PICTURE EXCLUSIVE: Hampden surface isn't looking too pretty after Pink...so, would it be ready in time to host Rangers?
Rangers play their opening game of the 2024/25 season in little over four weeks’ time. Where they intend to play it remains to be seen.
Improvements to the club’s Copland Stand have been complicated by shipping delays. With Ibrox out of commission for Champions League qualifiers and their first home league game of the season against Motherwell on August 10, contingency plans are now taking shape with various parties.
Hampden and Murrayfield — or a combination of both — are the obvious, leading alternatives.
Scotland’s national football stadium is located just four miles from Ibrox and facilitates roughly the same number of supporters. With the SFA ready and willing to help out a member club, it’s the most natural solution.
Yet, as Mail Sport’s exclusive pictures illustrate, the Hampden pitch is currently rutted and bare and engaged in a race against time to be ready for the new campaign after the playing surface was badly damaged by the staging of two concerts by rock star Pink last week.
Newly reseeded, the unseasonal, muggy, moist summer weather is helpful when it comes to growing grass.
Hampden has just hosted two huge concerts by American pop star Pink
The home of the Scotland team is just one of the options being looked at by Rangers
Hampden's pitch has not yet recovered from the concerts - as our exclusive pictures show
It remains to be seen if the pitch will have recovered in time for the start of the season
With grow lamps installed to help the process along, the National Stadium might be able to host a home game in the third qualifying round of the Champions League on August 6/7 followed by the first home league game against Motherwell on August 10.
Anything but pretty in Pink after last week’s concerts, however, the ideal bedding-in period for a re-seeded fibre sand pitch is eight weeks.
Anything less risks pitch scarring and rutting to the surface and, with Scotland playing Poland in a Nations League qualifier at Hampden on September 5, that’s a risk the SFA can do without.
If Rangers decide Hampden is the venue they want to rent, the onus would likely fall on them to fund any additional measures necessary to make the pitch playable. Lay and play turf would come at a cost in the hundreds of thousands, adding to the outlay of renting the stadium from the SFA.
Complicating matters further is the fact that Championship side Queen’s Park are contracted to return to Hampden to play their league matches after Scotland’s game with Poland.
Until September 5, the Spiders will play their home fixtures at the 900-seater City Stadium and any agreement between the SFA and Rangers could compel the Ibrox board to offer Queen’s Park a financial incentive to continue playing at Lesser Hampden.
Piece it all together and the National Stadium becomes a complex and expensive solution to a problem with no easy answer.
Rangers have also held talks with Scottish Rugby over playing their ‘home’ games at Murrayfield in Edinburgh.
Philippe Clement’s team take on Manchester United at the home of Scottish rugby in a pre-season friendly on July 13 and while Murrayfield could offer a temporary home while the grass grew at Hampden and building work continued at Ibrox, the SRU appear to be no clearer on what Rangers plan to do than anyone else.
It’s now three weeks since the club publicly confirmed the rumours of an issue with the Copland Stand.
Despite issuing season-ticket renewal notices to supporters, information has been thin on the ground ever since.
It’s tricky for directors to answer the questions of supporters when they don’t necessarily have them to hand themselves.
Awaiting the delivery of steel from China, a consignment was always projected to arrive later this month.
Until the materials are physically located on Edmiston Drive, however, it’s difficult to plot a firm timeline for completion of the project. Or to go directly to potential landlords and say precisely how long they wish to rent their grounds for.
Playing at Ibrox with three open stands is appealing, but problematic. The 8,000 supporters displaced from their seats and locked out of games would be due compensation in some shape or form. It would do nothing to mend the already strained relationship between the club and supporters.
There are no good solutions to a conundrum which gives manager Clement another issue to deal with. And he has plenty on his plate already.
The arrival of Moroccan striker Hamza Igamane in a £1.5million deal takes the number of new signings this summer to six.
A summer expected to be dominated by talk of rebuilding the team, few anticipated the challenges posed by rebuilding a section of the stadium. For the first time in living memory, who plays for Rangers next season is now less pressing and important than where on earth they play.
