Keith Jackson believes that the playing surface at Hampden is bordering a national disgrace.
On Saturday the SFA’s national stadium cut up badly in the European Championship qualifier against Cyprus with further punishment expected tomorrow when Spain are the visitors.
SFA chief Ian Maxwell believes that Scottish football is doing remarkably well but it is a while since he put his boots on or had to watch a match from behind one of the goals at Hampden.
Jackson can normally be relied on to paint a sympathetic picture for the CEO of the SFA but changes direction in today’s Daily Record:
Maxwell really will have to get his hands dirty in a hurry because the playing surface is now bordering on a national disgrace. It was a mudheap for the semi finals of the Viaplay Cup and although it looked marginally improved for last month’s final, the patch up job didn’t make it play any better.
It looked no easier for Scotland’s players to perform on it on Saturday and, even though they were not reaching for excuses afterwards, even the irrepressible McGinn conceded that the surface had made seeing off the Cypriots a lot harder work than it ought to have been.
With two Scottish Cup semi finals to be played there in a month from now, Maxwell has to get the gardening gloves on sharpish or stand accused of allowing the home of Scottish football to fall into a state of disrepair.
Doing nothing is not an option. Not at a time when Clarke’s right hand man lamented the training pitches at Edinburgh’s Oriam as a health hazard – and not when the one that’s used for the main event might be even worse.
As well as the Falkirk v Inverness Caledonian Thistle semi-final the day before the Glasgow derby on April 30 Hampden hosts a Scotland v Costa Rica woman’s international friendly on April 11.
In the past the SFA had the excuse that they were renting Hampden from Queens Park who used the national stadium as their home ground, now that they own Hampden it seems that Queens have a better surface at Lesser Hampden with a half built 2,000 capacity stadium still being put together.
Steve Clarke’s side will again train today at Lesser, avoiding the national disgrace across the road.
I couldn’t tell the difference if it was Cyprus potatoes or Maris Piper potatoes Scotland had been playing at the weekend,going by the state of that farmers field they had been playing on.
If has to be said, yet again:
the SFA couldn’t organise…
a footy game on a decent pitch!
And that just about sums up the Hampden blazers.
A rotten pitch.
An obsolete, dreadful, atheltics stadium – which the SFA , in its wisdom, chose to buy!
Who exactly is supposed to be promoting football – and encouraging more people to attend and support the national game?
Well, it’s obviously not the SFA. 🙁