Shedding New light On An Old Venue

...and where was the first ever football international played?

Saw my first day of test cricket at the Oval in 1965 against the South Africans - an interesting claim when I later whole-heartedly supported the sporting boycott.

Makes me ask which other English cricket grounds now have permanent lights? Hove...Derby...Chelmsford? Any others?

* Yes, I must admit as I read Merse's piece I was sure i'd seen it somewhere before... Then it dawned on me, or rather it was staring me in the face!!
And just to add to the 'Groundastic' bit of work done by the members on this forum, here is a picture of the aforementioned West of Scotland Cricket ground taken in 1995 (actually, lifted from Mr Smith's article, but he's a nice chap who owes me a favour so i'm sure he won't mind!)




In fact I hope he feels he owes me a huge favour because below is a picture that Paul Smith supplied to a certain magazine 'for the slightly ground orientatedly deranged' to illustrate an article on the Kennington Oval and which depicts the 1887 final between Aston Villa & West Bromwich Albion at this ground.
It was formerly a cabbage patch and then a market garden owned by the Duchy of Cornwall and around which a road was built circa 1790, hence the name 'The Oval', and finally opened as a cricket venue in 1846 for use by the Montpelier Club and has been the HQ for Surrey CCC since.

I hadn't realised that Mary Queen of Scots was a football fan. Mind you, they do say the old Prince of Wales used to "go up the 'ammers" of a Saturday and that Princess Michael of Kent was once spotted at Plainmoor..................although that might have been Bet Lynch on reflection

The Scottish Football Museum is excellent - especially when they reveal that the "cup" on view at the Scottish FA Cup Final isn't the actual "Scottish Cup", it's a fake one because the original has worn too thin through all the "kissing" it has been on the end of (ever been on the end of a Glasgae kiss?) over the years and so it sits forever in that very museum.

When a group of CGs visited the museum a few years ago we were afforded a tour of Hampden Park too and invited to "help ourselves" to any of the disgraceful detritus that the two users of the stadium the previous day had discarded - the guide was distraught at the shitehole a couple of American Football teams had left the dressing rooms in and kept going on about them having no respect for the auld place................and quite right he was too.

There were thousands of pounds worth of boots laying around still in their boxes (I don't think these characters EVER broke any footwear in), shoulder pads, helmets, tops, breeches you name it; it was there for all to see. There were half eaten doughnuts thrown on the floor, Gatorade powder all over the place - even the dustbin they mixed up vast quantities of the stimulant in, complete with a huge wooden paddle.

Whilst everyone else was content with a little "souvenir", one of our members, who shall remain nameless; had to go the whole hog and fill an over sized kit bag full of gear that must have totalled a good few quid in value whilst I contented myself with some of those doughnuts (not the ones on the floor mind you!) and the Gatorade paddle which I thought would make a nice "Wooden Spoon" trophy for a CGFC tournament one day.

On the way out, guess who got nicked by security? It wasn't me guv, but our well laden friend who it now transpired was to be hauled before the police and we had visions of visiting Glasgow Sheriff's Court the following day..................I offered to appear as a character witness for him and was going to take the opportunity to ask for our bloody crossbar back at the same time but that's another story!

Anyway, disaster was averted and we managed to imply that it was all the guides fault and in turn for letting the security guy have the entire contents of Ross's (oops!) bag of swag - probably to end up at some Glasgae car boot sale - we walked free from that castellated main entrance.

Mary had a scrap just up the road from Hampden at the Battle of Langside in 1568 when she came off the worse in a family Derby against her brother James. It was all over in 45 minutes with little need for stoppage time.

She then headed down to Dumfries where she persuaded the local team to change its name to Queen of the South as part of one of the game's earliest sponsorship deals.

Then - rather like Gretna many years later - Mary switched to the English leagues but soon ran into trouble and was placed under house arrest along the road from Brunton Park.

On 14 June 1568 Mary still managed to arrange a friendly between some of her own lads and Read's Halberdiers. There's no record of what happened to the match ball but it's possible it still exists:

heritage.scotsman.com/willspringer/Worlds-oldest-football--fit.2758469.jp