Ibrox Stadium is a football stadium on the south side of the River Clyde in the Ibrox area of Glasgow, Scotland. The home of Scottish Premiership team Rangers, Ibrox is the third-largest football stadium in Scotland, with an all-seated capacity of 51,700. The stadium was designed by renowned football stadium architect Archibald Leitch, with renovations to the stadium between 1978 and 1981, as well as 1990 and 1991, being designed by The Miller Partnership and Gareth Hutchison respectively.
Opened as Ibrox Park in 1899, it suffered a disaster in 1902 when a wooden terrace collapsed. Vast earthen terraces were built in its place, and a main stand, now a listed building, in 1928. A British record crowd of 118,567 gathered in January 1939 for a league match with Celtic. After another disaster in 1971, the stadium was largely rebuilt. The vast bowl-shaped terracing was removed and replaced by three rectangular, all-seated stands by 1981. After renovations were completed in 1997, the ground was renamed Ibrox Stadium.
Ibrox hosted the Scotland national team when Hampden Park was redeveloped in the 1990s, and three Scottish cup finals in the same period, and has also been a concert venue. The stadium hosted the rugby sevens at the 2014 Commonwealth Games held in Scotland.
History
First Ibrox (1872–1902) Rangers played its first match in May 1872, on Glasgow Green. The club then played home matches on public pitches across Glasgow, first moving to a regular home ground at Burnbank in 1875. A year later, Rangers played at the Clydesdale cricket ground in Kinning Park. This ground was improved to give a capacity of 7,000, but it was not owned by Rangers. After hints by the landlords that they wished to develop the site, Rangers left in February 1887. The club shared Cathkin Park with Third Lanark for the remainder of the 1886–87 season.
Rangers first moved to the Ibrox area later in 1887, playing on a site immediately to the east of the current stadium. The first match at this stadium was an 8–1 defeat to English side Preston North End on 20 August 1887, watched by a capacity crowd of over 15,000. This inaugural match had to be abandoned after 70 minutes due to a pitch invasion. The first Ibrox Park was a success in the short term, as three Scotland international matches and the 1890 Scottish Cup final were played at the ground. Celtic Park, built in 1892, was more advanced, however. Rangers opted to construct a new stadium, raising funds by forming a limited company. The last match at the old ground was played on 9 December 1899. The new Ibrox Park was formally opened with a 3–1 victory over Hearts on 30 December.
Ibrox Park and Ibrox disaster (1902–1928)
Ibrox Park, as it was known between 1899 and 1997, is almost completely different from the Ibrox Stadium of today. It followed the model of most Scottish stadiums of the time, comprising an oval track around the pitch, with a pavilion and one stand along one side. The ground had a capacity of 40,000. Celtic Park, Ibrox and Hampden Park all competed with each other to host Scottish Cup finals and Scotland matches, one of which could generate up to £1,000 in revenue for the host club. To aid their chances of gaining that revenue, Rangers constructed a large terracing, holding 36,000 people, behind the western goalmouth. The terracing, designed by Archibald Leitch, was formed by wooden planks bolted onto a framework made of iron. A similar wooden terracing was constructed at the eastern end, giving a total capacity of 75,000.
The structure was passed by the Govan Burgh Surveyor in March 1902, but there were newspaper reports that it was unstable. A crowd of 68,114 assembled for a Scotland v England match on 5 April 1902, but shortly after the kick-off one section of the terracing "collapsed like a trap door". A gap of 20 square yards appeared, causing about 125 people to fall to the ground 50 feet below the terracing. Most survived due to the fact they fell on top of other bodies, but 25 people were killed. 517 people were injured, some due to being crushed in the panic caused by the collapse.
Most people in the stadium were unaware that the (first) Ibrox disaster had happened. People even re-occupied the damaged area, despite the danger of further collapse. A definite reason for the disaster was not agreed upon, partly because there was no public inquiry held. Some experts blamed the quality of wood and the supplier was tried for culpable homicide, but was acquitted. The design was also cited as a possible cause. Generally, wooden structures of that size were not trusted. Rangers removed the wooden terraces, reducing capacity to 25,000. The criticism of the design did not deter Rangers from hiring Leitch in the future. He designed an expansion of Ibrox to a 63,000 capacity by 1910, using slopes made of earth. By this point, the city of Glasgow had the three largest purpose-built football grounds in the world.
Renovations (1928–1953)
The next major redevelopment occurred in 1928, after Rangers had won their first double. A new Main Stand, to the south side of the ground, was opened on 1 January 1929. The Main Stand, which has the familiar Leitch style criss-cross balcony and a red-brick facade, seated 10,000 people and provided standing accommodation in an enclosure. Simon Inglis, a writer on football stadia, commented in 2005 that the Main Stand is Leitch's "greatest work" and is "still resplendent today in its red brick glory under a modern mantle of glass and steel". The architectural significance of the Main Stand was reflected when it became a Category B listed building in 1987. Original seats in the Main Stand were made of cast iron and oak. One was auctioned in 2011 for £1,080.
