Real Tinto

East Kilbride Thistle  0  BSC Glasgow  2

West of Scotland League Cup – First Round

Admission / Programme - £6 / No

I’ve learned quite a bit about how it works in Scotland when it comes to looking for football fixtures.

First of all, there is little or no point looking too far in advance, because the chances are, unless it’s in the upper echelons, you won’t find any games. I use the very handy Scottish Football Fixtures website which tends to start giving you the fixtures up to about three weeks in advance, by day.

I do appreciate that the weather recently has meant a few games being re-arranged, some at short notice, but even so, what you see three weeks before on the lists, compared to a couple of days before can be two very different things.

Hence now, I try not to set anything in stone, because invariably it will change. When I first looked at the options for the January visit to Glasgow I had a choice of one game, at Drumchapel United, but then after the final weekend before the trip, Drumchapel had gone due to a re-arranged Scottish Cup tie, but options were now on offer at Dundee (a bit too far?), Linlithgow Rose (all ticket and sold out), Rangers Training Ground (would they let me in?), or New Tinto Park which was a 4G being used to host an East Kilbride Thistle home game.

New Tinto Park it was to be then, which having done my homework was only a seven minute train journey to Cardonald away from Glasgow Central. But, before we get onto New Tinto Park, we need to talk about the old Tinto Park.

I’ve been doing this groundhopping malarkey for a good few years now, and I like to think I’m reasonably well versed in what’s going on in the football ground World. There are parts of the UK I know better than others, and clearly I’m more travelled in some parts of the island than I am in other areas. I don’t for one minute profess to knowing a vast amount about Scotland, particularly the clubs and the grounds in what was / is the junior ranks, but in all of my time that I’ve been entrenched in the pastime, I’ve never quite seen a w@nkfest like it when it was announced that Benburb were leaving Tinto Park.

I’d never heard of Tinto Park, I’d heard of Benburb, but that was about it, and to be honest, I can honestly say I’d never up until that point had a conversation with anyone about the ground. Put another way, I’d not heard a single person, even those that had done a fair bit North of the border, even mention the place.

But then it happened, it was announced, the clock was running down, and suddenly the greatest football ground that you’d never visited, simply had to be visited because it was indeed top shelf porn of the highest order. I was curious, I had a look, and to be truthful, my initial thoughts were of an oversized cowshed that looked like a complete and utter health and safety disaster, set in a part of Glasgow that you wouldn’t want to be running around in late at night for fear of your very existence.

Basically, you had an almighty covered terrace down one side, with more terracing sweeping behind the goal, much of it overgrown, and in 2014 they exited stage left, for it soon to be swallowed up by housing. But my God, as the great and the good made their pilgrimages to the ground (the locals must have been delighted with the levels of interference by the Hopperati), and waxed lyrical, dribbling into their cask ales about the glory and the sadness that surrounded Tinto Park.

I didn’t give a flying, I never went, I was never going to go, I had no desire to go. But it did strike me that if you told some people that they were bulldozing a field with a sh ed in it, in the middle of nowhere, then dressed it up as iconic, you had half a chance of being able to hold a festival at the venue if you so wished!

Anyway, when they built New Tinto Park a stones throw away, they simply had no chance, they were on a hiding to nothing, it would never be able to even come close to the old Tinto, it wouldn’t have even been fit to wipe the rear of Tinto, it would of course be a bland, stereotypical new build that had all the character of a Tesco’s trolley park. In fact, it begs the question as to why they even bothered, because if the Hopperati are not going to flock to it, add it onto Futbology and record You Tube videos about it, then it was clearly a huge waste of money and time.

Unless you are of course Benburb Football Club, who now have a brand new facility, with floodlights, a 4G pitch, dressing rooms, covered accommodation, a bar and a car park. They must be gutted to have sold Tinto Park which was probably a complete money pit, and ended up with something as new, functional and financial viable as this!

Talking of financially viable, they had lent the ground to East Kilbride Thistle to allow them to take on BSC Glasgow in a long overdue First Round tie in the West of Scotland League Cup. EKT’s ground has been unfit so the league ordered the game to be played on a suitable surface in midweek, hence why I was jumping off the train in Govan just over an hour before kick off.

It's a reasonable, albeit steady walk from Cardonald Station, heading up and over the M8 before cutting back along the side of the motorway, down a couple of alleyways, before New Tinto appears slightly elevated on your left hand side. I would say it’s about a fifteen minute trot, but an easy enough one to be fair, you just stay parallel to the M8 and then look for the floodlights! Ibrox Park by the way, is a further ten to fifteen minute walk further on in an Eastward direction.

The ground is easy to describe, the clubhouse and dressing rooms are behind the East goal, with the area of cover sat on the South side. It’s accessible on all four sides, while to the North is a new housing development, one that sits on what was the footprint of the old Tinto Park.

The West of Scotland League has five divisions, ranging from a Premier Division down to a Fourth Division. The Premier Division sits at Step 6 in Scotland, feeding into the Lowland League, but in terms of the game in question, East Kilbride play in the Third Division, visiting BSC Glasgow, or Broomhill as they are known, play in the Fourth Division.

Interestingly though, while EKT are the long standing junior outfit in Scottish football from the town, they are not the most senior, East Kilbride FC who are a newish entity, sit well placed in the Lowland League and are one of the sides tipped to make it into the Scottish Football League at some point in the near future. Also in the Lowland League is a club called Open Goal Broomhill, who were previously called BSC Glasgow, so I am assuming that the BSC who I was watching, are maybe the reserves?

Anyway, we got a bit of a shock. BSC took the lead in the first half when Alexander McGhee netted from close range, while early in the second period the lead was doubled when Mathew Melvin found the net. It was a deserved victory for the side from just across the River Clyde, and sets them up for a game against St Rochs in the Second Round.

A crowd of around 50 or so paid the £6 to get in, while pints of Tennants and Scotch Pies were readily available in the bar area if you couldn’t be bothered to go outside and watch the game on a cool but dry night. I made the train back with a couple of minutes to spare and was quickly back into the City Centre. We travel up again at the end of February, and I’m not even going to bother looking just yet, a lot can happen in Scottish football in a month, just ask anyone who follows Aberdeen!