Restoration - Week 37

Weather been Hellish of late but still managed another 2 weeks of graft at Cathkin. Horrible, dirty and unglamorous work but necessary and every day a little improvement is evident. With the ground frozen hard we turned again to cleaning the concrete pitch wall, cleaning and scrubbing down years 

of growth but it is restoring well, but still too cold and wet to start repainting. We moved 100 buckets of earth this week from the terracing and running track and the work to level this important aspect of the stadium has been tough-going! Tyre marks, ruts and moss have ruined the top layer, rendering it

unsafe to run on and thus the ground has lost a valuable asset. We are cutting it down 2 inches all round the pitch and defining the borders which should enable the pitch to dry out better as the water will run into the lower level of the track, as it used to be.

We have cleared 70 feet of this track now but with the frost it has been the stuff of nightmares this last 10 days. As the photos here show the track below is in firmer condition which we are packing hard and will then resurface with fresh blaes in the summer months.

The trees are now all bare of leaves and this is my favourite time of year to work at the park as you can clearly see exactly what remains of the terracing and can get a real feel for how the ground once looked. Also this week we were sent some amazing press reports and sketches of how the stadium

looked when Alloa Athletic were the first team to grace New Cathkin Park when Thirds took over the ground in 1903. Every week another little bit of this old ground's amazing history pops up and we are condensing all of this information into a souvenir book which is being written up at the moment.