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Date: 1st October 2024
Douglas Gorman has greatly expanded on his articles in Scottish Football Historian 157 and 166 on the expansion of capacity of Hampden Park (which was spurred on by Rangers’ ambitions of the 1930s to develop a ground of equal proportions), and has produced a very comprehensive, detailed and thought‐provoking 96 page book. He has collated all the information on the formation of 3rd Hampden and its two nearby predecessors and its subsequent development in the interwar years as the world’s largest football ground, a position it took from the old Crystal Palace arena in London, which hosted six‐figure crowds at FA Cup Finals, and the sensible restrictions placed on the newly built Wembley Stadium following the dangerous overcrowding at the 1923 FA Cup final.
The emerging need for such a ground in Scotland is illustrated in one of the Appendices to the book. Prior to the First World War, the first five attendances over 100,000 were for the bi-annual England internationals It took until 1927 before Hampden once again hosted such a crowd for the England match, but two years before that, 101,714 arrived for an Old Firm Cup semi final, giving warning that the domestic game needed a venue for the exceptionally popular, occasional event.
Despite annual warnings of such a need, and the continued attraction of the visit of the Auld Enemy, it took a further decade for the SFA to react, forced to do so after two potentially dangerous events. In 1935, with nearly 130,000 already admitted – ten thousand more than the permitted capacity – a further 25,000 and 30,000 who had turned up for the England match were locked out, .
Your editor’s grandfather was one of the unfortunates denied entry – he and about 20,000 others walked over Prospecthill to watch a Junior cup final between Shotts Bon Acord and Rothesay Royal Victoria at 2nd Cathkin Park (2nd Hampden).
The SFA decreed that they needed access to a bigger stadium, and invited applications from interested parties. Only Queen’s Park and Rangers obliged.
Grandpa was back two years later and did get to the Celtic v Aberdeen Scottish Cup final, as did another 147,364, most of whom paid cash at the turnstiles (unlike the even larger crowd who all had tickets for the Scotland v England match the previous week). He was accompanied by a friend from Kirkcaldy who was not a smoker, unlike my grandfather, and who had poke of sweets in in the inside pocket of his coat; grandpa’s fags were in the equivalent pocket of his own garment, and neither could get their hands into their coats until half time when some of the crowd had left because of the crush. The SFA belatedly learned a second lesson; that popular Cup Finals should also be all-ticket affairs.
The author goes into great detail about the ensuing contest between Ibrox and Hampden, won by the latter, and continues with a detailed account of Queen’s Park’s subsequent struggles to maintain and improve the ground before it became apparent in 1973, in the wake of the second Ibrox Disaster, that the cherished capacity of 134,580 was no longer sustainable.
The book, lavishly illustrated, is also very thought-provoking. Queen’s bore the brunt of criticism over several decades for the awful North Stand, but it was forced upon them by the SFA’s 1935 competition. The pressing need to maintain such a huge capacity meant that other modern facilities were neglected, not least floodlighting, which arrived, belatedly, in the autumn of 1961, an expense which Queen’s Park could not really afford.
It should be borne in mind that no-one was making any money over the accommodation of 2.25% of Scotland’s population within 20 acres of Glasgow’s South side. Queen’s were an entirely amateur organisation, with a minimal permanent ground staff and management. Scottish fans simply got their major venue on the cheap for more than half a century.
The book’s avowed intent is to concentrate on the development of the stadium itself, with no coverage of the games, the players, the occasions. Memories of these are left to the reader to conjure up, inspired by the details and the images spread liberally over its pages.
The long to‐apparent problems of Hampden were resolved, if not permanently, with the complete redevelopment of the ground, largely driven by the SFA, with Rangers once again spurned and complaining on the sidelines following their earlier, expensive, redevelopment of Ibrox post 1971.
The book, priced £12, is available from: https://www.lulu.com/shop/douglas-gorman/hampden-park-1908-1950-the-largest-football-ground-in-the-world/paperback/product-95zjdz6.html?q=Douglas+Gorman&page=1&pageSize=4
Article first published in the October issue of the Scottish Football Historian. For more details and to subscribe (four issues a year), please visit: https://www.scotlandsfootballers.com/sfh.html
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