'We've Nae Pies': Hampden Park is a National Embarrassment

You wake feeling hopeful. Your team is playing its biggest-ever home game. Rugby is returning to Scotland’s national football stadium for the first time in 20 years and Glasgow Warriors finally have a venue for their leg of the 1872 Cup that could be a match for Murrayfield. A great day for rugby in this soccer-dominated city awaits.

It’s even a nice day. Crisp, clear, bright. ‘I’ll take the bus’, you think. Your first mistake.

Hampden Park is 5.34 miles from your house. You learn this, incredulously, as you draw a line from the stadium to your front door on Google Earth an hour into the journey. You still have almost another hour to go.

Note to self: Do not get the bus to Hampden Park.

You arrive. Finally. The short walk from bus stop to stadium in the fresh winter sunshine restores your excitement. It will be short-lived.

Hampden doesn’t give much away from the outside. If it did, you might turn tail and run. It looks like an ageing but functional stadium. The vast concrete expanse that surrounds it looks like the perfect space for a great fan village. You assume it is left empty to act as a battlefield for militant football fans.

You squeeze through the turnstiles. There will be a lot of squeezing today. As soon as you’re through, you know you’re trapped. There is bare concrete, harsh lighting, uncovered insulation flaking something you hope isn’t asbestos onto your head.

Hampden's dystopian interior

Unsure whether the turnstiles have brought you into a national stadium or a Soviet gulag, you realise you’re hungry. You join the first of many queues, this one supposedly for food. You wait. And wait. The sign above the distant bar promises pies. You make it to the front of the line and ask for one.

‘We’ve nae pies’, says the server in a voice so bereft of feeling you have to do a double take to check she’s actually human.

‘Do you have anything else?’

‘Crisps.’

‘Do you have anything else warm?’

‘Naw. Crisps.’

‘Okay. I’ll have some crisps and a lager, please’.

She hands you a non-descript plastic packet and adds, ‘We’ve nae beer here.’

‘Thanks. Where can I get a pint?’

She gestures vaguely into the middle distance and turns her lifeless gaze to the next person about to be disappointed. Your time is up. You walk away in search of liquid refreshment.

You join another queue, this one promising beer. You open your crisps and put one in your mouth. You chew. Nothing. You chew some more. Still nothing. And then a flavour emerges that you can only describe as the simulacrum of a potato that your great-grandchildren will experience in the not-too-distant future when the seas have gone dry and fresh produce is a legend spoken about in hushed whispers.

Note to self: Do not buy Taylors Potato Crisps. Ever.

You snap out of this apocalyptic reverie, realising you are nearing the front of a line to be served beer by a semi-robotic dispenser. The apocalypse is here and now, and it’s shit.

The robot can’t load its own cups, so you have to insert them into its belly. You do so and it obligingly pours you a pint of foam. You look around. There is nobody you can complain to. So you try again and get half-foam, half-lager. You attempt to move away, but you have been corralled throughout your journey to the beer machine by the same metal fencing the police use to kettle protesters. There is a tiny gap through which you must squeeze yourself if you wish to leave. You are, admittedly, an oaf, and it may be more because of this that you spill what little beer you were able to purchase on your way out, but the barriers don’t help.

You take your foam and make your way, dispirited, to your seat.

Beerbots: a sign of humanity's impending doom

Once you’re into the bowl of the stadium, you have to admit that it is quite pleasing to see such a huge crowd for a Glasgow game. The way their Warriors flags catch the waning December light as kick-off approaches makes you wish club rugby could regularly be played at venues of this size.

Then you squeeze into your seat, finding yourself snuggled so closely with the two large men sitting on either side of you that you think you may now technically be married to three people, and you add a caveat to that last paragraph: You wish club rugby could regularly be played at venues of this size. Just not this one.

The first half goes well. Glasgow are 21-0 up over their oldest rivals when the half-time whistle goes and you’re feeling a sense of enjoyment, maybe even Christmas spirit.

It will be short-lived.

You couldn’t finish your crisps and the foam hasn’t really quenched your thirst, so you join yet another queue. This one promises both pies and beer. That is, of course, false. But you won’t know that for quite some time. You’ve been in the motionless line for about ten minutes when you think, just as an experiment, you’ll start the stopwatch on your phone to see just how long this can possibly take.

Nothing continues to happen and you find your mind drifting to other things. ‘Perhaps I’ll write about this in the second person and the present tense. Perhaps that might draw the reader in, make them feel like they’re here with me and experiencing just how dire this ground is. Maybe they’ll think that’s cool. Probably not.’

You snap out of it. You’re at the front of the line. Your stopwatch says another 14 minutes and 37 seconds have passed. Law 5.2 of rugby union states that half-time should not exceed 15 minutes. This crosses your mind as you hear, inevitably:

‘We’ve nae pies.’

‘Okay. Do you have anything else?’

‘Vegan sausage roll. Chips.’

‘I’ll have a pint of lager, a vegan sausage roll and some chips, please.’

The pallid teenager serving you hands you something that looks like a carboard cut-out of a sausage roll and shuffles off, presumably to source some chips. He does not return. You wait. You realise that the man who was ahead of you in the queue is still there, standing to your left and waiting for something that may never come.

Together, you watch as what appears to be a full classroom’s worth of 17-year-olds gathers around an empty tray that may, once, have contained chips. They don’t move. They stare at the empty tray as if some collective force of will might cause chips to materialise. They don’t.

Fast food meets Waiting for Godot

Minutes pass. The man who had been ahead of you comments, ‘You can’t blame them. They’ve nobody to supervise them.’

You think that’s remarkably charitable, and try to get the attention of the vampiric youth who promised you food.

‘Mate!’

Nothing.

‘Mate!’

He turns. You think you see some semblance of recognition flash momentarily in his glazed eyes.

‘Mate, forget the chips. I’ll just take the lager and the sausage roll, thanks.’

He grunts, trundles to the beer tap, and pours you a pint of foam.

Your blood pressure spikes and you dream of the day when the beer dispenser and its robot kindred have subjugated humanity and you are permanently confined to a futuristic recliner, pumped full of stimulants that make you feel like you’re at a game as procedurally-generated athletes perform feats your long-atrophied limbs could not even attempt on the screens that have replaced your retinas.

Enraged, you make your way back to your seat to enjoy the second half of the second half. You reacquaint yourself with your two new husbands, although you’re more thankful for their proximity now that the sun has gone down and the icy fury of the Scottish winter can be felt. You bite into your sausage roll, experiencing a flavour that you imagine is akin to eating the Sunday paper while you read your breakfast. Your blood pressure spikes again.

Note to self: Do not eat or drink at Hampden Park.

An approximation of a sausage roll

The full-time whistle blows. What you saw of the second half was good. You join the shuffling march of fans making their way home.

‘I’ll take the train this time,’ you think.

You won’t.

You approach Mount Florida, the nearest station. It doesn’t look too busy. You move towards the back of the line.

‘That’s no the back of the line, pal’, a steward who has manifested out of the darkness informs you. He points. You turn. A sea of humanity stretches out in front of you.

‘I’ll get an Uber,’ you think.

It’s £37.

‘I’ll get the bus,’ you think.

After a long hike around some of south Glasgow’s less salubrious streets, you find a bus stop. You wait.

‘Maybe £37 isn’t that unreasonable,’ you think.

Apparently it is unreasonable as it isn’t enough for any nearby taxi driver to take you home. So you wait some more. A bus appears. Shoulders hunched and Christmas spirit crushed, you slouch on-board. Two hours later, and three-and-a-half hours after the whistle blew, you make it home.

Note to self: Do not go to Hampden Park.