Fool Me Twice: Hampden Park is Still Pretty Embarrassing

So, you did it again. You didn’t learn from that old cliché about who’s to blame the second time you get fooled. By the time that particular adage floats into your mind, it’s already too late. You’re there and not only are you there, but you also remember you paid extra for a ‘premium’ ticket this time round in the vain hope that it might yield an improved experience. Standing in what looks like a drab, lifeless conference room while you queue for beer, you realise money can only buy you crappiness.

At least getting there was easier this year. Still scarred from your two-hour bus odyssey across Glasgow last December, you take the train this time. Sure, it’s cramped, but it takes just a few minutes to reach Mount Florida station and it’s only a short walk from there. It’s almost enough to get your hopes up that things might be better this time.

They won’t. Not in any way that really matters, anyway.

That ‘premium’ seat you paid for means you get to enter through an ample turnstile rather than the trash compactor other punters are crushed through. You take several escalators to the upper levels of the stadium, where, instead of the rundown prison camp you encountered lower down the year prior, you find yourself in the aforementioned conference centre. It looks very much like the kind of place you might find yourself on a soul-crushing corporate away day, with people using markers to write ideas for corporate values on Post-it notes and sticking them to flip-chart paper. It doesn’t fill you with the Christmas spirit.

But it’s not all bad. The queues are manageable and, lo and behold, you find an actual human with the knowledge to pour a pint correctly at the end of them. It’s clearly still a dystopian take on a national stadium, but you feel like you’re amongst the higher-ranking apparatchiks in 1984 this time and not as if you’re trapped in Room 101 like last year.

When you take your seat pre-game, you realise why those queues were so rapid. Very few other people are stupid enough to spend over £50 on a ticket to attend this match. In fact, there are 6,000 fewer people here than there were last year. While there is a fairly large cluster of people around you in the premium seats on the halfway line, it’s sparse or entirely empty from the 10-metre lines onwards. There are visible, large gaps in the crowd along the sideline opposite. Clearly you weren’t the only one who swore never to return. You were just one of the fools not strong enough to stick to your word.

The atmosphere is commensurately flat. The drabness of the rugby doesn’t help. Half-hearted shouts of support and chants echo off the 30,000 empty seats. You’re so far away from the action that you have to squint to make out who’s who. This does not feel premium.  

At half-time, your mood is lifted when you get in line knowing that this time there will be pies. Perhaps it is the eager anticipation of these delights that gets you thinking about great Scottish innovations. You arrive at the conclusion that everyone else can keep whisky, liberalism, and penicillin because, in your mind at least, the macaroni pie is Scotland’s greatest invention. Like much Hibernian cuisine, this culinary masterpiece involves taking a bunch of beige elements and bringing them together to make something far greater than the sum of their parts. However, execution is critical. The best macaroni pies expertly walk the tightrope between utter deliciousness and complete inedibility. Find the perfect balance of crunchy crust, soggy bottom, and molten cheese interior and you have something that has no right being so delicious. Get it wrong, as they so predictably do at Hampden, and that crust might be tough enough to threaten your teeth and the filling a viscous, coagulated mess that slops all over your winter clothing.

Hampden’s macaroni pie is a lot like its overall offering as a venue for a set piece rugby match. While recognisably what it says it is – large stadium or small pie – it is somehow both more expensive and less satisfying than similar products available elsewhere. You know, for example, that you’ll be at Murrayfield next week where you’ve paid slightly less money for two games (it will be a double-header with the women’s Glasgow-Edinburgh clash held at the Hive before the men’s match in the larger stadium later in the afternoon) and a similar seat. There will be more people, better catering, and a vastly improved atmosphere. Despite it being nearly ten times the distance to and from your house, it will feel easier getting there and away.

The match ends with a suitably festive scoreline of 24-12 to Glasgow, but there is a distinct lack of seasonal joy. It’s been a pretty dreary game watched by a morose crowd of people. If this is intended to be the kind of event that gets casual fans to take a chance on live rugby, then it needs a lot of work. Without major improvements to the overall experience, it will be a struggle just to keep season ticket holders and loyal fans on-board.

This time next year, you plan to be watching from home.

As for this year, shame on you.