Goodbye to the Hi-Hi's

Not usually my forte abandoned football grounds but this one ticked all the boxes, easy access i.e. not behind stacks of over-zealous security, easy transport and still evidence of what it once was. So when I was in Glasgow recently I paid a visit to Cathkin Park, home of Third Lanark Athletic Club. Known as the Hi-Hi's.

The chances are most people will have never heard of them but they were a major part of Scottish Football history finishing as high a third in 1961 only to fall to their dramatic demise just six seasons later

Just a short train ride out of Glasgow Central to the exotically named Mount Florida station and then a five minute walk through an ordinary city suberb pass the usual selection of Bookies, Poundshops and Nail bars which seem to have replaced the more traditional High Street offering.

The place was silent and hard to imagine that the year before their final demise a crowd of over 25,000 were in the ground. The stands and any associated buildings have long since gone but from the archived picture below you can see it was a large ground and capacity bigger then a lot of today's Plastic Premier grounds albeit all terracing and just a handful of fancy seats.

In the next decades the ground slowly fell into disrepair, but has never been completely demolished. There are currently still a few terraces left standing, though largely overgrown and in poor state. In recent years there have been attempts to bring this very sleepy giant of a ground back to live but progress has been very limited so far.

The last professional match played at Cathkin Park had been a 3-3 draw against Queen of the South on the 25th of April 1967. One day this may rise from it's slumber and again football will return to Mount Florida.