Time for Dundee to be a one-team town?

Is it time for a United Dundee: a one-team football city for the modern age? A new city team playing at a new purpose-built ‘Discovery Stadium’, jammed to bursting for every game.

The day of the dinosaur is long past, and I think both city clubs could be heading for an extinction event if they don’t engage in some rapid Darwinian thinking.

Survival of the fittest may soon require both sets of supporters to put ancient rivalries aside to ensure the continuation of the species.

The time may have arrived for a one-club city with a support base to compete with other big city clubs like Aberdeen, Hibs and Hearts, all of whom have more than double the regular home core attendances at Dens and Tannadice.

If anything did ever distinguish the two sets of city supporters from each other, it no longer does.

Their respective histories forged over a century ago are now ancient script in a changing football story.

Fans of both clubs can continue to gaze wistfully into their beer recalling the good old days which will never return – or they could contemplate building a new club, free of petty tribalism, and representing and embracing everyone in a rapidly changing city: a club with a reasonable chance of competing successfully in the modern football landscape.

In a city of 160,000 souls, a third the size of Edinburgh, and with 70,000 fewer folk than Aberdeen, both Dundee and United face an unequal and losing battle trying to compete at the top end of the Scottish game.

A unified city side playing at a custom-built new stadium would allow joint investment and sponsorship from the business community, and stop the slow, lingering descent into football irrelevance.

Individually the core supports of the two sides simply don’t allow either of them the financial muscle to match the other traditional city teams and, with the sugar daddy benefactor model of football as burst as a wet paper bag, radical new thinking is required.

Taken together, the home core support at both Dens and Tannadice is around 11,000 – and that’s with one team struggling in the top league and another fighting to escape the second tier.

That gives potentially a solid base to build on to match the rest.

At Dens, the American investment has not been rewarded with any great upsurge in attendances, and at Tannadice the Thompson family involvement is surely nearing its end.

There was at one time in the city a healthy tradition among fans of crossing the street regularly to see both sides; my father was one of them.

With good marketing and a strong business plan, a oneteam town could witness a powerful renaissance for topflight football in Dundee.

If we were starting football afresh in Dundee, straight from the drawing board and unhindered by tradition, would we have two teams playing just 100 yards apart in two decaying stadiums, each only used for a handful of hours every fortnight?

The answer must surely be no.

The question is, has the time now arrived to think the previously unthinkable?

Picture: Kim Cessford. If we were starting football afresh in Dundee, straight from the drawing board and unhindered by tradition, we surely wouldn’t have two teams playing 100 yards apart.

Dundee United chairman Stephen Thompson.