I have three cuttings from Saturday’s edition of The Courier beside me, different in character but all linked by dark blue and tangerine threads.
We’re talking football, specifically Dundee derbies and Dundee’s stadium.
One cutting was the regular Saturday Journal piece by Rebecca Baird who said: “I hate football…for the nine years I’ve lived in Dundee, the derby has been a mere bug on the windscreen of my life.”
But this time, and with some trepidation, she had ventured into a derby day pub for the first time, only to be pleasantly surprised by the behaviour of rival fans, of which more later.
The second was on the letters page and written by Ken Ramsay, a United fan mysteriously exiled in Fraserburgh but who still made it to the match with his wife.
‘I wish Dundee would stay at Dens’
The unique charm of the event was nicely caught in these words: “I hope Dundee have a brilliant season, except when they play us!”
He added: “I wish Dundee FC would refurbish Dens Park and stay at their spiritual home.
“This would go a long way to preserving the special nature of the derby. Two teams, one street…”
I thought: “Comrade!”
The third cutting was a news story reporting Dundee City Council’s decision to delay a planning committee meeting to discuss the planning in principle application for the proposed new stadium at Camperdown.
The council has asked the club for more information.
I grew up in a Dundee family that spawned two goalkeepers – my grandfather Bob Crumley, who played in the Dark Blues’ only Scottish Cup-winning side in 1910, and his younger brother Jim, who played for United a few years later before moving to the south of England where he spent the rest of his life.
My father, yet another Jim Crumley, and his older brother Bert used to watch Dundee one week and United the next.
I have been a lifelong Dundee fan but United’s result is always the next one I look for, and that is probably why.
‘Two teams, one street’
Mr Ramsay, the letter writer, touched a nerve with his generous observation about Dundee and their spiritual home.
The council is probably more concerned with match day traffic on the Kingsway, but it would be nice to think that football fans of both persuasions among councillors and planning officials are aware of considerations that go deeper than that.
A spiritual home. Two teams, one street.
Camperdown is a property developer’s response – but where, in all of this, is an architect’s plan to redevelop Dens Park?
We have heard arguments for a new stadium on the outer edge of the city, selling Dens Park and redeveloping it, presumably as housing.
What we have not heard are reasons for not selling Dens, redeveloping it as a better stadium, a new lease of life for the spiritual home.
The controversy has already dragged on for years.
If it was brilliant idea, if it had won unanimous approval as the perfect solution for the club and the fans, it would have happened years ago.
But it isn’t a brilliant idea. It’s a way to make money out of a new stadium with housing and hotels and leisure facilities chucked into the mix, not to mention the crematorium.
‘Plagued by doubt’
One more delay is just a small symptom of the essential truth that the project is plagued by doubt, and nobody I know thinks it will happen in 2025.
But speaking of small symptoms, the nature of the Dundee derby may be a small symptom of the Scottish football season, with its good nature and the ritual of the players walking from one ground to the other one across the street and among the fans.
But it is a significant symptom of football in the city and that part of town where it belongs.
The Courier’s Rebecca Baird had her mind changed about the derby when two fans – one a Dundee diehard and the other a United supporter – sitting next to her shared a joke at the end of the game.
She wrote: “Maybe I’ll watch the next one. But I’ll need to pick a team first.”
Don’t look for advice, Rebecca. You’ve known the city from within for nine years which is long enough.
Ask your heart. It’s what the rest of us did. It’s what our fathers taught us.
Conversation