Firhill stadium

Firhill Stadium is a football and former rugby union, rugby league and greyhound racing stadium located in the Maryhill area of Glasgow, Scotland which has been the home of Partick Thistle since 1909. The stadium is commonly referred to as simply Firhill, although between September 2017 and September 2020 it was also known as The Energy Check Stadium at Firhill for sponsorship reasons.

Past ground-sharing agreements have seen Firhill act as a temporary home for three other football clubs: Clyde, Hamilton Academical and Queen’s Park. It was also a venue for the 2000 Rugby League World Cup and the Glasgow Warriors rugby union team between 2007 and 2012. , the all-seated capacity of Firhill is .

History

Partick Thistle played at various sites between 1876 and 1891, including Kelvingrove, Jordanvale Park and Muir Park. The club settled at Meadowside, beside the River Clyde, in 1891. They were forced out of this site in 1908, however, to make way for a shipyard. The club found some spare Caledonian Railway land in Maryhill, the site was purchased by the club for £5,500, and construction started soon after. The ground was due to open on 21 August 1909, but the match was postponed because it had not been declared safe for public use and planning consent had not been obtained. Firhill opened a month later.

The record attendance for a Partick Thistle game at Firhill was set against Rangers in 1922, when 49,838 people attended. The present main stand was constructed in 1927, at which time the terraces were expanded. Although the main stand resembles an Archibald Leitch design, it was in fact designed by David Mills Duncan, who had previously worked for Leitch. The stadium's attendance record was set by the 1928 British Home Championship match between Scotland and Ireland, when 54,728 people attended.

There were no further improvements until the early 1950s, when Thistle had a relatively successful period. This success financed a roof over part of the terracing and floodlights, which were first used in a friendly match against Tottenham Hotspur in November 1955. Firhill hosted the first European Cup match ever to be played in Glasgow, when Swedish club Djurgården played their "home" leg against Hibernian in the 1955–56 season in the city as a result of the freezing conditions in Sweden at the time of the match.

Firhill became designated under the Safety of Sports Grounds Act in 1977, which reduced its capacity from over 40,000 to 20,500. In 1986, Firhill became the first Scottish ground in modern times to be used by more than one team, when Clyde moved in after being evicted from Shawfield. This arrangement lasted until 1991. Hamilton Academical then shared Firhill with Thistle in two different spells, the first arrangement beginning in 1994. To cope with the resulting additional usage, undersoil heating was installed in 1994.

The North Stand was built in 2002 to meet the Scottish Premier League criteria on stadium capacity, which stated at the time that member clubs must have 10,000 seats in their ground. Ironically this criterion was later changed to only 6,000 seats, which not only allowed for the relegation of Partick Thistle, but meant they had constructed a stand which cost the club unnecessarily. Originally, the stand only ran for two-thirds the length of the pitch, but it was extended in 2003. The construction of this stand was assisted by the sale of some land to allow the construction of student flats which now lie behind the stand.

Structure and facilities

The modern stadium comprises three seated stands, with an unused area at the south end. The current capacity of the ground includes seats with no standing areas available. The Main Stand was built with an original capacity of 6,000 seats, however in recent times this has been reduced to 1,825. In January 2006, the club announced that the Main Stand would no longer be used on matchdays due to high maintenance and stewarding costs. There were exceptions to this, such as a Scottish Cup

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