NO PLACE LIKE HOME
Angry Rob Roy fans aching for long-awaited return to Kirkintilloch after years as nomads
IT is a tale that has been consumed by a series of sound bites. The team that never plays at home. Rob Roy put to flight. ‘It’s the homeless label that annoys me,’ says one supporter. ‘I mean, we’re older than Celtic and we don’t have our own ground.’
The estimable Adamslie Park can be passed en route to Kirkintilloch Rob Roy’s lodgings in Guy’s Meadow, Cumbernauld, if one takes the scenic route from Glasgow.
It once held the hopes and dreams of supporters of one of Scotland’s most venerable clubs, certainly on the Junior scene. It is now a construction site with some completed homes.
‘I don’t even like to talk about Adamslie Park,’ says one supporter, who declines to be named even as he auditions for self-combustion.
‘I know people who will not leave Kirkintilloch by that route. They can’t stand to go past it and see what has been done with a great piece of the town’s history.’
Another, also wishing to remain nameless, has told me earlier: ‘People’s ashes were sprinkled on that ground. It may sound overblown to some but it’s a sacred site to me. It’s all very sad.’
It is all now, of course, history. It is what the future will hold for the club that is focusing the attention of the committee.
Neil Anderson, president of the club, sits in the clubhouse of Cumbernauld Colts drawing up a team sheet. ‘The match secretary is not well so I’m filling in,’ he says as Rob Roy prepare to play Benburb in a home game that is, of course, played away.
Anderson has the sober, calculated mind of a chartered accountant who has worked with leading financial institutions in Scotland and Germany. But he also has an emotional bond with the club.
It makes him the perfect narrator for where Rob Roy stand now and where they may be next season.
‘It is still an open-ended question,’ he says in response to what the future holds for the club. The past is a matter of some controversy, various accusations, myriad concerns about traffic lights and access to any new stadium, and the hope of a brave new world, or at least home. That has not materialised quite yet.
Basically, Rob Roy sold their ground to move to another site in Kirkintilloch. The subsequent machinations would engage a team of lawyers, involve tussles with the council and leave the club moving to Cumbernauld to play their matches.
There is an end in sight. The cynics at Guy’s Meadow the other night said it might be a mirage.
Kirkintilloch Community Sports Complex is nearing completion and it would seem an obvious answer to the Rob Roy problem.
‘We just don’t know at the moment,’ says Anderson. ‘The council elections are imminent and the council officers won’t do anything until they are over. The marketing process — literally putting the premises on the market for tenders to run the facility — will end this month and will be decided in September which, of course, is of absolutely no use to us.
‘We will be starting a season in July. But where?’
He also points out that if the Rob Roy bid is judged successful in September it will take some time to introduce protocols, process and technical equipment.
‘It is not satisfactory,’ he says with the precision that marks his profession. Anderson, though, does not shirk from the emotional. ‘I basically returned home five years ago to support my local team and I joined the supporters’ bus that goes to what could be called home games. It was then I found what was happening. I volunteered to help out and have been in my present position ever since.’ He adds: ‘I had the professional skills and contacts. The club had spent a fortune on professional help and I thought I could help reduce that.’ Anderson thus devotes a large chunk of his time — all unpaid — to
trying to find a home for a babe born in 1878. Why?
‘It is the club I grew up watching as a boy. I meet up with friends and older supporters who, to be frank, are coming to the end of their days. I want them to have a place to go on a Saturday.
‘Somebody has to take this by the scruff of the neck and get it through. I felt it was going nowhere and I felt a sense of duty to the club and the town. So I did it.’
It is business in the sense that he is dealing with matters of planning, process and tendering. But it is also personal.
‘I grew up behind Adamslie Park. As a boy, you would hear there was a match on and walk down and be part of it.’
the bus draws up at the front of the Colts stadium and decants the Rob Roy faithful. they have been on the road since the club sold up.
‘I am not just frustrated, I am absolutely livid,’ says Charles O’Brien, a trustee of the club who was on the committee for years. He recounts the history of the exodus from Adamslie with a commendable articulacy and force.
the details, of course, are important but mostly and properly stated off the record. It’s fair to summarise his retelling of the saga as a dream that turned into a nightmare.
‘We must find a way out of this and soon. the council needs to step up,’ he says.
John McKean, a fellow fan, now travels to the game on the bus after years attending with friends and family.
‘I have been coming to Rob Roy since the 1960s,’ he says. ‘I have been at all the cup finals.’
this is a reference to Scottish Cup finals. Rob Roy has played in eight in its history as the oldest surviving Junior club in Scotland.
McKean has watched the three of the modern era: the victory over Renfrew in 1962 and the defeats to Cambuslang Rangers in 1969 and Kilbirnie Ladeside in 1977.
‘these were the highlights, even the defeats,’ he says.
‘the council should get their finger out and get us back to Kirkintilloch so we can go again. A lot of people won’t come here or any other ground. they say that it’s Kirkintilloch or nothing. My attitude, though, is that if you are a supporter you will go anywhere to watch the team.’
He pauses and then decides to relieve his mind of another burden. ‘they are wasting it,’ he says of Junior football.
‘to be semi-professional you have to have money. I hear of players wanting £150 a week. We can’t afford that.’
Brian Gilmour has returned home. If not to Adamslie Park, then at least to Rob Roy, his first love. ‘I came back five years ago to watch my nephew. He moved on but I have stayed,’ he says.
‘I was a ball boy, that’s how I started. I went down to Adamslie in 1960-61 and that was my Saturday. Ball boys weren’t trained or as official as they are now. We used to stand on the sidelines or behind the goal and got the ball back.
‘I have had some ups and downs in life and I suffered a bad head injury that caused me to have to give up my HGV licence, so I have known bad times. But I have had plenty of good ones, too. the 1962 Scottish Cup final falls into that category.’
Kirkintilloch beat Renfrew 1-0 after a replay. ‘McLeod, Dyer, McLeod, Ferguson, Loughran, Cooper, Fascione, Knox, Fleming, McIlwraith, Cunningham,’ says Gilmour, the names flowing in an affecting example of Kirkintilloch poetry.
there is also sombre Kirkintilloch prose. Ann Davie, depute chief executive of East Dunbartonshire Council, has provided an update.
‘Work is currently under way on Kirkintilloch Community Sports Complex, with the facility due for completion in autumn 2022. the council will undertake a comprehensive marketing exercise before then, inviting offers from third parties to lease the completed facility. As this process will be commercially sensitive, it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time.’
the wait goes on. But where will Rob Roy wander in the meantime?