Ever heard of Steve Hislop? Even by Caley Thistle fans, he is hardly a club legend, having spent two years at the club from 2003 till 2005. Since then he had brief spells with Gillingham (who dopily paid us £50,000 in a transfer fee), and Livingston when they were an SPL club, and since then has tottered around clubs in the second division. He currently plays for East Fife, and I'm sure I read in the papers a few years back that he is training to become an optician or something.
There are plenty of reasons why Clyde FC lie bottom of the Scottish league at the time of writing, but Steve Hislop is one of them. For in spring 2004, Clyde led the first division, ten points clear at one point, though Inverness, their main chasers had games in hand. In March, the Bully Wee travelled to the Highlands for a rearranged midweek game where, with Caley 2-1 up, midfielder Roy McBain was sent off for handball on the goalline. The resultant penalty was missed and the home side won 3-1. Clyde, managed by Irishman Alan Kernaghan at the time, hardly collapsed, but they dropped enough points in the run-in to give Inverness a sniff. When the sides met again at Broadwood in May, it was the penultimate game of the season and Clyde were still two points clear - a draw would mean they just needed see off Alloa, the division's whipping boys, to get to the promised land of the Scottish Premier League.
Hislop had been at Inverness for eighteen months, having joined from Ross County but his hard work and constant running never really made up for his inherent clumsiness. My own username on the club's fan website is "Hislopsoffsideagain", out of homage to a commonly used phrase on the terraces during his tenure. He was a bit part player during that season, demoted to the bench because of the prolific scoring of veteran striker Paul Ritchie. But he came off the bench at Broadwood with the score 1-1, and it was he who arched his neck back to power home a header with 11 minutes left that turned out to be the winning goal. Clyde gubbed Alloa the next week but it was no use, for Inverness saw off St. Johnstone and won the division instead.
In 2004, Clyde were that close to being in the top division. As 2010 draws to a close, they are at the foot of the third division, with only one win from their opening twelve matches.
And unlike Livingston, they've never been demoted because of going to administration. They've ended up in the fourth tier of Scottish football because they've been relegated twice.
Clyde FC are a team that can be found mentioned even in the oldest history books
about footie in this country. Founded in 1877, they were named for the river that runs through Glasgow, and whci was adjacent to their first pitch at Barrowfield. The side joined the Scottish Football League in 1891 and soon afterwards moved to Shawfield, the ground which would be their home for 88 years. Shawfield was initially owned by the club, but was also (and still is) used for greyhound racing - and for financial reasons Clyde sold the ground to the Greyhound Racing Association in 1935. This somewhat came back to bite them...for in 1986 their owners evicted them so that Shawfield could be renovated.
To be honest, Clyde were just another team in Glasgow anyway. Though they won the Scottish Cup three times, the last in 1958, and spent several seasons in the top flight, they were but a tiny fish in a pond ruled by the Old Firm and where the scraps went to Partick Thistle. It was with Partick that Clyde had to groundshare, initially, when they left Shawfield. As if five years as tenants at Firhill didn't damage their support base enough, a further two years at Hamilton, out of Glasgow altogether, probably eradicated this. So Clyde took the gamble of completely abandoning their roots, and left for the new town of Cumbernauld, about 20 miles out of Glasgow and with a population of 50,000. And without a football team. North Lanarkshire Council built (and still own) a stadium called Broadwood, and a capacity crowd of 6,000 turned up for the first game. Not a bad idea, huh?
Except that Cumbernauld is not a very affluent town. No, let's be honest - it is an absolute hole. And its proximity to Glasgow means that, inevitably, the locals still enjoy a considerably loyalty to the Gruesome Twosome. In reality, even when challenging in the first division, Clyde's attendances were less than 2,000. On the pitch, the club found itself in the third division in 1998, but the reigns of managers Ronnie MacDonald and Allan Maitland saw back-to-back promotions, with the coaches improving the squad by attracting the best players from junior football. Trying to get to the SPL was a big gamble, however, and one which failed miserably.
By the end of that season, creditors were sniffing around, and whilst they never quite ended up in administration, a Compulsory Voluntary Agreement was required which left the club debt-free, but weak, even after a shock cup win over Celtic in 2006 (best remembered as Roy Keane's debut for the Hoops). Even with a poor team, the bills were run up again and the last two seasons have seen back-to-back
relegations. And to cap it all, this week they have announced that they are going to leave Broadwood.
Sadly, it's not as if they are leaving much of a support behind, much like in the 1980s.
Clyde's story is increasingly typical of the lower reaches of the Scottish game; a club who have been around forever, but whose support has drained over years and years. The lack of income off the field leads to a lack of quality on the field - and this means less paying fans, and so less income...and so on. And Clyde were one of those teams, like Livingston, and Dundee, and plenty of others, who gambled it all on reaching the big time, and were almost irreparably damaged as a result. Goodness knows where the club go next - there is no other "Cumbernauld" out there, no town that looks like ripe pickings. If they go back to groundsharing in Greater Glasgow, who would go and watch them?
The romantic in me finds it a depressing tale, and hopes that this historic club
find themselves a niche in the Scottish game. The pragmatist in me wonders whether there is any point to their existence any more.
And their current plight is a depressingly common one throughout the lower reaches of Scottish football. They might just be the first who end up fading away. There will be others.
L.
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