Queen’s Park close to Scottish top-flight return but there is sting to tale

D epending on one’s outlook, Friday evening in the unlikely surroundings of Ochilview Park could either see a Scottish football fairytale come to life or the latest temporary vindication of the boom-or-bust culture that has scarred the game in the past. Queen’s Park, who were amateurs for more than a century and proud of it, will earn a place in the top flight as a professional team if they defeat Dundee. But for an Arsenal-esque stumble – Queen’s have won one of their past six games – promotion would already have been secured.

Sixty-five years have passed since Queen’s, formed in 1867 and Scotland’s oldest league club, played top-division football. In those more simple times of 1957-58, Hearts secured the title at a canter from the Old Firm as The Spiders won four matches out of 34. In the intervening decades Queen’s have generally floated around the nether regions of Scotland’s league structure. They were a cuddly club, untouched by the corporate classes.

That changed owing to two events of late 2019, with the team in the fourth tier. Members of the Queen’s Park Football Club voted overwhelmingly in favour of abandoning amateur status, permitting the club to receive transfer fees for players and compete more reasonably with sides further up the pyramid by paying professional wages. This represented a seismic shift; for more than a century, Queen’s had taken pride in their players taking to the field “for the sake of the game”. The second key element was the planned sale of Hampden Park, eventually completed in 2020, to the Scottish Football Association for £5m.

“I thought it would be a tragedy if Hampden was going to lose out as the home of Scottish football,” said Willie Haughey, who grew up in the shadows of the