Bully for you, Danny, as the dream moves closer to being reality
Somewhere in the Parks household there’s a video which goes by the title ‘Here the Dream Begins’.
It’s a story of Clyde’s first ever game at Broadwood Stadium – but can it really be 25 years almost to the day?
Footage of the build-up to the visit of Hami lton Accies, interviews, a montage of the club’s successes and, if memory serves, there’s also a clip of yours truly eating his pre-match meal.
A quarter of a century ago, it almost beggars belief.
The boy band good looks are fading and the passage of time hasn’t been too kind.
It was in a different life when this striker sat in the dressing room on that February 5th afternoon and held history in his grasp.
This was back in the day when the Bully Wee played in the old First Division, a halcyon period when they actually played on grass.
Accies arrived in Cumbernauld as a sell-out crowd of 6000 fans filled the brand new stadium – and duly beat us 2- 0.
It was an inaugural occasion for Alex Smith’s Barmy Army but, unfortunately we f luffed our opening day lines.
That match back in 1994 was to be the start of something memorable in the striking department for the club in their new home.
Game after game came and went but try as we might, we couldn’t break our scoring duck.
The embarrassment and shame didn’t go unnoticed, so much so that the weekly paper, The Cumbernauld News, put a clock on their back page for every edition with the hands showing how long the goal famine had lasted.
It was a huge, black timepiece of public shaming, but on and on the big hand went.
To make matters worse, personally, it was largely my fault that it continued ticking round.
As a jet-heeled young hitman, it was my job to shine in the goals department and nothing was going in.
Sorry to be a bit light on the detail but the net didn’t rustle for weeks and weeks and weeks.
But that was all to change when the ball dropped out of the sky and I was on the edge of the box.
Catching it flush, the shot was heading for the corner flag before r icocheting of f team- mate Alan MacKenzie and into the net.
The drought was finally over.
Chippie, as Alan was better known due to his body building obsession, had found the target and became a part of the club’s folklore by writing his name into their history books.
It ’s been a sad story since of a club which looked to have so many good things ahead of it, only for it to fail to ignite and suffer decline.
A huge name in the game, such nostalgia with a back catalogue of silverware and littered with former players who became greats in the game.
The signs are that under Danny Lennon it’s the start of a climb back to where they belong.
But it’s been 25 years of missed opportunities and a tale of what might have been.
‘Here the Dream Begins’ will continue to gather dust, a vision of what was to be a bright future has become a video nasty and the nightmares occasionally creep back in.