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Meet The Tartan Army
The Tartan Army are recognised as an iconic brand across the world but there are many clubs in Scotland who make up our famous name. Therefore, it’s the duty of it’s own magazine to give each TA Club a bit of profile now and again. In the first of our guide to the TA Clubs, Tartan Army Magazine looks at the foundation and growth of the Cumbernauld Tartan Army and caught up with club secretary Gary Bannatyne to find out more about them. The Cumbernauld Tartan Army (CTA) was set-up in 2003 by a handful of Scotland fans working at the local Royal Mail office. As expected, the membership was small to begin with, as Gary explains: “There must’ve been about eight of us who all went to the games and we just wanted someway to get to the games. So we hired a wee mini-bus and we left at the Beefeater to go to the games and it’s built from there.” Nowadays, the CTA boasts 53 members, all Scotland Supporters Club members, and now hires a double-decker bus for their games. When asked if he was surprised by the growth of the CTA in the last five years, Gary replied: “How quickly it’s built up yeah! We’ve had loads of people coming on the bus and stuff so it’s grew quite quickly and, for a while now, it’s been a full double-decker every game.” September 2007 saw the CTA run a bus to take members to Paris for that memorable victory against the French. That trip also saw the club form a friendship with the Overtown Tartan Army (OTA) just by advertising bus spaces on the Tartan Army messageboard. Since then, the two have kept close contact and this was emphasised when the OTA invited their CTA compatriots to a Tartan Army function in January 2009 that included a gig by Tartan Army footsoldier Davy Holt. Speaking of how the OTA link materialised, Gary said: “After the draw for the European Championships, we seen France came up and decided straight away we were going to run a bus. We organised a Parks of Hamilton bus and we just advertised it on the messageboard to see if we’d got any interest and one of the first people to get in touch with us was a guy called Paul Toner who kind of runs their group. What happened was we ended up sitting talking, they paid straight away and stuff, they came through here one night and asked how we set up Cumbernauld Tartan Army and they were looking to set up the same thing. So basically it just went from there, it started up with ten of them then it turned out 14 of them went. Then they asked how we set up, borrowed our constitution off us to draw up some of the same ideas. We went through to their first AGM, helped them set up their AGM, how to run it so it’s been since then we’ve been backwards and forwards.” After the success of the Paris trip, the CTA have again chartered a bus so the “Cumbernauld Express” is on it’s way to Amsterdam via Dover-Calais on March 26 and has sold out, with OTA members again joining them on the journey. There are also plans for CTA to return the favour to OTA by staging their own Tartan Army function where plans are in the early stages. The CTA, however, is about more than Scotland trips and drunken shenanigans. They are also devoted to charity work with their chosen charity being the Scottish Spina Bifida Centre, Cumbernauld. In October last year, they handed over a £200 cheque from funds raised from a Race Night a couple of months earlier and are keen to hold more fundraising events. Gary said of how they chose Spina Bifida: “We held an AGM and talked about affiliating ourselves with a charity. It was one of the guys who’s a taxi driver and he mentioned it. They actually don’t get any money from the government and we wanted it to be something local so someone proposed it and we agreed. We had a race night and gave them a cheque for £200 before the Norway game. We hope to have further nights to raise money for them.” Cumbernauld Tartan Army recently joined the Association of Tartan Army Clubs (ATAC), who meet up with the SFA to discuss issues with the SFA. Speaking of how important ATAC are to the CTA, Gary said: “They have meetings with the SFA so they raise points, they talk to Derek Kirkwood the security advisor and others and give them suggestions about what we’re looking for. We’re just getting into it and finding out how it works and how it benefits us. For example, I, like most TA clubs, raised with them concerns our members have with was points for away games in where if you apply for a ticket but don’t go you get the point though ATAC had already spoke to them about this and changes were made. So they were the ones who instigated this where you need to prove you had went by sending flight tickets and hotel bookings or you won’t get your point.” The CTA is always on the lookout for more members to join, which costs a one-off fee of £10 for adults but free for anyone under 16. One of the requirements is that you must be an SSC member meaning the CTA can order tickets on your behalf, as Gary explains: “You need to have a Supporters Club membership, that’s part of our constitution, and one of the options we’ve got is we buy the tickets. That’s not mandatory but it became more of a family section thing so that all the kids can go together. It means that if a guy goes for pies there’s five adults and eight kids so he doesn’t need to ask a stranger to watch them or take the kids with him, he actually knows who they are and the kids know who everybody is and they’re all watching out for each other so it’s good that way. Then in the North Stand, you’ve got about 30 of us sitting together.” The Cumbernauld Tartan Army are, like most TA clubs, dedicated in their support of the National team and like to do their bit for charity as well. If you want to know more about the Cumbernauld TA, check out their website at www.cumbernauldta.com. If you want your Tartan Army club to be featured in Tartan Army Magazine, please contact us at www.tartanarmy.co.uk.
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