HAMPDEN PARK ARTICLE - December 1994
| Scottish football said goodbye to one of its longest-served
and most frightening institutions this month, as the bulldozers moved in. Surprisingly,
the target wasn't League Secretary Jim Farry, but the South Stand at the National
Stadium, Hampden Park. Originally constructed in 1903, the red-brick stand is now (or
rather was) the last part of the original stadium still intact after a huge modernisation
finally brought seated and covered civilisation to the grand but timeworn old ground,
albeit at a cost of about 40,000 heads of capacity (Hampden currently hold a paltry 37,000
or so, a far cry from the days when record-breaking crowds of over 145,000 crammed in to
watch legendary matches like the 196x European Cup Final, when Real Madrid beat Eintracht
Frankfurt 7-3 in what's probably still the best match ever played on British soil). But 'frightening'? If you're wondering about that one, then you've obviously never taken one of the rusted-steel-and-wooden seats in the South Stand's press box. Perched precariously on the sloping roof of the stand and looking like it might slide off onto the pitch at any moment, the only thing more alarming than looking up at the press box was looking down from inside it, behind one of the huge open windows slanted down onto the field at exactly the right angle and height for hapless journalists to tumble out headfirst should they, for example, leap up to punch the air and proclaim loudly their sporting appreciation of the skill displayed in the scoring of Aberdeen's second and deciding goal in November's Coca-Cola Cup Final, the last major game to take place in front of the old stand. And the fear of hypothermia as the icy Scottish wind howled through the unheated and massively exposed shed-like structure was something else again. The reward for the brave and foolhardy, though, was a view described by German journalist Gunther Reimann as "the best I've seen anywhere in Europe". With the box set just a few yards back from the nearside touchline, every inch of the pitch was visible in a breathtaking panorama that nevertheless permitted the illusion of being able to reach out and playfully tug back the shirt of a passing opposition winger. There's now no longer the slight but plausible possibility of the Hampden press box crashing to the ground with Archie MacPherson still inside it, but we hope nonetheless that you'll join us in a moment's respectful silence in its memory. We shall never (thanks to modern safety regulations, probably) see its like again. |
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