Glasgow Spectator Sports - Summary

Glasgow Sports - What are the options?

I spend many Saturday afternoons watching Partick Thistle play football at Firhill Stadium in Glasgow. There are other options in Glasgow though if you fancy taking in a bit of sporting action and when my team had a few weekends out of action I went around several of the other Glasgow sporting entertainments, to see what they offered. I have written blogs about these over the past month and below is a summary of what I found. As I usually dragged my children along with me I was also aware of how different sports try to appeal to future fans. 

All opinions and prejudices expressed here regarding different sports are entirely my own. I am of course fully aware that other sports struggle for attention with the Scottish media's Rangers and Celtic obsession in the sporting pages, and I am happy to flag up anything else you feel merits a light being shone upon it dear reader. 

For more detail please see my original posts 

• Ice Hockey - Braehead Clan
• Greyhound racing - Shawfield Stadium
• Speedway - Glasgow Tigers
• Basketball - Glasgow Rocks
• Rugby - Glasgow Warriors
• Football - Glasgow City and Partick Thistle Football Club

Ice Hockey

• Cost (2 adults, 2 children) - £60
• Season runs - September to April
• Catering - Licensed bar and popular offerings of American themed snacks...plus stovies. 
• Performance this season - finishing 3rd in the 2015-16 league they qualified for the play-offs, where Fife Flyers eliminated them at the quarter-finals stage
• Atmosphere - from the fans downloading pre-match entertainment apps, to Angus the Highland cow mascot there is plenty of effort made to warm up the crowd. The commentary and musical stings keep the atmosphere going and interval entertainments come fast and thick. The crowd also get right behind their team and a full house is a frequent occurrence
• Marks out of ten - 8/10. Definitely will continue to dip my toes into the frozen waters of Braehead Clan ice hockey

Greyhound Racing

• Cost (2 adults, 2 children) - £12 (plus betting)
• Season runs - all year, Friday and Saturday nights
• Catering - several bars around the stadium. Decent restaurant for a small group wanting a night out (I came here for my 40th birthday), plus my children agree the snack bar here makes some of Glasgow's best chips
• Performance this season - it's just a venue, not a league
• Atmosphere - the rickety old feel of the place is the atmosphere.
• Marks out of ten - 7.5/10, purely for the nostalgic vibe you get at the greyhound track I will continue to keep coming, but I am not sure how long they can keep it going, as the crowds seem to shrink year on year.

Speedway

• Cost (2 adults, 2 children) - £42
• Season runs - April to October
• Catering - Licensed bar before and during the speedway, diner at the stadium now open 7 days per week and snacks and sweets available during the racing
• Performance this season - second in the 2015 season to local rivals Edinburgh Monarchs, they have started this season well having already defeated their neighbours once already this year. Various cup and knock-out tournaments also across the year.
• Atmosphere - with kids running races and Roary the Tiger mascot families are well catered for. Like greyhound racing the quick turnaround from one race to the next mean that there is always something to watch. And I haven't mention the whiff of burning fuel yet...
• Marks out of ten - 8.5/10, this trip was my first visit to Saracen Park to watch the speedway and I will definitely return again with my petrolhead son

Basketball

• Cost (2 adults, 2 children) - £30
• Season runs - September to April
• Catering - City council run snack bar, if you want a drink they can pour a bottle of Bud into a plastic tumbler for you
• Performance this season - finishing 5th at the end of the league season for 2015-16 they made it into the end of season play-offs where they were eliminated in the quarter-finals by Worcester Wolves.
• Atmosphere - With smaller crowds than some of these other sports the atmosphere can be a bit flat, despite the score ticking over constantly. In some ways the constant scoring drains a lot of the drama from basketball. There were plenty of kids activities on the court, from youth teams playing in the breaks to birthday outings trying to score hoops, but the cajoling over the tannoy felt a bit forced. Cheerleaders? It feels a bit dated, no?
• Marks out of ten - 5/10. I'd be more likely to give it a go if Dalmarnock train station stayed open later on Sunday evenings to get me home more easily

Rugby

• Cost (2 adults, 2 children) - £80
• Season runs - September to May
• Catering - good choice of burger / chicken/ grill vans around the ground, plenty of licensed bars and little queuing
• Performance this season - Champions of the Pro12 league in 2014-15, at the time of writing this, they are in the end of season play-offs after finishing the league in 3rd position in 2015-16
• Atmosphere - Again they've gone for the old Highland cow mascot, but no great efforts made to cajole the crowd, who seemed happy to chat among themselves for most of the match. Kids teams were playing all over the place on the day I was there. The "respect the kicker" and the lack of cursing at the referee seem to take some of the fun out of being a spectator.
• Marks out of ten - 4/10. All feels a bit safe and nice. Not my cup of tea really.

