Own goal by the Bankies even though someone moved goalposts

Regular readers of the Guardian's sport pages will recall the farcical tale of Clydebank FC, the only professional football club in Britain whose pre-season preparations consisted of trying to find a place to play home games, to sign enough players to field a team, to find someone to answer the phones in the office, a club secretary, a physiotherapist and a team bus.

Since then the news from Clydebank has been both good and bad. On the bright side, the club's admirable manager, Ian McCall, succeeded in overcoming all (or at least most) of the above obstacles in time for the start of the Scottish First Division campaign and in the past two months his squad has put up some creditable performances against clubs with vastly superior resources.

Alas, the Bankies have yet to win a league game and sit at the bottom of the league. This, however, is not the bad news.

No, the bad news is that for Clydebank FC the agony of footballing farce refuses to fade away. A few weeks back there was the embarrassment of only 29 fans turning up for a home game. Worse was to follow. On Saturday, the club was forced to postpone its home game against Dunfermline due to - football historians take note - "a lack of goalposts". The only consolation for McCall and Co was that they were entirely blameless.

Clydebank currently play their home games at Cappielow, the headquarters of Greenock Morton. Last Monday, vandals broke into the ground and tore down the goalposts, and then ran over the remains with a roller.

Hugh Scott, who owns Morton, takes up the story: "Tampering with goalposts is a fairly major exercise. They are sunk in concrete, normally one metre deep and half a metre wide, so that they can withstand a strong impact. We ordered a new set straight away."

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday passed, still no goalposts. They eventually arrived at 5.30pm on Friday. "If we'd sunk them that night there was no guarantee they'd be properly aligned for the game, and to play football at a senior level with goalposts that have been sunk in concrete that wasn't dried properly isn't on, is it?"

Indeed.

The game was postponed and the wags had a field day: "Why don't they use jumpers, it's only the Scottish First Division?" etc, etc. Scott, on the other hand, was not amused and judging by his wounded tone when the subject is raised by sniggering Guardian columnists, he is never likely to be. Here's why.

The Cappielow Goalpost Farce - as historians will come to describe it - brought to a wider audience the fact that during the past six weeks the ground has been the subject of the kind of vandalism that might entice Jack Straw to introduce martial law. Scott estimates there have been at least 45 break-ins. Windows have been smashed, doors kicked in and the night watchman shot in the leg with an air gun.

Then there was the infamous Cappielow Pie Stall Robbery when, as the Scottish Daily Record reported, "hundreds of pies were stolen when thieves got into the main stand and made their getaway after squirting tomato sauce over the walls".

All of this has happened at a time when Scott, a local businessman who bought the club a couple of years ago, is trying to develop Cappielow as a 10,000-seat stadium fit for the Scottish Premier League. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that he finds little to laugh about when the pies are nicked on match day.

Ask him why his club has been subjected to such a torrent of vandalism and he can only make some generalised guesses about the decline in parental control.

"It's not that vandalism is any worse in Greenock than anywhere else, in fact things are probably better in this town. The difficulty is when it involves something high-profile like a football club - the press want to attach blame and ridicule to the club, the people who live in the area around the club and those who work for the club. It's not the club's problem, it's society's problem."

R ather than sitting around whining, Scott has decided to take action. He is trying to set up a scheme which would allow local children to play on the pitch at Cappielow on Sundays. "The idea is to foster some community spirit and try to deter the vandals. Perhaps it would make those people who are doing this damage realise that the football club is very much part of the community."

All of which sounds like a very good idea indeed. Who knows, if someone gave Rupert Murdoch and his cronies the chance of a kick around at Old Trafford or Elland Road they might come to think the same of British football.