All this no fans inside the ground stuff is anything but knew to me. As a youth I had a fascination with football grounds (particularly climbing into them free of charge). Quite regularly at one time I would visit that huge barn of a stadium, Hampden Park, where once 150 thousand had turned up for a game, to watch amateur minnows Queen’s Park play before as little as 200 fans.
Hampden was vast and open with a huge pitch with a speedway track running around it. Queens Park would be playing Brechin or Forfar or Stenhousemuir; one of those clubs supported by sad autograph hunters that couldn’t make friends at school and forged their meagre identity with the local football club.
The ‘away’ fans – all 43 of them – would, out of courtesy, be given the covered ‘Rangers end’ while the other 157 of us cavorted in the wide open plains of the opposite terrace or the vast enclosure or stand (the ‘stand’ is where you sat down).
The atmosphere would be about as febrile as a clap clinic on a wet Tuesday. One could hear the players and coaching staff clearly cursing “Get intae um, Malky. Fuckin’ stookie um” while Malky was busy tripping over his own boot-laces. Your neighbouring fan could be maybe thirty yards away leaning on a crush-barrier with his son looking as bored as Russell Brand on a vow of silence. Why did his father subject him to this? And didn’t he know his mum visited the provvy man when they were at these games?
I once witnessed an ironic pitch invasion during a night game against the behemoths of Partick Thistle. The Maryhill team were three up and the legion of Spiders fans decided to disrupt the game so that the referee would abandon the game and force a replay. He didn’t and the crowd dispersed back to the gloom of the terraces laughing.
Let the fans back in to Queen’s Park games and no-one will notice at all!
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