Football - Partick Thistle 

• Cost (2 adults, 2 children) - £44
• Season runs - July to May
• Catering - football catering would be familiar to someone arriving at the stadium from the 1920s I imagine. Pies and Bovril the go to snack, and uniquely amongst all the sporting options here "no bevvying" allowed
• Performance this season - a battling performance after a slow start in 2015-16 season to ensure another year of top flight action next season. They continue to perform above expectations (and their budget), not that you would know by reading any sports pages.
• Atmosphere - Kids get in for free and can meet players after the matches, various imaginative give-aways and offers this year, but the atmosphere at football, more than any of the other sports here is really dependent on the team's performance and opponent. A poor show can mean that the referee, the manager or last week's hero can be in for dog's abuse next week.
• Marks out of ten - 10/10. It is history, tradition and the eternl possibility of a surprise upset or successful cup run that keeps me coming back. Definitely hope over experience, but there's always hope.

Football  - Glasgow City

• Cost (2 adults, 2 children) - £10
• Season runs - March to October
• Catering - the bar in the stadium is the usual gathering place before home matches, with light snacks available
• Performance this season - runaway champions in Scottish league and cup competitions for many years, really needing to be challenged more if Scottish women's football is to progress
• Atmosphere - most league games can be sparsely attended, but usually a very relaxed and jolly affairs, with lots of families and children about
• Marks out of ten - 9/10. The longer that Glasgow City can stop the old firm grasping control of the women's game the better and I'll keep cheering them on.

1901 Queens Park vs Third Lanark exhibition match

Glasgow Spectator Sports, Part 2. Greyhounds and Speedway

It is 18 months now since the 2014 Commonwealth Games finished in Glasgow. By most accounts the games were a spectacular success, with all of the sports on display getting great crowds attending from Glaswegians. At any sporting event now it seems obligatory to talk of what "legacy" the games have left behind, there is even a Legacy 2014 website extolling all the benefits the games brought to the city. Did it encourage people to be more active, seek out new sports to watch or participate in? I'm not sure.

During the games I certainly went to see sports that I had never paid to watch before, but realise that, by and large, my spectating has largely fallen back to following Partick Thistle week in week out. My children still enjoy going to their assorted badminton, athletics and swimming clubs but we have not been spectators at any of these sports in the city since the games. The football league having a weekend break for the international matches meant that I was looking for other entertainment last weekend. This made me think about what other sporting excitement people of Glasgow find in their spare time, so I will try a few different sports and see if there is anywhere in town that can match Firhill for thrills.

Last week I took my children to the ice hockey. This week we tried speedway.

Greyhound Racing and Speedway

As the history of greyhound racing and speedway in Glasgow are so closely linked I will briefly look over both of these sports, which at one time were new and innovative, but both now evoke bygone ages.

The origin of greyhound racing lies in hare coursing, and to try and make it a spectator sport a London venue devised a mechanical hare to lead the dogs along a straight track as far back as 1876. When a Californian track developed a mechanical hare going around an oval track in 1912 the sport of greyhound racing took off. Glasgow's first greyhound track was set up in Carntyne in 1927, on a site which has been derelict for decades just north of the Forge Shopping Centre, recently redeveloped for housing.

After Wester Carntyne in 1927 came the White City Stadium and Albion Stadium near Ibrox a year later, then Shawfield put a dog track in place in 1932. Between 1948 and 1954 there was greyhound racing at Partick Thistle's Firhill Stadium. From 1928 many of these venues would introduce "dirt track" motorcycle racing on other nights of the week to boost incomes. Speedway, as it became known, as it requires a similar venue, has therefore always been associated with greyhound tracks. 

