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No fears for a Dens farewell

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The irresistible force that is Dundee’s penchant for constantly realigning its own built environment has always been countered by two of the most immovable objects on Earth.

These are so deeply embedded in the citizenry’s affections that their sell-by dates are as long-gone as the Fifies.

One is Cox’s Lum and the other is the extremely silly relative geography of our two professional football teams.

It says a great deal that is admirable about the Dundee psyche that not only has it stoically resisted efforts to demolish Cox’s Lum but it has built a wee monument to it in the High Street.

I was on the top of the Law one Saturday lunchtime en route to Dens Park and I overheard a native discussing the Lum with a friend who was clearly not from around these parts.

“What is that?” she asked. It is, if you are not a Dundee native, a good question.

“Cox’s Lum,” said the local, “a factory chimney fae the ahld days.”

“A chimney? I don’t see any smoke.”

“Disnae work.”

“Oh. Is it broken?”

“No.”

“Then why…?”

“Nae smoke wi’oo’ fehr,” said the native in a tone that clearly closed the subject.

I moved on before her gaze wandered from north-west to north-east and she asked him why there were two football grounds so close together.

And so, here we are again at the beginning of a new football season and suddenly there is talk in the air about a new stadium for Dundee.

We’ve heard it all before of course, dollops of pie in the sky that varied from a new stadium to one shared with United, to full-scale amalgamation with them (also known as fate worse than death syndrome).

But what has brought it on this time is news that a piece of land out Camperdown way has been acquired by Dark Blue Property Holdings Ltd, a company whose sole directors are the chairman and managing director of Dundee FC, all of which strikes me as amounting to a little more than talk in the air.

This is serious. This is the-stuff-of-life stuff. Cox’s Lum stuff. What’s to be done?

The thing is (and it’s not easy to say this after a wheen of decades of ritualised pilgrimages to Dens), I think perhaps it’s time.

My new season ticket allocates me an eyrie in the Bobby Cox Stand. It affords an unrestricted view of not only the game but also the creaking embarrassment that is the South Enclosure and its immediate and increasingly tawdry surroundings.

The North Enclosure is 100 years old and a recognisable backdrop throughout the photographic archive of the club’s finest hours – but it was built in an era when no one knew how to hold the roof up without pillars.

There is an optimistic air about Dens Park just now, remarkable considering the all-too-memorable gloom of administration.

But the truth, however unpalatable to supporters of a certain vintage and for that matter, to former players who strutted their stuff on that stage, is that there is little about Dens Park that meets the needs of a 21st Century professional football stadium. OK, maybe the pies.

The heritage of the club is not at stake, it is well cherished and well documented. But unless Dens is either transformed or replaced, the future of the club might be.

No one need have any fears about the unique relationship we enjoy with Dundee United. Nor need they fear that if and when we move house, our fixtures with them will still be anything other than the most relished of the season and their results the most pored, cheered and wept over.

The only thing that could stop that from happening would be amalgamating the two clubs. We all know the arguments and the practical, financial commonsense that underpins them.

Yes, it makes sense – unless that is, you love football and in particular, Dundee football.

And all of us who love our football and from whatever side of the street we watch it, surely recognise that the well-being of both clubs depends, as much as anything, on there being two clubs.

We are two sides of the same coin and moving a mile away across the city is not going to change that. Cox’s Lum will come crashing down into the Lochee streets first.