The banking of the terracing continued to increase in the 1930s. On 2 January 1939, the Old Firm game against Celtic attracted a crowd of 118,567, the record attendance for any league match played in Britain. At this point, Ibrox was the second-largest stadium in Britain.
Post-war, re-design and new name (1953–1997) Floodlights were first used at Ibrox in December 1953, for a friendly match against Arsenal. The first floodlit Scottish league match was played at Ibrox, in March 1956. Covers were built over the north and east terracing during the 1960s. No structural changes were made to Ibrox, but capacity was cut to approximately 80,000 by safety legislation.
Ibrox Park had the worst fan safety record in Britain before its complete redesign and renaming in 1997. Two fans died in September 1961 when a barrier collapsed on Stairway 13, resulting in a crush. Stairway 13 was a popular exit from the East Terracing due to its proximity to Copland Road subway station and parking areas for the Rangers supporters' coaches, but it was often overcrowded and very steep. After this incident, Rangers installed safety measures, but further injuries were sustained in crushes on Stairway 13 in both 1967 and 1969. On 23 October 1968, the main stand at Ibrox was hit by fire. Just seven months later there was another fire, which destroyed more than 200 seats behind the directors box. The worst disaster to date to affect football in Britain happened after the Old Firm game on 2 January 1971, when 66 people died of asphyxiation due to another crush on Stairway 13. The game itself ended in a 1–1 draw, with Colin Stein scoring a late equalising goal for Rangers. This led to a widespread belief that the crush had been caused by fans who had left the game early, but had turned back when they heard the roar that greeted the Rangers goal. A public inquiry discounted this initial story. It established that the crowd had been travelling in the same direction when the crush happened, with it perhaps being precipitated by some bending over to pick up items that had been discarded during the goal celebrations. The downward force of the crowd leaving the stadium meant that when people started to fall there was no means of preventing a crush.
The inquiry and subsequent compensation cases found that Rangers had been inept in their administration and complacent after the incidents in the 1960s. The disaster also highlighted, however, the fact that there were no established safety standards that should be adhered to, let alone any means of enforcing such standards. This had been first recommended nearly 50 years earlier, after the 1923 FA Cup final. The Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds was published in 1973, and legislation was enacted with the Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975. This law cut the capacity of Ibrox to 65,000. In the short term, Rangers took the stopgap measure of installing benches in the North Stand, which was renamed the Centenary Stand.
Ibrox Stadium (1997–present)
The 1971 Ibrox disaster led to the club developing a modern, safe stadium. Willie Waddell visited modern grounds in West Germany during the 1974 World Cup and believed that steep terracing and exits, such as Stairway 13, had to be replaced. The cut in capacity and boardroom changes led to radical plans by architects Miller Partnership, which were published in November 1977. The plans were modelled on the Westfalenstadion, home ground of Borussia Dortmund. They involved a radical reshaping of the stadium, with the old bowl-shaped terracing to be replaced by three new all-seated structures. Only the old Main Stand would remain, with its enclosure providing the only standing room in the ground.
Although later events, such as the Hillsborough disaster and the subsequent Taylor Report, vindicated this plan, Rangers were taking a significant risk. The whole plan was estimated to cost £6 million, which no other club could have afforded in a short period of time. The development was funded by the Rangers football pools operation, which was the largest club-based scheme in Britain. The first phase of the plan, which began in 1978, was the removal of the east terracing and its replacement with the Copland Road stand. The same process was repeated on the west side of the ground a year later, with the two identical stands each holding 7,500 seats. The redevelopment was completed in 1981 with the replacement of the Centenary Stand by the 10,300 capacity Govan Stand.
The new Ibrox had a capacity of 44,000 and was opened with an Old Firm game played on 19 September 1981. By this time, however, the development cost had risen to £10 million, which depleted the club financially. This resulted in a difficult period in the history of Rangers, as the average attendance fell to 17,500 in the 1981–82 season, including a crowd of only 4,500 for a game against St Mirren.Rangers: The Complete Record (Breedon Books, 2005) states the attendance for the match against St Mirren was 6,000. The redeveloped stadium was partly blamed for this, as some fans felt that the new ground lacked atmosphere due to the spaces between the stands. This was during a period of low attendances in Scottish football in general, but also because of Rangers' generally poor performance at the time - between 1979 and 1986, Rangers never finished higher than 3rd. Despite this, Rangers had the highest average home attendances in the Premier Division in both 1983–84 and 1984–85.