Shawfield Stadium on the banks of the Clyde is the only greyhound track in Glasgow still going. Shawfield was initially laid out as a trotting track, for horses. Football was first played at the stadium in the 1870s. Thistle FC were an Oatlands team and an early member of the Football League. They folded in 1895, only surviving in the record books as giving Partick Thistle FC their highest ever league win, a 13-1 drubbing at Firhill Stadium in the Scottish League Division Two. Clyde FC moved to Shawfield in 1898 and it was their home for another 88 years. The biggest crowds at the stadium were, for football, the 52,000 who came to see Clyde v Rangers in 1908 or, in other sport, the 40,000 who came to see local boy Benny Lynch beat Peter Kane in 1937 to defend his boxing world title. 

Shawfield Stadium

The Greyhound Racing Association owned Shawfield and planned to sell off the stadium to be developed as a supermarket. They moved Clyde FC out in 1986, who eventually settled in their unhappy Cumbernauld home. When the plans fell through GRA sold it to new owners who took in new tenants, the Glasgow Tigers speedway team who were based here until 1998. Since then it has only housed the greyhounds.

The dogs are paraded before the race at Shawfield Greyhounds

Every Friday and Saturday night the races start about 8pm, with the doors open an hour earlier. There are a couple of bars and a wee restaurant within the stadium, which is a good venue for birthday parties and the like. My children think that the snack bar here does the best chips in town. I don't go often to Shawfield, but every time that I do go I think of my grandad and great uncle Andy, who lived nearby in the Gorbals and made occasional trips to the dogs here in the 1930s. My grandad's tip to bet on the black dog, or trap 5 seems as random and as valid as any other technique.

A normal night will see about ten races, one every 15 minutes or so. Most races are handicaps with the dogs given a staggered start and ending at the finish line below the main stand. Once the dogs are paraded in front of the crowd you have your last chance to back a winner before they are placed in the traps. Like horse racing the point of going to the dogs is to have a flutter, and as with any betting you should only start off with the amount that you are prepared to lose on the night in your pocket, then stop. I'll wager that nobody has ever got rich betting on dogs. You can either place your bet at the various tote windows around the ground, or at the cluster of private bookies alongside the track, who may offer better odds.

The greyhound traps at Shawfield Stadium 

Betting options are a straight "win", usually minimum stake £1, a "forecast" - predicting first and second in the correct order (minimum stake usually 50p) or a "trio" - predicting first, second, third in the correct order (minimum stake 25p but the odds and returns are obviously much higher). You can place a "reverse forecast" selecting two dogs to finish first and second in any order (two bets at 50p, so minimum cost £1) or a "trio - all ways" predicting 3 dogs to come in the first three positions in any order (six bets at 25p, so £1.50 minimum stake). 

My daughter overlooking the finish line at Shawfield. She's only here for the chips

It's a good night out if there is a crowd of you, but attendances recently seem a bit smaller than they used to be. There has been some concerns raised about the welfare of dogs kept for racing, particularly what happens to them after their racing days are over. If you do have a big win maybe you would consider donating some of it to the Scottish Greyhound Sanctuary or the Greyhound Awareness League. The retired dogs make great pets and we have a friend who adopted a greyhound, a well loved member of their family now.

Cost - Entry to Shawfield Greyhounds is £6 for adults and free for children under 16. Most of the cost thereafter depends on how much you decide that you want to bet. For me it is just as much fun when you have £1 riding on it as £10

Speedway

Glasgow now only has one venue where speedway can be seen, Saracen Park or "Peugeot Ashfield Stadium" in Possil. This stadium was opened in 1937 and is home to Ashfield Football Club, who still play their home matches on the pitch in the centre of the track here. On Sunday afternoons however this is home to the Glasgow Tigers. The Tigers started out in 1946, but have only been based at Ashfield since 1999. Before that they have called various tracks home. White City Stadium in the 1940s, on and off through to the 1960s. Hampden Park from 1969 to 1972, then Cliftonhill Stadium in Coatbridge for four years, spells in Blantyre and Workington, before arriving at Shawfield Stadium in 1988. This was home for most of ten years before they settled in their current home.

White City Stadium, Glasgow, opposite Bellahouston Park,
with the Albion Stadium between it and  Ibrox Stadium

White City Stadium used to lie north of Bellahouston Park on the opposite side of Paisley Road West. It was finally demolished in 1972 to make way for the M8 and Govan Police Station. It was part of a chain which had greyhound and speedway venues in Manchester, Newcastle, Hull, Nottingham, Cardiff and London. In Glasgow the White City stadium initially had a grass dog track on the outside with a cinder speedway track inside it. There are some great pictures of it on the "Defunct Speedway Tracks" website.

