Hampden Roar

With the big matches coming up for Scotland on Saturday and Wednesday I thought it would be a timely to post about our recent visit to the Hampden Sports museum.

Housed in the bowels of the stadium the museum does kind of feel like its been squeezed into space left over rather than having been purposely designed and the layout is a bit strange without a coherent story or thread to guide you through.

When we arrived there was a young guy on the desk and we were walking up to pay when I spotted a flyer and advert stand over to the left hand side. Amongst the leaflets etc there I spotted one which I'd read before which gives discounts on various tourist venues and buses. I wandered over picked one up and discovered inside that there was a voucher for two for one entry to the both the football museum and tour. We ripped the vouchers out and gave them to the guy on the desk. Not sure if it was his first day on the job but he initially charged us £25 with the vouchers which was actually more than it would have been without the vouchers. We explained that he must have made a wee mistake and despite looking very confused he tried it again and this time told us the total cost was £9 - which was pretty good value for 3 adults and 1 child.

Unfortunately the day we went the tours were not running as there a Queens Park match on. Apparently the rules changed this year and now if a match or concert is on then no tours are on that day. So its prob worth while phoning first as the tours look good.

The lack of tour was disappointing but we soldiered on. The museum is pretty packed with memorabilia and was quite interesting but it wasn't really managing to entertain Ann's 10 years old nephew. Everything is presented very dryly. We had guessed that the football museum would be more like a science centre for sport but in reality its a display case filled history museum. The adverts we've seen had sold us on getting to feel like a professional player, get a taste of the Hampden roar and play sporting games like testing the speed of your shots. In fact we kept our young guest entertained by the promise of the test your shot game coming up. Sadly for us - we discovered at the end that this, along with several other items, is part of the stadium tour and not the museum.

If a history tour is what you are after then you'll definitely love it and if you are doing football history research then you'll find a great resource - but if you are just after a bit of touristy fun for all the family then you might be a bit disappointed. Mostly the museum is made up of display cabinets showing medals, newspapers cuttings, old jerseys and trophies. Mixed in amongst these are some nice statues and some old bits of stands etc but with the odd layout and the really dull old fashioned lighting it all feels a bit lacking and a little bit cheap.

Definitely a missed opportunity - our imagination of what the museum would contain turned out to be a heck of a lot better than the actuality. Where were all the interaction and fun? Where was any actual contact with a football? For example the classic Archie Gemmel goal - one of Scotland's proudest moments is presented as a diorama of still statues meant to give you a feel of being there but it doesn't really work.

I guess the SFA don't really have the budget to do it properly with an all singing and all dancing museum but its a real shame. Football is supposedly our national sport and with a bit of money and a lot more imagination they could really have created a top tourist attraction here. As it is I'm not too sure how entertained tourists feel they've got for their pennies - especially if they didn't have the 2 for 1 vouchers we used. I'm not sure I'd recommend it to any visitors though I do think the tour is probably the best part so we will go back another time and check it out.

In summary - its worth a quick visit if you get the vouchers but don't expect the kids to be too entertained. Our favourite bits were the old stands where you could watch old recordings of football matches and the press booths where you picked up a phone and were played an excert from a random selection of radio clips.

Ann's football crazy nephew on the other hand was a bit bored with it all - in fact his favourite thing was the three free Foosball tables we could play on (all were slightly broken) and the six PS3 systems set up with Fifa2009.