Herald Scotland's sports team trawls through the archives for the very best stories from yesteryear
Herald Scotland's sports team trawls through the archives for the very best stories from yesteryear
Glasgow police took special precautions during the night to protect football grounds in the city after the fires on two successive nights this week which caused extensive damage Hampden Park and Ibrox Stadium.
At Glasgow Eastern police division a senior office said "arrangements have been made" for the protection of Celtic's football ground at Parkhead and CID officers again visited Ibrox Stadium to check up on security there.
Two of the Rangers' ground staff mounted a special guard.
Senior detectives of Govan and Southern divisions of Glasgow Police assisted by officers of the police scientific branch and of Glasgow Fire Service continued the search for evidence which might show that the fires had been started deliberately.
Hampden, the more severly damaged, was again visited by Chief Detective Inspector George Browne of Glasgow Southern CID, accompanied by scientific branch officers.
Later he was joined by Chief Detective Harry Watts of Govan CID, who, who is in charge of the investigations into the fire which damaged the centre stand of Ibrox Stadium.
"It is still an open question as to the cause of the fire at Hampden," Mr Browne said "and earlier in the day I went to Ibrox to see the position there after the fire."
"Certainly, reports that the blaze at Hampden were [sic] caused by an electrical fault have not been confirmed."
Workmen cleared tons of debris from the heavily-damaged aread of the centre stand at Hampden yesterday, and at Ibrox, Mr David White, the manager of Rangers, said after he had inspected the fire damage which destroyed 300 seats and the directors box: "The whole area will have to be cordoned off, and it will be out of use for our next two games, at least."
At Parkhead, Mr Sean Fallon, assistant manager of Celtic, said: "We will be taking every possible precaution."
Mr Archie Robertson, manager of Clyde, said a close watch was being maintained by watchmen at Shawfield and precautions were being maintained right around the clock.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article