OFFSET YOUR WORLD CUP TRAVEL WITH GREENERTRAVEL
Date: 11th September 2025
Transfer Embargo
“The Broadwood club is lurching from crisis to crisis”
This subheading in the BBC report must be like a dagger through the heart of any Hamilton Accies fan. Being described as a Broadwood club rather than the club proudly representing your hometown is not just unfortunate, it’s a bit of a travesty.
It is misery piled upon misery over the last few months for Hamilton Academical supporters. It has been difficult to witness and hard to bear.
I can remember in a final game of the season when I was watching Hamilton Academical versus Cowdenbeath for Kicktalk. Colin Cameron, the manager of Cowdenbeath at the time, was hoping that a win would see The Blue Brazil go from 10th in the championship up to at least 8th, allowing him and his club one more season in the Championship.
This was when, having got rid of Billy Reid, Hamilton Academical were allowing Alex Neil the opportunity to emerge as a candidate for manager.
Little did we know that the following season, Hamilton would gain promotion, and Alex Neil would go on to manage many English clubs creating a decent career down south.
I cheekily asked Neil what his summer plans were because there had been no announcement from the board as to who was going to take over from Billy Reid permanently. My ham-fisted attempt to get some kind of exclusive was batted away by a manager emerging as a media savvy operator.
The Accies is, therefore, a club that I have a degree of affection for. Hamilton Academical do not deserve to be where they are. By that I mean the fans, I don’t mean the board.
And so, the misery of losing 15 points, being relegated, beginning this season with negative five points, closing down age groups within their Academy, losing elite academy status, watching emerging players leaving, becoming homeless, then a transfer embargo, and finally a potential winding-up order that has been put in the Edinburgh Gazette.
However, the report with which I began this, on the BBC website, referred to a possible takeover bid. It could be light at the end of this really awful tunnel.
Right now, there are plans and counter claims about the way that the club has been run, how fans have been ignored, whether the SFA/SPFL have been unfair to the club and even building a second stadium in the town of Hamilton… From the outside, I can’t see why Hamilton could/ should boast two stadia that would be compliant with the Premier League. There’s only one potentially compliant club… And New Douglas Park always seemed to me the perfect fit for Hamilton Academical.
I haven’t been down since the stadia has become tenanted by Clyde, but I wonder what happened to all the wonderful pictures of glories gone past. As I type this, Celtic and Rangers are playing out on Sky Sports a 0-0 draw for half time (It ended 2-0 for Rangers). I can report New Douglas Park is still resplendent in Accies colours.
Now Accies have the ignominy of playing in League One and hoping that they can emerge from that into the Championship, perhaps next year or the next, with some kind of pride intact.
That should include returning back home.
Being a nomad is no good for anybody.
And Hamilton, after seven years previously spent in the wilderness, know exactly how that feels.
It is a scar that many of the fans continue to scratch and hope that it’s not coming back now.
A year at Broadwood would do them little harm if it meant that Hamilton Academical was going to take their rightful place within the Scottish football firmament – in Hamilton, as their name suggests!
Should it ever get back into the Premiership, of course the people currently in charge should never have an opportunity to raise a flag as a championship winner or get pats on the back for having emerged from what they have created.
Though if a new owner comes in, and there have been many changes of ownership over the recent past in Scottish football, it is hoped that what they’re going to be is more akin to a Dundee United or a Hibs than a Romany of Hearts.
Time will tell.
Hamilton Academical supporters and fans organisations will also tell.
And though they are not diminished by number, they must be dimmed by the pressures and stresses that they’ve had to face over the last 10 to 20 years.
We in the Scottish Football Supporters Association proudly put down our scarves when there is a fellow club in difficulty and join alongside them to support them and help them in any way we can.
That affection that I have for Hamilton Academical should be little needed when it comes to supporting the right of Hamilton supporters to see a Hamilton Academical in nowhere else but Hamilton.
After all, when they came for Third Lanark, we said nothing because we were not Third Lanark, when Gretna fella way we said nothing because we didnae like them buying their success (whether they did or not), and if we keep turning a blind eye to those clubs we don’t support struggling, when we need support to keep ours afloat, there may be nobody left to support us… and that would be a huge tragedy.
Posted in: Fan's Blog, Latest News
Tags: Hamilton Accies, Scottish fans, Scottish football, SFA, SPFL