Stadium Move - A Clydebank Fan's View
By Stuart Gillespie
Updated Sunday, 27th October 2002
With the recent news that Saints could be about to sell Love Street to move to an all new stadium, I sent the news to an SFL mailing list. Here's the response I got from the main man in Clydebank's UCS supporters group, David Munro.
"Sadly, your current situation looks more like a
Clydebank than a
Falkirk to
me. You have a large, near to town centre ground which is valuable to a
developer. This will bring in a considerable sum of money but which will
not be sufficient to fund a new stadium of 'acceptable' or similar size.
"You do not (to the best of my knowledge) have planning permission for a new
ground nor an identified site for a new ground. The debts at your club will
be repaid after Love St is sold leaving an even bigger funding gap and the
initial estimates for building a new ground will rocket out of control.
Your club will continue to lose money and more and more of the sale
proceeds will vanish a la Airdrie and Hamilton.
"You will then propose a joint Morton/St Mirren stadium somewhere in middle
ground which will be rejected by both sets of fans. You will share at god
knows where and will drift into the no-mans land between Love St and
obscurity as more and more fans become disillusioned and desert you,
however temporarily this may be. This will cause yet more money problems.
Your club may be relegated to division 2 or worse and will certainly be
strictly part-time.
"You need cast iron guarantees and you aren't going to get them. Your only
solution once they propose this route is to identify a buyer prepared to
take over the club as your current owners have now shown they do not
deserve your support. Once they suggest this route it is the start of the
slippery slope.
"Trust me, fight this and fight it hard. You will have our backing.
You have absolutely no need to relocate from Love St - you have 2 spanking
new stands and your ground meets SPL requirements.
We had absolutely no need to leave Kilbowie and could still have been there
today.
"If I had suggested to you 7 years ago that our fixtures would be a thing of
the past by 2002 and that Kilbowie would be gone you would not have
believed me. If you had suggested to me that Love St would be all seated
with new stands at either end and would then be sold to a supermarket, I
would not have believed you.
"DO NOT LET THIS PLAN HAPPEN - IT WILL KILL YOUR CLUB ONCE AND FOR ALL."
Lot's of good points there from David, but what do you, the St. Mirren fans think? Mirren Mad now has a poll up on the issue, and you can also discuss this on our message boards. Also, if you would like a look at the UCS website it can be found at
http://www.ucsweb.freeserve.co.uk/
