CELTIC currently have the biggest football stadium in Scotland – but it could all have been very different.
That’s if a plan proposed by beleaguered members of the old Hoops board 30 years ago had come to fruition.
Thirty years to the day since Fergus McCann completed his transformational takeover of Celtic and ousted the old board, SunSport looks back on their plans to move the club away from it’s historic home.
Younger supporters might be amazed to find out that before Parkhead was redeveloped into it’s current form, the club almost moved lock, stock and barrel to Cambuslang.
It’s all a bit of a trek from the club’s existing home, but in some ways the plans for the 52,000 all-seater stadium and multi-purpose events venue could be seen as visionary.
The incentive was the Taylor Report commissioned in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster, which clubs had to conform to by 1994.
Chairman Kevin Kelly was pictured at the site with his arms held aloft, declaring a new dawn for the club.
Puff pieces in the Celtic View envisaged it as the ‘best stadium in the world’.
Given an overall price tag of £100m, the plans revealed in April 1992 included a ‘space age roof’.
There would be parking spaces for 4,500 cars, plus an integrated Celtic heritage museum on the site.
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Then there was a retail village – including major stores and even CAR showrooms.
Not forgetting a 30-lane ten-pin bowling alley and an eight screen cinema complex.
Not only that, but there would be sports and leisure facilities on site.
The plans included a permanent performance stage – with a mobile acoustic curtain enclosing 15,000 seats.
There would be drive-through fast food restaurants, office units and a petrol station.
Not to mention room for further expansion on the site.
Working with London-based firm Superstadia, the Hoops had considered a whopping FIFTEEN sites, including Celtic Park itself and the likes of Linwood, Robroyston and St Rollox.
But they had settled on the Bogleshole Road site in Cambuslang – in order to ‘maintain their East End roots’.
John McGinn’s grandad Jack was the man tasked with sourcing finance for the deal – with the first priority raising £26m for the first 32,000 seats (the two touchline stands) with the rest added later.
But problems were afoot.
First reports claimed the site was a toxic ”timebomb” riddled with up to 5000 different chemicals, many of them poisonous and cancerous.
While this was denied, the proposal was widely unpopular within the Celtic support, who didn’t want to leave their spiritual home.
Putting on a united front to the media, the capacity of the new ground had altered to just 40,000.
Funding was thought to have been secured via a London company called Gefinor, only for the plans to be thrown into confusion again when they denied all knowledge.
The whole thing was coming apart at the seams – with the unpopular stadium plan and apparent funding shortfall only adding to the ‘Celts for Change’ campaign.
In came McCann and the rest is history – as the Cambuslang plan was scrapped re-shaping of Celtic Park took shape instead.
As for the Cambuslang site, some of it is now occupied by a Tennent’s Caledonian Breweries Distribution Warehouse.
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It remains a fascinating footnote in Hoops history.
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Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
