Boghead Park
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This article is about the former football ground of Dumbarton F.C., for the village in Lanarkshire see Boghead.
Boghead Park is a former football ground in the town of Dumbarton, Scotland.
It was formerly owned by Dumbarton Football Club, who had played there since 1879, making it one of the oldest sporting venues in the United Kingdom. It was used by the club until the end of November 2000, when they moved to their new 2,000 capacity all-seated Strathclyde Homes Stadium.
Boghead Park's record attendance was 18,001 for a Scottish Cup match against Raith Rovers F.C. on March 2, 1957. Despite the local enthusiasm for the tie, Dumbarton were comprehensively defeated 4-1 in the game.
In 1979 part of the ground was redeveloped. The old main stand (nicknamed the "Hen House"), which had a mere capacity of 100 was replaced by a modern facility that held around 300 people. The opening of this stand was undertaken by Alan Hardaker, one time secretary of the English Football League.
Having played host to a crowd of almost 20,000, Boghead Park was latterly a sad sight. The ground fell into a level of disrepair and its capacity, which was around 10,000 when Dumbarton played in the Scottish Premier Division in the mid 1980s was somewhere closer to between 2,000 and 3,000 by the time of the ground's closure. This was largely due to the club not maintaining the site as they decided whether to renovate the ground or move on to pastures new.
That the board of Dumbarton Football Club chose to let the ground get into a run down state is signified by the fact that when one of the two stands that existed at Boghead Park in the mid 80s was destroyed by fire, they chose not to replace it, instead leaving the site empty.
Ambitious plans were created for the redevelopment of Boghead Park into an all seated facility with a capacity in the region of 9,000. These plans are currently held on show at the Football Museum at Hampden Park, but were never put into practice by the club who eventually opted to sell the Boghead Park site for a housing development and to move to a new purpose built facility elsewhere in the town, the Strathclyde Homes Stadium.
An interesting piece of trivia about Boghead Park is that it was chosen by Robert Duvall as the supposed home ground of the fictional football team, Kilnockie F.C. for his film, "A Shot at Glory". Duvall allegedly chose Boghead Park because of its ramshackle nature, but ironically, the filming involved the film crew making improvements to the football ground.
