Half Time Bovril

Saturday 2nd December 2006

What’s it called? Cumbernauld, the home of Clyde football club and also voted the most dismal place in Scotland. So there wasn’t much hope for visiting and with these low expectations we set out to see if it was worthy of this award. That being said we were hopeful that the stadium would be of reasonable quality having moved from Shawfield stadium in the south side of Glasgow to Broadwood in 1994 (with some ground sharing in-between) so it was relatively new. We arrived at the stadium and the parking facilities were pretty good with plenty of spaces and from the outside it looked smart and tidy. We were with the cheap skate that is Jamie and after hearing it was £2 for parking, the car was promptly turned around and parked in some road that looked like a haven for smack addicts, but I guess he would say it was worth it for the saving of £2 (although in my opinion we were lucky to come away with 4 hubcaps).

So we went into the main stand with the home fans and on initial viewing the stadium looked good and was definitely of sufficient class to be a ground for an average side within the SPL. The only disappointing aspect was that it was no-where near capacity with one stand noticeably closed. This gave the game a poor atmosphere and therefore the banter was distinctly lacking between both sets of fans which is a frustrating when the rain is battering down and the wind was coming in from the hills making the opportunity of good football happening next to none. Why were we here again? The first half was riddled with scrappy football with the only interesting part being Paul Lovering booting several Clyde players up and down the park before being eventually booked with not much complaint from the player. Despite being the more dominant side the Clyde team seemed to be light years away from the performance they put in against Celtic the season before to put them out of the Scottish Cup.

The second half was much of the same until the last 20 minutes when the game suddenly sprung into life with Marc Smyth being sent off after a second bookable offence and David Hutton making a superb double save in injury time to rescue a point for Clyde. Overall it was a poor game; the stadium itself was good despite there being a lack of a fourth stand in which it has been widely publicised that there have been problems with planning permission and finance and also the additional pitches and facilities make this one of the better stadiums in the First Division.

Dougie Ratings

Quality of Seat: 4 / 5 Quality of Banter: 1 / 5 (too empty for there to be any) Quality of Ground: 4 / 5 Quality of Pie: 3 / 5 (and the Bovril was reasonable) Overall: 3.5 / 5