Stadiums For Sale Or Rent

These however wither into insignificance when compared to the universal loathing and death threats a board will receive should they even consider touching and god forbid selling the ground.

The world over for fitba fan their stadium is sacrosanct. The holiest of holy shrines or temples used for their weekend (formerly Saturday 3pm) religion and woe betide any man who would talk of demolishing or selling the ground.

Such talk is the heathen heresy of a non believer for which the only appropriate punishment is public lynching (or a weekend in Dundee....at least the lynching is over quickly!).

So strange then given the Nelson Muntz like 'Haw Haw have to sell your ground' cackling of non Dandies following this weeks announcement by the board that there has been a distinct lack of outraged Dandies declarin a fatwa on the heretic Wiggy.

I mean after all he's said we're leaving and selling Pittodrie...surely by now we should be stuffing the effigies, organising the demos, making the 'Wiggy Oot' banners and launching the 'Save Our Dons' (SOD) campaign ?

Personally I think there's 2 main reasons for this...

Firstly, bar having to order 2 new sets of headed paper well....nothing's changed, despite non Reds creaming themselves at us selling Pittodrie we still own our ground and will continue to do so until the day we leave for pastures new across the road....still another Dandies Urban Myth to go wi the 'cannae afford a toaster' and the 'kept up by Falkirk's stadium' ones they love so much....still if it makes them happy.

Secondly while we adore the place and I mean how can you not love a place with a bath embedded in one of the stands for no apparent reason ?....there is the heavy hearted acceptance amongst Reds that Pittodrie has had her day.

As you know I like nothing better than to illustrate my point with nothing better than a rather dull anecdote that may or may not have a tenuous link to the point I'm tryin to make...so here goes...

A few months back I was at a 'Team Building Exercise' Day type thing at Pittodrie, I won't bore ye wi the details 'cept it was the usual collection of managers doing passable David Brent impressions whilst the rest stifled yawns and sniggers.

Anyway during the breaks the many Reds there that day drifted thru to the Executive Boxes just to silently glaze lovingly on the sacred turf (ye ken as ye do) anyway it was a pretty multi-national gathering wi a Ghanaian, Nigerian and many Indians there and they began to ask us about the club and aw that ye ken and we wiz yakkin away talkin about the great games, players n'aw that, most of which they were lapping up then someone mentioned that Pittodrie was once the most state of the art stadium in Britain...which produced snorts of laughter from our visitors and one said '"Really? Here?" We mounted a sterling defence...aye Britain first all seater first wi Executive boxes n'at but you could tell they didnae believe us and thought we were taking the piss.

To be fair it wisnae hard to see why they were having difficulty believing us about Pittodrie's past walking round Pittodrie afterwards there were sun bleached signs will peeling paint, a set of Health and Safety regs that hadnae been changed since 1997 and even the once pristine 'ABERDEEN FC' set in granite above the entry to the Merkie was well...filthy.

If you were being generous you'd describe Todders these days as 'Authentic and atmospheric' if you were being honest it would be 'tatty and rundown'. Alas these days Pittodrie is very much a place only a Dandy could love.

Having said that obviously 'It looks a bit tatty like' is hardly grounds for demolishing 100 years of devotion...the sad fact is as a century old building Pittodrie's maintenance costs are huge, it's only a matter of time before a condemned notice is slapped on the Main Stand and with the ground now hemmed in on all sides redeveloping Pittodrie while technically possible is simply unfeasible on grounds of exorbitant costs and planning permission hassles and that's without wondering how we could demolish and rebuild the whole stadium between mid May and late July.

Faced with evidence like this the majority of Reds now accept that however undesirable ultimately a move is inevitable. Staying put will simply leave us in the same position as Hearts and desperately grabbing the first passing Ex Soviet Bloc gangst...sorry legitimate business man and becoming their own personal plaything. Hence the board's announcement last week came as a bombshell of 'Pope - A Catholic?' proportions.

Now I'm not gonna try and pass masel of as some expert on PFI or the likes but the announcement will deal with 2 questions in these post-Holyrood days we will almost inevitably face during this process. Is there any risk of the Club going under during construction? and will the club be viable once any stadium is built?

Well the refinancing package agreed with the Clubs bankers until 2011 answers the first question before it's posed and as of now the club is operating exactly as it would in any post-Pittodrie scenario, and given the footballing operations are now at break even we should be able to provide evidence to back up our case on the second point. I suspect this is the reason for the announcement being made now as opposed to any imminent visit of Messrs Kroll or KPMG to Pittodrie Street.

The club has obviously learned it's lessons from the abortive move to Kingswells and to date has managed to take the majority of fans with them.

There are obviously arguments and debates still to come that may break this unanimity...where are we moving to? and most important of all what are we moving to?

As I said moving from Pittodrie will be an emotional wrench for all Dandies, there will be justified outrage if we move to little more than a McDiarmid on steroids and the words 'Community Stadium' send a chill down the spine.

I've got nothing in principle against a Community Stadium but it should serve the community who'll be it's main users...i.e. the Red Army. This is our new shrine and temple and we should play an active role in it's design...after all when your building a Mosque you'd hardly go and ask the Mormons what it should look like.

Personally as long as there'd no running track and one large end where the best and most vocal elements of the Y and Beach End can combine to make the atmosphere at home akin to the atmosphere created by our travelling support I'll be happy.

The other divisive problem that lies ahead is obviously the sale of Pittodrie. There is obviously a blatant conflict of interest if Milne is involved as both the buyer and seller. Personally as long as Wiggy pays market value and makes the highest bid I'll be satisfied. I'm also quite confident that as there is public money involved in the plan the sale of Pittodrie it will be closely inspected and audited leaving little scope for profiteering or for Wiggy to get the site on the cheap.

But these are issues for the future; the task in hand currently is getting the Council on board. Now the Aberdeen City Council has veered between tepid and lukewarm and that's on a good day.

A few years back for example the Council listed 50 great things about Aberdeen which whilst they lauded the engineering and technical achievements of it's corporate sponsors, cited Aberdeen as the home of the Crombie Coat and the birthplace of Waterpolo (though that may just have been a misinterpretation of a kick about on the paddy fields known as 'The Shedds') there was not a single reference to the institution that has done more to raise the cities profile and civic pride more than any other.

I'm also old enough to recall a pic of Papa and Baby Dick Donald grinning like Cheshire cats with the plans to redevelop Pittodrie in the late 1980's which involved to RDS style stands and a 2nd tier on the Curva Sud, this scheme was apparently thwarted by the Councils refusal to grant planning permission for the club on the Gasometer and old lumber yard sites (now housing developments) so in many ways the council has played it part in making Pittodrie undevelopable.

You can help by signing the Red Ultras petition and may I also suggest we adopt a tactic the Tims have successfully used in recent years and bombard the council into submission...a tactic used most successfully when despite roundly booing Porto after their UEFA Cup Final the bombarded UEFA wi e mails along the line of "We were purebrilliant in Suville byraway....gies wan o thay awards ye gied the Arabs" to the point that UEFA gave up in order to get their e mail server back.

We should do the exact same thing wi every elected representative in Aberdonia from Cooncilors to MPs. So send them an e mail...not 'Support the Dons Stadium plans or we dig up yer Grunny' type just a polite enquiry as to whether they will be support the Dons or not and if they say no then use the various message boards to name and shame them.

If we clutter up their inboxes the Stadium Issue will rise to the top of the local political agenda and remember nothing focuses a Cooncilors mind more than the prospect of losing their expenses account.

The Red Avenger