Easter Road stands proud

June 20, 2008 by Fraser 2 Comments

Inflation is quite something. When Hibs announced the redevelopment of Easter Road in December 1994 the price tag for the new North and South stands was £4million. Another £5million would see East and West stands completed in due course. Oh for construction costs like those nowadays, when £4million will be lucky to buy you a share in one of Cristiano Ronaldo’s toenails.

The architect’s model in the photograph shows that replacement of the East terrace was deemed the greater priority, but events (ie decay and safety legislation) overtook the planners and it was of course the West which went up first in 2001. Decrepitude eventually consumed the old main stand which had stood since the 1920s and for whom the term ‘refurbishment’ meant a new coat of green paint on the corrugated asbestos cladding every few years.

It is interesting to read with hindsight that ‘the idea of Hibs moving to Straiton has been laid to rest’. Obviously that notion was interred in an undead condition and returned to stalk us like a festering zombie a few years later in the dark night of the £20million debt. The paint on the new West stand’s sleek architectural cladding was barely dry and we came within a ba’ hair of knocking the whole lot down.

Hugh Keevins remarks somewhat obscurely in his last paragraph that Hibs’ final game on March 4 1995 in front of a reduced capacity will be the last time the club ‘will do anything that could be considered second rate’. I suspect he himself regarded that as a meaningless rhetorical flourish to even up the columns on the page and wouldn’t expect anyone to throw it back at him now. Perhaps his thoughts extended to the no-expense-spared backdrop behind Dougie Cromb at the press conference. Obviously he didn’t forsee the season before last’s excuse for a match programme, relegation in 1998, employing Bobby Williamson…