Murrayfield chief thrilled by historic European night

PAUL KIDDIE

MURRAYFIELD Stadium manager Mark Laidlaw today gave a resounding thumbs-up to the first competitive football match staged at the home of Scottish rugby.

Almost 19,000 fans - more than could be housed at Tynecastle - roared on Hearts to a thrilling 3-1 victory over Braga in the first round, first leg of their UEFA Cup clash last night.

The electric atmosphere which was generated came as a pleasant surprise to many observers, who had questioned the wisdom of staging the match at such a huge venue - the stadium capacity is 67,500.

However, Laidlaw never had any doubts the historic match would be a success. I thought the Hearts fans were superb and hopefully last night has knocked on the head the myth that Murrayfield doesn’t have an atmosphere when it is not full," he said.

"I got as big a buzz out of watching that as I have seeing anything at the stadium and it was a great night. People had to come along to experience it for themselves and hopefully they will now spread the word.

"We have proved Murrayfield can be a succees, irrespective of the argument over whether Tynecastle is sold or not. I’ll be cheering them on in the return leg and it would be great to have them back here in the group stages."

Levein also declared the stadium as a worthy venue, saying: "I don’t want this whole thing to be about the atmosphere at Murrayfield. It was good because we played well and gave the fans something to shout about - had we played poorly maybe it wouldn’t have been so good. I was not really concerned about that side of things but there seemed to be plenty of noise and it was a good experience for us."

Taken from the Scotsman