One last hurrah at Hughenden

THE famous old pitch at Hughenden will breathe an emotional last this afternoon as Hillhead/Jordanhill FPs entertain Aberdeen GS FPs in their final league match before the builders move in.

A pitch with a distinguished pedigree, Hughenden has hosted many touring sides from the All Blacks, Australia and a star-studded French XV to Fiji and Tonga. Hundreds of Scottish internationalists have graced the field in inter-city and district matches as well as global talents like Bryan Habana, the recent player of the 2007 Rugby World Cup.

Today, a clutch of Hillhead High School FPs from the golden 1950s period, when the team rose up the senior ranks in Scottish club rugby and Alan Cameron and Ian MacGregor represented Scotland, will have a reunion dinner, while Jordanhill FPs, merged with Hillhead in 1988, will also host a dinner to mark the end of the main pitch.

Hughenden, itself, will remain as a sports ground and the rugby club remains one of the biggest in Scotland, but the mounting debts of Hillhead Sports Club, now over 100 years old, have forced the sale of land along the stand side of the ground for the building of flats on a third of the pitch.

A new all-weather hockey pitch is to be installed where rugby is played this afternoon, which will allow Hillhead's men's and women's teams to return to Hughenden, and two new rugby pitches will be created adjacent to the clubhouse as part of the refurbishment. It will not help answer the SRU's long search for a suitable venue for the professional team, but will, hopefully, breathe new life into a number of sports in the west end of the city.

Hillhead/Jordanhill's president Michael Paterson said: "We are only one sport at Hughenden and it should become a better sports venue in the long-term, but there is a real sadness about this weekend and losing the pitch that has meant so much to rugby people in the west coast particularly.

"Hughenden was opened on 24 May, 1924, after the ground was purchased by a war memorial committee, and many sports flourished here, but it went on to become a major part of rugby in Glasgow. It's a bit emotional for me too because my father Hugh was a Hillhead FP wing-forward, and my son David is playing centre this weekend – I was the odd one out because I went to Jordanhill.

"It remains a great club with four senior men's teams, women's teams and a thriving junior section, so rugby will be at Hughenden for many years to come, but I think this weekend we'll see quite a bit of reflection and perhaps some sentimentality as well."

Shade Munro, the current Glasgow forwards coach, played at Hughenden many times, as did his father, also Shade, and grandfather John Bannerman, one of Scotland's greatest-ever players. He admitted: "It is really sad that they have had to sell off land at Hughenden to keep the sports club going.

"That pitch is a big part of rugby in Glasgow – it's the spiritual home of Glasgow rugby in my opinion. Hughenden has hosted fantastic matches, seen some great players and with Glasgow in recent times it really brought people from all over the west coast to rugby. There was a lot of disappointment in some respects when the pro team left Hughenden. It will definitely be sad to see that famous old pitch go."

Hughenden really began to develop as Glasgow's rugby home from 1958 when the inter-city matches with Edinburgh shifted there from Anniesland, and over the past four decades it has hosted terrific district matches with their capital rivals, the North and Midlands and the South.