A Photographic History Of Scottish Football

[Tibbermoresaint]

Comfier side

[tree house tam]

7 hours ago, Monkey Tennis said:

That's interesting.

It's kind of how I remember it, but without the detail.   Unlike with some other clubs then, the upside was huge.  What was the last game at Muirton like?

We all knew we had to move and I stayed near McDiarmid so I was probably looking forward to it. After moving there wasn't any lack of atmosphere, not like there is nowadays, the ground was never less than 2 thirds full.

Last game at Muirton was a bit of an anti climax, was against Ayr, who we had some sort if rivalry with. The casual scene was in full flow and either that season or the one before 50 odd saints casuals got lifted along from the Prince of Wales in Ayr, so there was a bit of spice every time we played. Anyway this one was no different, 4 or 5 of our lads went in their end and started a battle with around 30 of them and another few hurdled the barriers at the front and ran into their end too, thats my abiding memory if the last game at Muirton 

 

[RandomGuy.]

8 hours ago, Ranaldo Bairn said:

Here's the badge.

I was upset/sad at losing Brockville no doubt, but it had to be done I think. There were guys I saw waiting to go through the turnstiles for the last time utterly distraught. Completely inconsolable.

I've got one of those, despite not being born when Muirton stood. Found it in a bag of stuff my gran left me the other week and didn't really pay much attention to it.

Nice to know what it is now

Edited October 24, 2018 by RandomGuy.

[Mr Heliums]

8 hours ago, Tibbermoresaint said:

Comfier side

Were those the posh seats? The ones I remember sitting on as a kid were plain wood.

[Monkey Tennis]

8 hours ago, Tibbermoresaint said:

Still got my mum's Centre Stand seat. 

What happened there then?

Did they deliberately open the place to be plundered, or did they offer season ticket seats in that way, or did it get nicked?

[tree house tam]

5 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

What happened there then?

Did they deliberately open the place to be plundered, or did they offer season ticket seats in that way, or did it get nicked?

Folk were on the pitch digging it up at the Ayr game

It was a free for all.

[Estragon]

Absolutely great stuff from the St Johnstone boys on the last few posts. I can totally relate to scanning the crowd for your Grandpa, there's been a few members of my family going to Kilmarnock games and any one point for 100 years and I always do exactly this.

It was a bit different for us because, while RP was dramatically remodelled 5 years later, we remained in the same place as it were.

There is so much about my football routine that is all about place though. My father and I have been sitting in the same seats since it reopened, I have driving duties now but park in exactly the same spot that we always have, same walk to and from the ground, same faces and voices surrounding you season after season. How long did it take for McDiarmid to feel like "home" as it were?

[Squirrelhumper]

16 minutes ago, Estragon said:

Absolutely great stuff from the St Johnstone boys on the last few posts. I can totally relate to scanning the crowd for your Grandpa, there's been a few members of my family going to Kilmarnock games and any one point for 100 years and I always do exactly this.

It was a bit different for us because, while RP was dramatically remodelled 5 years later, we remained in the same place as it were.

There is so much about my football routine that is all about place though. My father and I have been sitting in the same seats since it reopened, I have driving duties now but park in exactly the same spot that we always have, same walk to and from the ground, same faces and voices surrounding you season after season. How long did it take for McDiarmid to feel like "home" as it were?

We're the same, I've sat in the same seat for all but one season (when I sat in Moffat after it opened) for almost 25 years. Before then it was where I stood in East Stand.

[ah-dee]

Absolutely great stuff from the St Johnstone boys on the last few posts. I can totally relate to scanning the crowd for your Grandpa, there's been a few members of my family going to Kilmarnock games and any one point for 100 years and I always do exactly this.
It was a bit different for us because, while RP was dramatically remodelled 5 years later, we remained in the same place as it were.
There is so much about my football routine that is all about place though. My father and I have been sitting in the same seats since it reopened, I have driving duties now but park in exactly the same spot that we always have, same walk to and from the ground, same faces and voices surrounding you season after season. How long did it take for McDiarmid to feel like "home" as it were?

yeah its been a good read. not sure how i feel about leaving dens. theres the obvious nostalgia involved. ive been going for 25 years. remember that forst feeling tou get with everything. first game. first pie. first flood lit game and so on. hard waying that against the obvious need to progress off the park (would be nice to do it on the park first!) commercially, better facilities etc.

like you mention in your post we all have our little rituals pre and post match that will be sad to loose.

exciting to be able to make new ones though!

[Squirrelhumper]

9 hours ago, AYRSHIRE_ANGUS said:

I agree, ditch the plastic perhaps but definitely not that ground.

Move with the times, there's a reason you guys have yoyo'd between the 2nd and 3rd tier my full lifetime watching football.

[Monkey Tennis]

4 minutes ago, ah-dee said:

yeah its been a good read. not sure how i feel about leaving dens. theres the obvious nostalgia involved. ive been going for 25 years. remember that forst feeling tou get with everything. first game. first pie. first flood lit game and so on. hard waying that against the obvious need to progress off the park (would be nice to do it on the park first!) commercially, better facilities etc.

like you mention in your post we all have our little rituals pre and post match that will be sad to loose.

exciting to be able to make new ones though!

