The latest stirring show at the birthplace of international football serves as an ode to Scottish game’s rich history… and a call to arms to preserve it

The poet can oft times tell the story the best, matching words with sentiment, rhyme with reason.

A preponderance of poets, a veritable rammy of rhymesters thus can illuminate a saga with wit, wisdom and no little humour.

All these traits were needed at Hampden Bowling Club on Saturday. The occasion was the Last Stanza. It was a celebration, a warning and a call to arms.

‘Before the lights, before the fame,

Here was born the beautiful game’

The words are from John Daly, vice chairman of the West of Scotland Tartan Army and its poet in residence. He was one of four poets who gave readings on Saturday on the spot where international football was born. 

Just off Cathcart Road sits the site where a purpose-built football stadium, the first in the world, hosted games from 1873-1884.

Poets gathered from across Scotland to celebrate the venue’s historical significance

Hampden Bowling Club, Cathkin Park and the current Hampden Park are all visible above

Graeme Brown, founder of the Hampden Collection, a group set up to promote and protect the history of a square mile that launched international football and gave the passing game to the world, was the master of ceremonies. There was a fear that he might be conducting obsequies for a valuable piece of history.

Hampden Bowling Club is closing after more than 100 years. What next for a patch of grass that forms the creation story for the beautiful game?

‘But now the site lies under threat

A debt to time we can’t forget’

Again, these are the words of John Daly. My apologies for now descending into the prose of Hugh MacDonald but a wee explainer may be helpful.

Football’s Square Mile is an initiative from the Hampden Collective. It encompasses the sites of the three Hampdens, of which the bowling club was the first, Cathkin the second, and the present home the third.

John Daly is the vice chairman of the West of Scotland Tartan Army and a keen poet

‘The biggest open-air football museum in the world’ was its designation. ‘The most important football heritage site on the planet’ was and is the claim. It is impossible to refute.

The Scotch professors, the great footballers of the late 19th century who took their passing game to England and then beyond, graduated from these fields.

There is a push to designate the area a UNESCO world heritage site. It is vital, therefore, that the first Hampden is protected. The campaign to ensure its future by giving it over to a community interest company has already started.

Owned by Glasgow City Council, there are fears that the pavilion might be razed and flats or offices erected on a sacred site. This would be monstrous, akin to replacing the Pyramids with a fast-food franchise or installing a crazy golf course in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

‘I am fascinated and angry,’ says Daly, whose first Scotland match was the 1-0 defeat of Italy at Hampden in 1965. He stands outside the bowling club after his recital and expands on his emotions.

‘I am fascinated by the history. What a story. But I never knew anything about it until I went on a Football Square Mile tour a few years ago. And that makes me angry. Why doesn’t everyone know about this? Why aren’t our schoolchildren taught about this? Why are we not shouting about this from the rooftops?’

Graeme Brown and David Coutts of the Hampden Collection are determined to preserve history

He adds: ‘I have had “football is coming home” shoved down my throat for years. But this is the home of football. We can’t lose this… but I fear we might.’

It is why campaigners have energetically tried to raise the profile of the area by tours, events and word of mouth.

Saturday was the last hurrah in one sense as the bowling club formally closes at the end of the month. But it may be the first shout in what could be a deafening rallying call to not only ensure the site of the first Hampden but to place history at the forefront of the present. It would be wonderful to believe that the square mile could attract thousands of visitors from all over the world.

For the moment, though, it was the destination for Scottish poets eager to celebrate the game they love and its birthplace.

Donna Matthew, makar of the Scottish Women’s National team, had helped set up the programme for the day with Gabrielle Barnby, a poet and writer who travelled down from Orkney.

Matthew reflects on the dramatic narrative of her life as concerns poetry. ‘I did not know I had poetry inside me,’ she says. It largely came to her in Covid and has spurred a career in creative endeavours.

Former Dumbarton poet Stephen Watt recites his footballing odes to the assembled crowd

A familiar collaborator with the Hampden Collective, the bowling club holds a special place in her heart.

‘This could be the last event in this amazing space in its current iteration,’ she says. ’It was special just walking in here. It felt like a hug. In many ways this is a celebration but we are standing on a threshold. What comes next? I am hopeful, looking forward to great things.

‘This is a vital community space and I am right behind the community members who want to make use of it.’

Her experience as an educator with Show Racism the Red Card has underlined football’s role in bringing people together and helping to make the world a better place. 

This can sound high-flown but it is felt within the bowling club as poets Daly, Linda Jackson, Stephen Watt — once the poet of Dumbarton FC — and Hamish MacDonald, poet at Clydebank FC, or Bard of the Bankies as I prefer to call him, all testify to the significance of the game.

This is all done with considerable style and no little humour. But the unmistakable message is that football matters. So should its birthplace.

‘I didn’t know much about the history before coming along and I want to know the difficulties this place faces and how they can be overcome,’ says MacDonald, whose recently published Square Baw is both a love letter to the game and a chronicle of his extraordinary grandfather, who survived the First World War and played with Alan Morton, the Rangers great.

‘Bard of the Bankies’ Hamish MacDonald recites from his recently published book, Square Baw

‘This would be a shrine anywhere else in the world,’ he says. ‘We must protect it.’

This role has fallen into the hands of Calum Cameron, among others. He is one of the local residents who have set up a community interest company.

‘We have already started conversations with Glasgow City Council about the future here,’ he says. There is also fund-raising going on to enable a feasibility study.

‘There are lots of ideas on how to use the site,’ he adds. ‘But we want to make it a living, breathing part of the community.’

There were words on Saturday. But there is action too. The hope is that both combine to keep history alive.