QUEEN'S GAMBIT

The oldest club in Scotland's attempts to modernise have paid on-field dividends, but also left them homeless

- Ed McCambridge

Queen's Park are a pub quizmaster's dream. From 'inventing' both the passing game and crossbar, to providing Scotland's entire starting XI against England for football's first international fixture in 1872 and playing home games at the colossal Hampden Park, the tiny second-tier side are the most abundantly quirky of clubs north of the border.

Over the past five years, however, times have been a-changing for Scotland's oldest club. In September 2018, the Spiders agreed a £5 million deal to sell their ground to the Scottish FA, whom they'd been leasing it to for international fixtures since way back in 1906.

The deal made sense for everyone, not least the 1,000 or so fans who regularly attend home matches. The plan would be for Queen's Park to eventually move to Lesser Hampden, a 500-seater venue (with plans for an extra 1,200) amid redevelopment in the shadow of its larger sibling.

More changes followed. In November 2019, fans held a vote on whether to turn professional, a seismic decision for a club that hadn't paid its players - or received any money for them, former left-back Andy Robertson included - since their inception in 1867.

"Being an amateur football club in this day and age is a nice oddity but, in reality, we've had a record of developing some good young players that we simply couldn't make money from," explains Spiders Talk podcaster Enzo Tamagnini. "That was frustrating, and the need to switch to a modern format was crucial." There was another reason for wanting the switch.

In 2014, the Scottish FA introduced relegation from League Two, the fourth tier of Scottish football, for the first time. Previously, it had been impossible for existing teams to slip out of the pyramid.

"We'd actually finished rock bottom of League Two a few times in the last 20 years," says Tamagnini.