I'll be sad when that one happens.

I've got family connections to Dundee and I'm fond of the ground.

More than that though, I love the bonkers quirk that sees two grounds so ridiculously close to each other.  I think it'll be a real shame when that ceases to be the case.

[Mr Heliums]

33 minutes ago, Estragon said:

There is so much about my football routine that is all about place though. My father and I have been sitting in the same seats since it reopened, I have driving duties now but park in exactly the same spot that we always have, same walk to and from the ground, same faces and voices surrounding you season after season. How long did it take for McDiarmid to feel like "home" as it were?

We went from a few hundred fans at a run-down ground in the mid-eighties to 7,000-8,000 every game in a state-of-the-art stadium  so McDiarmid was instantly seductive.  Cheap too – £3.50 in the East Stand in that first, thrilling season, so no more expensive than Muirton. And the games in the first couple of years, particularly that raucous full house against Airdrie,  but also the following season in the Premier, embedded the place. We turned full-time and signed a Soviet international. Stuff I'd never dreamed of. St Johnstone had taken a step up.

But there was an intangible romantic pull to the old place that has never quite left. My Grandad – who'd help build Muirton back in the early 1920s – felt it keenly. He was alive to see the move, but only visited McDiarmid once. I don't think he felt part of it and I can understand that now more than I did then.

Edited October 24, 2018 by Mr Heliums

[Squirrelhumper]

16 minutes ago, Mr Heliums said:

We went from a few hundred fans at a run-down ground in the mid-eighties to 7,000-8,000 every game in a state-of-the-art stadium  so McDiarmid was instantly seductive.  Cheap too – £3.50 in the East Stand in that first, thrilling season, so no more expensive than Muirton. And the games in the first couple of years, particularly that raucous full house against Airdrie,  but also the following season in the Premier, embedded the place. We turned full-time and signed a Soviet international. Stuff I'd never dreamed of. St Johnstone had taken a step up.

But there was an intangible romantic pull to the old place that has never quite left. My Grandad – who'd help build Muirton back in the early 1920s – felt it keenly. He was alive to see the move, but only visited McDiarmid once. I don't think he felt part of it and I can understand that now more than I did then.

This was my first visit, look at that support (home and away)

That was midweek as well!

 

[Tibbermoresaint]

1 hour ago, Mr Heliums said:

Were those the posh seats? The ones I remember sitting on as a kid were plain wood.

Yes, I can't remember if all Centre Stand seats were like this but North and South Stand seats were simply wooden benches. 

[Tibbermoresaint]

1 hour ago, Monkey Tennis said:

What happened there then?

Did they deliberately open the place to be plundered, or did they offer season ticket seats in that way, or did it get nicked?

She hadn't had her seat in the Centre Stand for 4 years because it was closed after the Bradford fire. She knew the club secretary of the time (George Bell?) and I think he suggested to her that she have it as they'd all been dismantled prior to the last game. She popped into Muirton in the week before the game to get it. I don't know if other former CS season-ticket holders - there were only about 40 of them - got this opportunity or not. At the Ayr game there were hundreds of them stacked at the back of the stand. 

[AYRSHIRE_ANGUS]

1 hour ago, Squirrelhumper said:

Move with the times, there's a reason you guys have yoyo'd between the 2nd and 3rd tier my full lifetime watching football.

I get that, and we badly need redevelopment, but I would love to retain both standing ends behind each goal with two modern stands along either side.  I'm don't think the "build it and they will come" theory works in Scottish football any more. With QOS they have modernised to a degree but retained the character of the ground, and the town centre location.

[Flybhoy]

Jim Duffy of Morton in 1984, slotting home a penalty v Rangers. 

[Mr Heliums]

2 hours ago, Tibbermoresaint said:

Yes, I can't remember if all Centre Stand seats were like this but North and South Stand seats were simply wooden benches. 

I remember them as tip-up, but plain wood – as in this pic, taken from the south end of the stand. You get a real impression of the size of the stand; but by the end, Muirton's official seated capacity of Muirton was only 250. It had been 2,500 in the early seventies.)

(Notice the absence of hand-rails throughout– the gangways were like sunken wooden channels.)

Edited October 24, 2018 by Mr Heliums

[paul wright scores]

3 hours ago, Squirrelhumper said:

This was my first visit, look at that support (home and away)

That was midweek as well!

 

Still remember that night well.  We played brilliant, but unfortunately couldn't score.   Even now when you watch the Burns lob you still think it s going to go into the net. 

We filled the end behind the goals and a good section of the main stand.   

[killieboyd]

53 minutes ago, paul wright scores said:

Still remember that night well.  We played brilliant, but unfortunately couldn't score.   Even now when you watch the Burns lob you still think it s going to go into the net. 

We filled the end behind the goals and a good section of the main stand.   

And some of the home stand behind the other goal as that us where I ended up!