Saturday 15th March 2025 ko 10:45

Lowland League

ALBION ROVERS 0

BO’NESS UNITED 0

Att 379

Entry £11

Programme £2

Sometimes I do worry that people forget one of the points of the organized groundhop. Yes, part of it is to allow groundhoppers to tick off multiple grounds over a weekend, but it’s just as much there to act as a fundraiser for the host clubs, and perhaps never before has that side of these events been so important as here.

Our day was ending in Coatbridge a town that grew out of the steel making industry, and here’s something I didn’t know, when that industry declined, many of the steel workers headed south and found work in Corby. Much is made of the Northamptonshire’s towns Scottish flavour, when you could be more precise and say the flavour is in fact from Coatbridge.

As an outsider to the Scottish game, nevertheless I do get the impression that relegation from the SPFL has been a good thing on balance. I’d seen The Wee Rovers in happier times, in a play-off game in 2012 but unquestionably relegation to the Lowland League for this season has badly hurt Albion Rovers. So much so the emphasis is on keeping the club alive, and an acceptance that next season the players will be on expenses only.

Meanwhile having GroundhopUK come to town, at least added up to a bumper crowd, and they hosted extremely well. We were privileged and humbled in equal measure to be invited into the boardroom at half time, to learn all about how this was the club that had Jock Stein play for them 236 times before being the first manager from the British Isles to win a major European cup, Celtic winning the European Cup in Lisbon in 1967. I must admit Robyn and I completely forgot that we’d actually been to the site of Stein’s triumph, Estádio Nacional!

There was a quiet dignity about the folks in that boardroom, and I regretted that I only had 15-or-so minutes in their company. I opted to spend the second half on the little terrace behind the goal that didn’t exist 13 years previously. I watched one of the better nil-nil draws I’ve seen, and gazed upon the old-school loveliness that is Cliftonhill.

I hope us being there helped them, and that both the club and ground can survive. As one of my photos says, “The fans are the club” and they deserve nothing less.