South Stand renaming

[StirlingDosser]

12 hours ago, Spiderpig said:

As has been said earlier the Cooper was originally meant to be identical to the South stand, but as I understand it the owners of the houses behind it on knowetop Ave complained about the size and planning permission was refused so the size had to be scaled back.

I'm sure somewhere along the way I seen the original sketches for the South Stand/Cooper and the plan for sure was to have two smaller but still two tiered stands? They even looked less shoebox-like. Perhaps the South Stand was scaled up after planning permission was denied for a mirroring stand in the Knowetop End. Something detailed about the history of the ground itself would be welcome actually as part of the club history on the website. I've seen there is a new effort on facebook from someone gathering MFC history - something possibly for them to look into?

I don't actually think  the South Stand is due the criticism it gets. It is very practical, allows us to ship that lot in and out relatively easily along Dalzell Drive and con 4,000 of them out of 25 scud a ticket at the same time. It doubles up as giving us additional home capacity for big games and the end of season deals we have done of late. Added benefit of the club's professional facilities housed within, alongside some corporate boxes. 

I actually think if the stand overhung Knowetop Avenue you could have fitted a slightly larger stand in there without cutting shapes like Hibs have at Easter Road. As was said, has been done in many grounds. But the Cooper Stand was built as it is, and here we are. I'm too young to remember but if we are naming the South I think something to do with Ancell would be appropriate. Definitely seems to be the other talked about Motherwell team once we put 1991 to one side. 

[Goggles & Flippers]

A Graveyard is a bit different from a street. Regardless, discussing what coulda or shoulda happened with the Cooper in 1995 is of no consequence now.

If a two tiered stand was ever muted it would have been in the first 5 minutes of the meeting based purely on symmetry rather than space available, need or approval. Then it would have been put to bed and discussions on to what we ended up getting.

[Kat]

Original sketches for the North and South Stand, the design was actually based on the Copland Road end at Ibrox and the architect of our plans was Bill Dickie.

[sinjy]

I have some memory of reading that the first thought was to move the pitch towards the south to make equal space behind each goal.  This was quickly ditched when it would have meant the POD stand would have been even more out of line