MAXWELL TELLS OF A REAL CLOSE CALL

IAN MAXWELL was aware of scepticism from the start. The perception that an SFA threat to quit Hampden was a bluff. A cynical attempt to put the frighteners on Queen’s Park and force the amateurs to hand over the keys to a stadium they have owned since 1903 in the full knowledge that, for Scotland’s oldest club, the alternative was financial ruin.

The truth, as always, was a little more complex than that.

When Lord Willie Haughey read in these pages of the financial gulf between the £6million Queen’s Park wanted for Hampden and the £2m the SFA could afford to pay, an idea began to take shape.

Until then, the chances of Scotland’s national football team playing their games in Edinburgh from 2020 was not only real. It was in danger of becoming likely.

A former Queen’s Park defender, the current SFA chief executive helped to install seating units during Hampden’s refurbishment in 1998. Yet, Maxwell insists personal emotion and sentiment was never a factor.

In Scottish football, decisions are usually whittled down to the option which costs less. And until Lord Haughey’s game-changing intervention, Scotland’s governing body — coffers decimated by decades of failure on the pitch — didn’t have enough to meet Queen’s Park’s asking price.

‘I know there was an assumption that it was always going to be Hampden,’ admitted Maxwell yesterday. ‘But in my head, it was never going to be Hampden — and this is somebody who played for Queen’s Park.

‘When I worked for Tarmac when I was 20, I installed the seat units in the main stand before I went to training.

‘That was done in ’97/98 and I was at Ross County at the time, working for Tarmac in the west of Scotland. They had a precast concrete factory and got the job.

‘They were actually doing the seats down south, but our factory ended up doing some as well and I ended up here installing the seating units at the stadium. So I have a lot of history with this place.

‘But my job now is doing what’s best for Scottish football. What’s best for Alloa as much as what’s best for Queen’s Park and for the rest of the wider membership.’

The home of Scottish rugby, Murrayfield held obvious appeal. No maintenance bills or overheads for a start. An SRU promise to put an extra £2m a year into Scottish football for the next 20 years was always predicated on the unsustainable notion that Murrayfield would be a 67,000 sell-out for Monday night qualifiers against Albania and Israel.

Had the SFA taken a vote in

January, however — when Celtic Park and Ibrox were ruled out on the grounds of cost — Murrayfield would have won.

‘To be honest, it wouldn’t have bothered me to push the button to leave Hampden if I thought it was the right decision,’ claimed Maxwell. ‘I genuinely mean that.

‘I can’t be sitting here thinking: “Ah well, the people who came to Hampden as five-year-olds will no longer get to come here”. That can’t be part of the decision.

‘It has to be what is best for the membership. What is best for the association. Not only now, but in ten, 20 or 30 years’ time.

‘I was asked: “Is this a good day for Scottish football?”. Well, it’s a monumental day for Scottish football. Let’s not make any bones about that.’

Half the money to buy it will come from Lord Haughey and, now, Sir Tom Hunter. One of Scotland’s wealthiest men, Haughey’s status as a former non-executive director of Celtic will arouse predictable suspicion. What’s in it for him?

Men willing or able to donate £2.5m to save historic football stadia in Scotland are thin on the ground. Yet Maxwell insisted: ‘I absolutely believe it was an altruistic move by him.

‘Willie’s involvement was instrumental in getting the deal for the stadium over the line.

‘The money comes to the SFA. As far as I am aware, it’s a donation.

‘Willie wanted to get involved. We didn’t put out a plea asking for help — Willie was kind enough to pick up the phone.

‘He’s a proud Glaswegian, he played for Queen’s Park and wants the games to be played in the Glasgow area. And he was in a position to help.’

Asked if the SFA could have bought Hampden without his money, Maxwell hesitates before branding the question ‘hypothetical’.

Yet, how the governing body bought the old place is less important than what happens now.

While the SFA were crunching the numbers, supporters were debating the shortcomings of a stadium many describe as sub-standard and not fit for purpose.

‘There is no doubt it needs a bit of work,’ admitted Maxwell. ‘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.’

Talks of discussions and support have already come from Lord Haughey and Sir Tom, two of Scotland’s richest men.

Entrepreneur Marie Macklin has also presented a plan to regenerate the stadium and turn Hampden into a community-led football hub from 2020.

Glasgow City Council, meanwhile, have proposed fan zones and safe standing.

Through all this, the million-dollar question remains. How do the SFA deliver on a national desire to bring the two ends of Hampden closer to the pitch? The will is there. Where is the money to create a new Stuttgart Arena?

‘It is going to be a chunky number that’s required to get us to that point,’ admitted Maxwell. ‘But that’s not something to be scared of. We need to try and address that and have conversations with as many people as we can, whether it’s private funders, whether it’s government, whoever.’

More public money for a private members’ organisation is a thorny subject when the NHS is under siege. Many feel the SFA and Queen’s Park squandered enough when they made a botched job of rebuilding Hampden in 1998.

Countering that, Maxwell argued: ‘I think that Scottish football is a real force for good. We are a members’ organisation, but Scottish football is by far and away the biggest sport in the country. The number of people we can reach and engage with is huge across the five million people in the country. Why not use us to help meet your healthcare targets?’

Exploratory talks with the other home nations over a joint 2030 World Cup bid offer the potential for huge sums to be ploughed into football infrastructure.

‘I don’t think that would be a bad place to start — absolutely,’ said Maxwell.

‘That’s another conversation with Glasgow City Council and the Scottish Government. If we can go and bring a World Cup here, what does that mean to the country? How can we leverage that? That would be a massive opportunity for us.

‘We had a very brief discussion when we were all over in Russia for a FIFA congress and the plan is to meet up in the short term and see exactly where those conversations can lead to.’

Stadium naming rights will also be explored.

Describing the decision as a ‘line in the sand’, Maxwell is blunt. All options are on the table.

All, that is, but Murrayfield; the one which hung over Scotland’s iconic stadium like a Sword of Damocles until 3pm yesterday.