’ he admits. He offers no defence to this charge. A boy taken to Celtic games by his father has become the most eloquent and industrious advocate for the Thirds.

‘That first day sneaking into Cathkin was the catalyst,’ he says. ’My dad told me he had taken me to some Thirds matches as a very young boy but I do not remember that. But I have never forgotten that feeling of being inside Cathkin Park.’

The adventure of creeping into forbidden territory as a kid has gained a serious purpose as an adult. McGeady sits in a cafe at Battlefield and gently and precisely articulates his strategy to bring the Thirds from the pages of history into the sports pages of the present.

A construction worker, McGeady has earned his money the hard way down the years. He is not immune to romance but not swayed by it. He knows the difficulty of the task ahead but is confident of a successful completion date.

‘If you ask me where Third Lanark will be in 10 years, then I want them to be playing in Scottish senior football, possibly League One by then,’ he says. ‘The potential is huge.’

His first step onto the Cathkin pitch more than 50 years ago came only weeks after Lord Fraser issued a winding-up order in the Court of Session and appointed an official liquidator for a club that had an illustrious history and now were summarily executed.

Founded in 1872 as an offshoot of the 3rd Lanarkshire Rifle Volunteers, they were founder members of the Scottish Football Association in 1872 and the Scottish Football League in 1890. They were league champions in 1903-4 and won the Scottish Cup twice, in 1889 and 1905.

Their history shortly before the liquidation was hardly depressing either. ‘In the 1960-61 season, we finished third in the top division, scoring more than 100 goals,’ says McGeady. Thirds, too, defeated Celtic 2-1 in the final of the Glasgow Cup final at Hampden in April 1963.

But the club went under in a tide of money problems, a sea of corruption allegations.

Resurrected as an amateur club, Third Lanark is now showing signs of rude health. There are now seven age-group teams for children and an amateur team that is unbeaten this season in the second division of the Greater Glasgow Premier AFL league.

‘We will be looking to move into a bigger league next season,’ says McGeady, who declines to give more details.

Instead, he moves forwards on two fronts. The first is an attempt to secure an important part of the club’s history. The second is to shape its future.

That day sneaking in was the catalyst. I’ve never forgotten that feeling of being inside Cathkin Park

The historic purpose is laid on the cafe table. ‘This is my favourite Third Lanark photograph,’ says McGeady, taking a flyer from his briefcase. It is a dramatic shot. It shows Jocky Robertson — at 5ft 6ins a remarkable and distinctive goalkeeper — twisting in mid-air to touch the ball over the bar in front of packed stands.

Robertson played for Third Lanark from 1957 to 1964 and his save, caught forever in time by a photographer, is a visual reminder of what has been lost and what McGeady seeks to recapture.

‘Look at that crowd,’ he says, pointing past Robertson to a sea of faces. ‘This is what Cathkin Park once meant to tens of thousands.’

This photograph is one of 200 that McGeady wants to bring back to the club. They belonged to Bob Laird, a long-time supporter who died recently. The photographs were sold to a dealer and McGeady is working to buy them for the club.

‘I believe it will take £5,000 and we have raised about two grand so far,’ he says. ‘They are important because they are part of the history of this area. This is something that is in the very fabric of the community. The photographs would be stored at the Scottish Football Museum at Hampden until we are back at Cathkin but we would take them around the area, say Govanhill Baths and other centres.’

He believes the rebirth of Third Lanark is vital to the regeneration of this part of the south side of Glasgow. ‘We are desperate for a good news story here and Third Lanark can provide it,’ he says.

‘The support has been growing and former players are buying into the project as well as others in the football world. Our last fund-raising dinner at Hampden sold out.’

He is convinced Glasgow City Council is now receptive to the club’s proposals and a return to Cathkin Park after half a century away.

‘We want Cathkin back,’ he says simply. ‘We have been talking to the council for 10 years and we now believe they are listening.

‘There are proposals there for the council to consider.’

He sees Third Lanark as the hub of the community. The Hi Hi — the wonderfully optimistic nickname for the lost Thirds — has been reclaimed for the modern version and McGeady seeks to use football to change life for the better.

‘We have the Hi Hi for Life programme that seeks to tackle childhood obesity and other lifestyle problems,’ he says. ‘Third Lanark is an important part of the south side and we can use that influence for good.’

He points out there is a veritable wave of goodwill for the club in the area. ‘No matter what pub you go into for fund-raising events, the response is always positive,’ he says. ‘There is also a wonderful reaction when men or women of a certain age see their grandchildren wear Third Lanark strips.’

BBC Alba will broadcast a documentary on Third Lanark on January 27, produced by the award-winning purple tv, and this sort of exposure may make the journey to elite football easier for McGeady and his fellow travellers. For the moment, he is determined to secure the historic photographs for the club while helping it to grow each day.

‘I never drive by it,’ he says of Cathkin Park. ‘I always go in and check it. Everything is falling apart. In many ways, it has been abandoned. It has been left to the elements.’

He adds: ‘No team has come again from so far back.’

The voice is that of a mature man. The dream is worthy of the eight-year-old boy who climbed into a pavilion and looked out, wondering what yet might be.

I want to see Third Lanark playing in League One within 10 years