Signs point the way to the Tiger's stadium

On the day we came to see the Glasgow Tigers in April 2016, the season had just begun and we were drawn by the chance to see them race against their rivals from the other end of the M8, Edinburgh Monarchs. The Monarchs are a team which dates back to 1928 and their existence has been as nomadic, and at times precarious, as their Glasgow rivals. Like ice hockey, this isn't a sport that started its life in the UK and many of the UK based teams are largely made up of riders from overseas. In the case of the Tigers this includes Australia, Finland, Argentina and England. 

Glasgow Tigers home stadium

The season starts in April and runs through until October with the Glasgow Tigers usually playing on Sunday afternoons at 3pm. There are 13 teams in the league, playing each other home and away over the season with play-offs at the end of the season for the top six teams, plus various cup and knock out competitions. Today's match was a league cup fixture, with Edinburgh the stronger team on last year's form. This was the first time I had come to see speedway, but the programme and compere easily guided me through the rules. As I am usually spending my Saturday afternoons watching Partick Thistle, the compere was a familiar face to me, with Michael Max providing matchday care to the Firhill crowd on Saturdays and the Tigers' fans the next day.

Michael Max keeps us right, alongside start marshal Hugh McNeilly,
assistant start marshal Heather McNeilly and team manager Stewart Dickson

Entertaining children is a big part of the afternoon here and before the racing started we were introduced to Roary the mascot and a parade of the teams on a flatbed truck before the racing starts at 3pm. Some fans turn up earlier, the doors open at 1pm, to look around the pit areas if that's your thing. The Tigers' name gives plenty of scope for tiger themed songs - "Tiger Feet", "Eye of the Tiger", and Katy Perry's "Roar" all featuring prominently. Every four or five races the track needs brushed and other entertainments are laid on, such as trying to throw a ball in Roary's bin and a children's race against the mascot. It is also a chance to grab some food, or get a drink at the bar.

Roary the mascot

"That's neat, that's neat, that's neat, that's neat....I really love your tiger feet"

Glasgow Tigers team introduced to the crowd

Spectators can stand around the outside of the oval track, or for an extra £1 per person, get a seat in the stand beside the start/finish line. There were 15 races in total, with four riders in each race going flat out for four laps. In each race the home team pair wear red or blue helmet colours and the visitors wear white or yellow. Points are awarded depending on finishing position, 3 points for first place, 2 for second and 1 for third. Nothing for being fourth or not finishing. If you are trailing by more than 10 points at certain stages, you can chose a rider to win double points in the next race, so there are various tactical shenanigans too. 

  

The starting tape goes up, and they're off

 It is fast and furious and not without crashes. In the first race, with Glasgow's Nike Lunna taking a good early lead, the race had to be stopped after a Monarchs' rider crashed into the safety barrier. The rider was uninjured (although the safety barrier wasn't) and Lunna was unlucky to lose the restarted race. Even when a race looks done and dusted, mechanical problems can change everything. Tigers' Ben Barker seemed home and dry in the 14th race when his chain came off and he had to push his bike across the line to take one point. At the end of the day it didn't matter and Glasgow Tigers were comfortable winners by 56-37 to win the derby match.

Spectators get close to the action

Danny Ayres of Glasgow Tigers and Max Clegg of Edinburgh Monarchs

A Monarchs' rider comes off his bike and accepts a lift back to the pits

Fernando Garcia is pleased to win a race for the Glasgow Tigers

Drifting around the banked bends

The pits behind the crowd, and an old Police phone box for the team manager?

Crossing the finish line

Overnight rain meant that the track was on the muddy side. As a result of this, finishing fourth in a race meant that a quick sponge-down would be required. The same was true for those standing along the home straight, who ended up caked in mud by the end of the day. However that, plus the smell of the burning fuel and the noise of the engines is part of the attraction surely. The racing can be very exciting, with plenty of nip and tuck. My children had a great time, I quickly got right into it. We will all definitely be back here again, especially if they promise to keep beating Edinburgh as soundly as that.

Mud splattered crowd

Cost - Adults £17.50 each and children £1 under 11 years old and £6 for 12-16 year olds. So two adults and two children £42 plus £1 each to get a seat in the stand rather than just standing.

Next week.....?