Scottish League One football club Clyde has terminated a lease deal for its current home, Broadwood Stadium, and has struck a ground-sharing deal with Championship team Hamilton Academical in a move connected to the furore surrounding its aborted signing of forward David Goodwillie.
Clyde ultimately scrapped a loan deal for Goodwillie last month after North Lanarkshire Council threatened to evict the club from Broadwood (pictured) if the player, ruled to be a rapist by a civil court in 2017, stepped foot inside the stadium.
Broadwood, located in Cumbernauld, has been Clyde’s home since it opened in 1994 and the lease deal still had a season to run. However, Clyde has elected to relocate to Hamilton’s New Douglas Park in South Lanarkshire for the 2022-23 campaign, meaning that tomorrow’s (Saturday’s) visit of Airdrieonians will be its last game at the ground.
Clyde said in a statement: “It is widely known that the club had begun developing a proposal to relocate to a stadium of its own. Although we had fully expected to continue the process at a pace of our own choosing, North Lanarkshire Council has now confirmed that it will not consider extending the club’s lease at Broadwood on a permanent basis beyond the end of season 2022-23, when the current arrangement was due for renewal.
“Given the need to meet the club’s immediate operating requirements, the board has arranged with Hamilton Academical to play our home matches at New Douglas Park while we accelerate the process to secure a site and new stadium back in Glasgow.”
The club added: “For the older generations of the Clyde support this is a scenario which is familiar, having had to leave Shawfield behind in 1986, and following the club through the ground-sharing days of the late eighties and early nineties. The loyalty of our supporters was unstinting during the uncertainty of these years, and the resolve that saw us through those times will now be called upon again – both from them and from the newer generations of Clyde supporters who have made this club their own during our time in North Lanarkshire.
“This is a historic moment in the unfolding story of Clyde Football Club and not one without an element of regret. Over 28 seasons, we have experienced many highs and lows at Broadwood. Many new fans had their first Clyde experience here and, sadly, many also had their last. All of us will set off from the ground with treasured memories, but also with the assurance that the final destination will be a home which we can truly call our own.”
Aberdeen
In other Scottish stadium news, Aberdeen chairman Dave Cormack has admitted that the Premiership club’s proposed new home is expected to cost around £30m (€35.8m/$38.7m) more than originally projected.
Aberdeen last week revealed a new rendering of its proposed new stadium as it asked fans to back the project. The club is looking to relocate from Pittodrie to a new venue at the heart of a £100m regeneration of the city’s beachfront, with plans having first been publicised in August 2020 after several years of false dawns regarding numerous possible sites.
The club has previously looked at relocating to sites in Bellfield, Loirston and then Kingsford, where its new training facility was built. Plans for a ground with a 20,000 capacity in Kingsford were approved in 2019, but local councillors last year developed plans for a beachfront site that would provide a link to the city centre.
With the outline business case for the new project due to go before the council in June, Cormack told the club’s YouTube channel, RedTV, that the cost “to build a quality stadium” is now expected to be £70m-£75m due to rises in construction costs.
He said: “Two things keep me awake at night – performances on the pitch as I’m like a regular fan and how we solve this issue (funding the stadium). We can build a basic stadium for a lot less. We have employed some of the best people who develop new stadiums, in terms of evaluating what we should have and what the turnover can be.
“But if we want to have a quality stadium where we can raise our income by £3m or £4m per year because we have better facilities then that is what it is going to take. It’s five years since we thought it would be £45m to build the stadium.
“During this time construction inflation has risen, particularly due to COVID over the past two years, but also due to the cost of timber, steel and labour. We have to look at the cost of the land we get at Pittodrie.
“The opportunity to build a stadium at the beach was never there before. In my opinion, this is the best relationship Aberdeen Football Club has had with Aberdeen City Council.”
Image: Euan Nelson/CC BY-SA 2.0/Edited for size
