I was there when Hibs' Cup opponents announced madcap Dublin move - another ordinary day in Clydebank history
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There were maybe a dozen journalists in the room, two of us from Scottish publications and the rest from a variety of Irish outlets. United by a sense of bewilderment, we had gathered in a suite at the Royal Dublin Showground to bear witness on a day of almost epic stupidity.
The press conference was hosted by Clydebank FC. A club bound, we were told, to take up residence in the Republic of Ireland’s capital city – while retaining their place in the old Scottish Football League Second Division – within a matter of months. Bonkers. Absolutely bonkers.
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Hide AdYet the Bankies, formerly defunct but back in a new and much-improved community model as they travel to Easter Road for tomorrow’s Scottish Cup tie, were merely playing to type. Given their hard-won reputation for doing things a little differently, the idea of moving country in search of a new audience – yes, we know, it was doomed from the outset – felt perfectly on brand.
This was a club, after all, who (in)famously appointed a coach, rather than a manager. Because the team was picked by the Steedman family, the dominant voices in the boardroom; the sight of someone ferrying down messages from the directors’ box to the dugout at New Kilbowie, as the ‘gaffer’ was instructed to make this or that substitution, always felt like a real oddity.
A former junior club who got into the league by merging with East Stirlingshire to create ES Clydebank, a wizard wheeze by Jack Steedman which effectively got ‘his’ team into the old Scottish Football League set-up, the Bankies were eventually on the receiving end of a very similar move when a group of businessman associated with the liquidated Airdrieonians bought the ailing club, renamed it and … well, you know the rest.
That’s not to say there weren’t high points during the three decades and more of life in the SFL, with the Steedmans rightly proud of their achievement in briefly getting Clydebank into the old Premier League. Jack Steedman, in particular, seemed to revel in upsetting the ‘bigger and better’ clubs just by his very presence, at times. Especially when it came to running the team.
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Hide AdAs the club was struggling towards the end, with the sale of New Kilbowie effectively the death knell, Steedman bullishly pointed out: “We’ve never had a manager at Clydebank, and we never will. It’s only recently that we stopped picking the team - and now look where we are.”
So, a club that should never have been in the league, a team that seemed to break the basic laws of football leadership, eventually undone by an inability to keep up with the times – and some dirty dealing at the crossroads? Don’t worry, it has a happy ending.
The ‘phoenix club’ that rose from the ashes of the old Clydebank are an example of football’s importance to a community. After just a single year in hiatus, the Bankies returned as a junior side in the Central League Division Two at the start of season 2003-04, their first game ‘back’ watched by a huge crowd.
Not all of the progress has been smooth, of course. Scottish football has changed so much during the past couple of decades. But Clydebank, this Clydebank, are leaders of the West of Scotland Premier League, one step shy of the Lowland League.
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Hide AdSharing Holm Park with Yoker and a variety of other community clubs who make use of the all-weather pitch and facilities, their story says something, surely, about the indomitable nature of Scottish football fans. And, yes, it definitely helps that they’ve got name recognition. Even if the former club didn’t always make headlines for the right reasons.
Which brings us back to that decidedly awkward morning in Dublin in February of 1998, as the businessmen who had bought out the Steedmans made bold declarations of drawing regular crowds of 5000 to a horse show-jumping arena, formerly home to Shamrock Rovers, that had one terracing condemned as unsafe and a few other ‘minor’ problems to be addressed. There was actual laughter in the room as the wise men were laying out their plans; that memory is clear enough even after all these years.
Without checking notes, there’s also a recollection of football authorities on both sides of the Irish Sea taking a little less than three hours to quash the idea once and for all. Yet the directors launching their bold blueprint were right about one thing – and only one thing – as they made their pitch.
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Hide AdClydebank FC, they explained, was incurring unsustainable losses. Without a home ground, and without something radical happening, they would eventually go under.
Bleak times did, indeed, follow this madcap attempt to roll a treble six with two dice. Yet the Bankies are back, with over 2000 away fans expected at Easter Road tomorrow afternoon. All hoping to see their team write another entertaining chapter in the history of a club not without its diverting moments.