VENUE #58 QUEENS PARK Hampdon Park

SCOTTISH LEAGUE TWO

Queens Park... 4

Montrose... 1

Saturday 7th February
              2015

@ Hampden Park Stadium

             Glasgow

     The threat of bad weather made me cautious once more about the prospect of this game being played.  Well, it is a Scottish league two game but this is Queens Park, the oldest Scottish league team and they play at Scotland's national ground, Hampden.  The ground does have under soil heating if Queens are aloud to use it for they only draw around 500 people per home game and I wouldn't have thought that the revenue made would go anywhere near paying a massive heating bill let alone anything else it costs to stage a game at this level.

     I arrived at Mount Florida railway station about 13:45 as scheduled but it was a close thing for the train from Wolverhampton to Glasgow Central was delayed twelve minutes for a signal failure, (again), between Birmingham and Wolves which left me minutes to catch my connection.

     Scanning Google maps I found that there was a chip shop not far from Hampden and so I made that my first port of call only to find it closed and so I had to put plan B into action and bought two sausage rolls from Greggs which was across the road.  They gave me a free chocolate and fudge doughnut because they had made too many or maybe they thought through my appearance that I'd fallen on bad times and could do with a little extra.

   

The little Hampden pitch outside the Stadium

 I took some pictures of the exterior of the ground focusing on the little Hampden pitch used by Queens Park reserves and noticed a steward paying me a lot of attention and I knew that I was going to be investigated as I made my way toward to the grounds entrance.  Hampden only opens two turnstiles for Queens games, P and O, and as I approached the steward made his way toward me and said, "Can I look inside your bag sir", I agreed and opened my bag for him, it contained my laptop and android for use on the train to write to my blog and add pictures to Facebook etc.  I think he was determined to find something to confiscate but fell short on his desire as I was clear of illegal substances and past the test, he was a little over officious but also helpful in a reluctant kind of way.

The North stand

     Last season Queens had to leave their ground Hampden Park to play their home matches at the Excelsior Stadium natural home of Airdrieonians which is 16 miles away in North Larnarkshire.  The reason for this being that Hampden underwent redevelopment work for the 2014 commonwealth games and the entire process took around fifteen months.  It is safe to say that Queens didn't enjoy the time away from their coveted home venue as they finished bottom of league two twelve points adrift of next placed team Elgin City, were as this season similar to the one before last they are contenders for promotion to league one.

     The Spiders boss Gus MacPherson makes four changes to his team from the game last Saturday when they lost 2-1 to Albion Rovers at Cliftonhill, Shaun Rooney, Bryan Wharton, Ross Gallacher and John Carter make way for Gavin Mitchell, David McGregor, Kevin Fotheringham and Jordan Moore.  George Shields of Montrose makes only one change to the team that beat Annan 2-1 at Links park bringing in Adam Harwood for Jonathan Crawford.

   

The West stand

Queens had most of the play from the start but always seemed to fall short in the final third of the field.  It took 24 minutes to make the breakthrough when the ball was pinging around the Montrose penalty area until it found it's way to Darren Miller who side footed it into the back of the net.

     You could see the confidence escalate in the Glaswegian side and it wasn't long before it was 2-0 when some intricate play found Paul woods in the Montrose box who cut inside and rolled the ball past Stuart McKenzie in the Montrose goal.

     Come the second half and Queens went back to playing as they did early on in the first and not making much impression on the Montrose goal which inspired the Gable Endies who in the 76th minute came back into the game with a fluke goal when substitute Ross Campbell charged into a sliding tackle from Queens defender David McGregor who smashed the ball against the Montrose striker and it looped over William Muir in the Spiders goal to make it 2-1 and game on.

     This sparked life back into Queens and in the 82nd minute the referee awarded them a controversial penalty which was easily despatched by Jordan Moore who totally killed the game off three minutes from time with his second and Queens Park's fourth.

Teams coming out the tunnel

     Beautiful Stadium Hampden but with a crowd of 500 and 52 thousand empty seats it just doesn't do the place justice, although I supposed it is great for these amateur players to get to play on the National pitch.  The ground is fully enclosed and fully covered as befitting a national Stadium.  The club shop is a little stall to the right as you come through the turnstiles, very quaint.

     One annoying thing is that there is no official programme to be bought at the ground, you have to download it from the Queens Park official website and print it off yourself.  I hope that other clubs don't adopt this idea as it's going to cost a fortune in ink for my printer

     Both sets of fans get to use the same turnstiles and are only segregated by a section of seats that are cordoned off.

     One drunken Montrose fan made the afternoon a little more entertaining by singing and clapping his way through a medley of Links Park favourites, (When he wasn't nodding off to sleep), and he can claim to his fellow supporters, if or when he gets home and if he can remember, that he out sang the Queens Park supporters at Hampden Park.

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