One day I hope we’ll play football together in heaven
Historians of the beautiful game salute Football’s Square Mile including resting place of a teamful of legends
There are no goals at either end and no stands surrounding it but, according to football historians, a square mile of Scotland’s biggest city is the most important space in the history of the sport.
Football’s Square Mile, as it has been dubbed, takes in the national stadium and related pitches and a graveyard where some of the most influential pioneers of the beautiful game are buried.
Now, the Hampden Collection, a group formed to preserve the story of the three Hampden Parks dating back to 1873, and Friends of Cathcart Cemetery, established to acknowledge and celebrate many of the outstanding individuals buried there, will host an online event, Scotland Invented Football: The Footballers of Cathcart Cemetery. It will not only celebrate where world football began, but explore the lives of the many trailblazing footballers and managers buried in the graveyard in Glasgow’s Southside.
Graeme Brown, founder of The Hampden Collection, explained: “This event, as well as being a fundraiser, is an attempt to explain the heritage sitting on people’s doorsteps that they don’t know about.
“The Hampden Collection was founded to promote the three Hampden Parks and everyone who played on them. The first Hampden was the world’s first purposely-built international ground, where the passing game was founded and taken to the world.
“We’re promoting Football’s Square Mile, taking in the three Hampdens, the cemetery, the old and new Cathkin Parks, and Queen’s Park recreation ground. These are the most important places in football, hands down, and it’s just about getting that message across.
“The history of football was rewritten to say the home of football is England but it’s not
– it’s the Southside of Glasgow. So many people don’t know this is the birthplace of football and we want to change that.
“There’s almost this feeling that it can’t be true, so we’re trying to change that mentality. We need to be proud of it.
“There is more history in that square mile than all the rest put together, because it’s where football started. How we play it, how we watch it – it’s all in that square mile.”
For Jacqui Fernie, one of the founders of Friends of Cathcart Cemetery, it was a shared love of the vast Victorian garden cemetery, which sits just inside the East Renfrewshire council boundary, that saw the members come together to highlight the remarkable people resting there as well as to tidy it up.
“We’re trying to highlight why we think the cemetery is important not just in as far as the fascinating array of people buried there, but to the social history of the area,” she said.
“There are people like Henria Williams, a suffragette who died as a result of her action, Jessie MacLachlan, a Gaelic singer who sang for Queen Victoria and was a superstar of her time, and Stan Laurel’s mum, Margaret Metcalfe.
“There are 15,000 graves in the cemetery, so there could be around 30,000 people buried there, each with a story.
“With it being in such close proximity to Hampden, we realised there was a lot of football history there, too. We have the first managers of Rangers and Celtic, the first Scotland captain, one of the founders of Seville Football Club, and an area we call Footballers’ Corner, a section where there are three or four footballers.”
Both organisations have applied for charitable status as they attempt to raise funds to save or improve their respective passions.
Tickets for Thursday’s online event, Scotland Invented Football: The Footballers of Cathcart Cemetery, can be bought at Ticket Tailor tinyurl.com/2mbrrt72
Pele pays tribute after the death of Maradona last year