GeeJay

...and who is footing the £100 million bill?

Article in The Times today (Michael Grant) Hampden might stage its last ever World Cup match tomorrow night. When the qualifiers come round for Qatar 2022 Scotland might be traipsing around Celtic Park and Ibrox, or hitting the road to Murrayfield, the new Tynecastle or the even newer Kingsford Stadium in Aberdeen. By then Hampden could be crumbling and unfit for purpose. Now, now, stop sniggering at the back: genuinely crumbling and literally unfit for purpose. It could be on its way to being an unused white elephant. It could be waiting for the wrecking ball. Eyes will turn to this sacred football venue for the Slovakia game. The old place will be full, or as near as damn it. The atmosphere? Well that will be down to what’s happening on the pitch. It’s not fashionable to say so but a major game at a full Hampden is as noisy, electric and exciting as it gets. Think Scotland-England in June and Hibs-Rangers last year for recent confirmation of that. Poor public transport, scant parking, inadequate food provision, bad sight lines, the shallow banking, being too far from the pitch: none of that goes away but it is all forgotten and overcome when there is high octane stuff down on the pitch. When they’re packed and bouncing those vast, sweeping ends, inviting goalscorers to leap the advertising boards and race towards them like ants across a sandpit, offer a visual backdrop second to none. Every big ground loses something when it is well short of capacity but the Hampden experience falls off a cliff. The more empty seats you see the more it sucks the life out of everything. Hampden is about the worst ground in Britain when it’s anything less than half full. Cup semi-finals are killed. Friendlies die. One of Hampden’s problems is that it’s often on public display when it is a million miles from its best. Celtic Park and Ibrox are usually pretty full; we rarely see them with the sub-20,000 attendances so often used to damn Hampden. But the stuff that’s wrong with it is genuine and exasperating, and it seems like the majority of fans want better. The Scottish Football Association’s 20-year, £800,000 per annum lease on Hampden was due to end in March 2020. It was renegotiated, but only until the July to cover the Euro 2020 finals (Hampden will be one of 13 host venues for that). Over the coming ten weeks we’ll start to find out what happens next. The SFA employed consultants and are sounding out member clubs and other stakeholders to find out what they want to do. They can stay at Hampden on the current terms by sign a new long-term lease with owners and landlords Queen’s Park. They can seek to buy out the lease and take control of the stadium and its operation (maybe for a token £1 given they would need to take on a £5.5 million dilapidations liability and £6 million debentures liability). Or they can thank Queen’s Park, walk away in 2020 and take Scotland games and cup semis and finals on a tour of the country while finding new venues for their staff, museum and sports medicine facilities. Those who run and operate Celtic Park, Ibrox, Murrayfield and Hampden have been asked to submit tenders in a mini-procurement exercise: what can their stadium offer, how much would that cost, what is its availability, what are its restraints? The SFA will make a recommendation to its board members ahead of their meeting in December. At the very least the ruling body feels it should be a tenant on better terms. It believes it has an awful lot of the responsibilities — maintenance, running and operational costs — but little control and no ownership. The SFA is a tenant doing a lot of the “landlord” stuff for which Queen’s Park has neither the infrastructure nor the expertise. And Queen’s Park collects the rent. Without Hampden the amateurs are screwed. The SFA want to change things but it’s an almighty psychological leap to then consider leaving Hampden altogether and start paying Celtic or Rangers occasional rentals to use their grounds instead. The biggest and currently the best football stadium in the country is Celtic Park: would every other club happily accept it hosting every cup final, season after season? Alternating between Celtic Park and Ibrox would look craven and expedient, and alienate many other fans. Murrayfield is the biggest sports stadium in the country and is in the capital, but symbolically Scottish football’s home always has been in the west (besides, Murrayfield shares some of Hampden’s problems). None of this is straightforward. Incidentally, neither the SFA nor the Scottish government have the dough to raze Hampden to the ground and replace it with a modern stadium. Count me in the minority who recognises and has endured all of Hampden’s flaws but still wants it to survive. Even into a fourth decade of going there it still delivers a wee kick to go through the turnstiles and see the pitch and that vast bowl of seats spreading out below. It’s where cup finals and the big Scotland games should be. The importance and symbolism of a neutral venue will be more obvious than ever if Hampden is done away with. But that’s not a popular view. What will the SFA do? Probably try to negotiate something relatively short term to buy a bit more thinking time. Maybe Slovakia tomorrow and hopefully the home leg of the play-off next month won’t be the end of Hampden and the World Cup. But it’s possible. After 114 years some in the SFA want to cut the umbilical cord.

JUST ANOTHER DAYYYYY

Celtic cost me an obscene amount of money, really thought they'd have been able to beat St Johnstone.

I see this and raise you:

I've got this running into the weekend. I'm obviously going to be one goal away but I''m having a hard time figuring out where. My biggest worry is Man Utd. edit: the Yes selection is Spurs to score in both halves.

Definitely not it's a straight up -1... beside the selection result instead of win or lose it just says 'void'. It's with Paddy, and to be fair I am a very good customer to them so a goodwill gesture is the only way I can explain it. Bizarre nonetheless. I've withdrawn already, crossing my fingers I'll see it in my PayPal balance later!

Has anyone ever known a bookie to pay out on an accumulator if you were just one selection away as some sort of goodwill gesture? Woke up this morning and they've now voided my Celtic -1 handicap selection and paid out on the rest of the accumulator. Happy days!

Forrest fluffing his one on one chance cost me close to 3 grand. Naeneck p***k.

The Omnibus man.

No complaints from me, I'm pleased for Aberdeen. A 2-0 win or better this week and the playoff round could be a possibility, long way to go though and I would still expect Apollon to get through.

Ramsay top Scot - 10/3

Based on the likely tie against the Kazakh side.

Terrible draws for all Scottish teams. Difficult to see St Johnstone or Aberdeen progressing past QR1 and QR2 respectively, Rangers might be able to get past the Luxembourg side but will get battered in Cyprus. Celtic will beat Linfield but I'm predicting will be the only Scottish team left in Europe come end of July.

The Lakanal House fire in 2009 (pictured below) killed six (during daytime when more chance of folk being away from the premesis), so you've got to fear what the total will be at Grenfell. If this was some terrorist incident we would no doubt be dropping drone bombs on Syria by now. I watched the footage from Westminster Hall earlier where the 'enquiry' began. Nick Hurd, who was one of the 72 Tories that voted against the amendment to ensure all private landlords made certain their homes were “fit for human habitation”, chaired the event. He described it a number of times as a useful 'debate' when it was nothing of the sort, all the Labour MPs asked the chair for assurances that the now-homeless residents of Grenfell would be given secure accommodation in the local area from tonight onwards. Hurd mumbled and bluffed his way through some pathetically empty rhetoric, I paraphrase but bullshit like ''ah yes it is right and proper that this will be looked at in due course''. f**k off you Tory c**t. There has also been plenty of speeches and praise about the reaction and work of the emergency services, which I agree with. However, we don't live in some third world country where that is a great achievement. It should be the absolute bare minimum. What is the government actually doing above and beyond this to secure the safety of the residents? I don't wish for any riots to take place but the next few days could be very unpleasant if there is no action taken whilst the death toll rises. Temperatures are set to reach 30 Celcius by the end of the weekend which won't help matters either.

High rise towers should be made entirely out of passports, IMO.

I'm calling bullshit on the 10th floor miracle catch.

Little bit off topic, but I just saw an advert for the new Pirates of Caribbean film on the side of a bus, with 'UNILAD - ★★★★' amongst the reviews at the side. f**k me that is next level depressing. We are officially doomed as a society.

It's a slippery slope, next she'll be doing papier-mache or, God forbid, origami.

I'm watching on Bet 365. Just need a funded account.

Scores after 80 seconds for the U20s.

People who tell me to "smash that like buttton" followed by a fist emoji when advertising their event or new business can f**k off.

At this rate the wording for Indyref2 will be something as follows: Should Scotland be an independent country? - Yes - Eh Rainjurz

Folk who still have the French flag watermark on their profile pics. That happened 18 months ago FFS, there's been hunners of different terrorist attacks since then.

Because there's no chance Leicester are getting a result.