Dundee's Dens Park departure is looming large and I'm not sure how to deal with this disorientation

Latest developments in City of Discovery beg question – do I support a football team or a ground?

The latest issue of Staantribune, the Dutch football culture magazine, sports an eye-catching front page. The entire edition is a tribute to ‘Schotland’, which is noteworthy enough in itself. Subjects covered inside include Theo Snelders, Hearts v Hibs, Jimmy Johnstone as well as an extensive piece on Voetsbaldstad Dundee – meaning 'football city'.

And they're spot on. Dundee is a football city. A unique one too. As that cover story illustration emphasises. Most people have seen a picture of Dundee’s two senior football grounds sitting cheek by jowl but the one the publication has used is an unfamiliar one. It is certainly taken from an unusual vantage point, looking directly east as opposed to north-east, the standard viewpoint. The Tay road bridge – though sadly not quite the V & A museum – is visible to the right, as is the docks area. Stacked old rigs in the mid-distance are evidence of a city once known as Juteopolis seeking to reinvent itself and progress.

I suppose this is relevant bearing in mind the point of this piece, which is the difficulty I and I know many others – not all of them Dundonians – have in accepting this quirk of two stadiums existing on the same street, viewed as special enough to promote an entire edition of Scottish content, might be re-arranged. A wrecking ball has Dens Park's name on it. Smartarsedly pointing out that it must be mistaken identity as it's actually called the Scot Foam Stadium at Dens Park these days might not save the historic ground (though it's a good try).

Dundee are predicted to leave Dens Park in 2025.

Meanwhile, robbed of 50 per cent of its charm and all of its noteworthiness, a street of shared and – well let's not be modest or even partisan about it – extremely rich football history is in danger of becoming a much less spectacular thoroughfare. Sixty years after the city’s much-missed Royal Arch was demolished, modernism be damned.

But back to that pic. It’s such a bright, clear day that you can almost make out St Andrews. It’s not being facetious to note that, on the day the photograph was taken, Dens would have passed a pitch inspection. Of course, where there’s sun, there’s shadow. And it’s not just the one cast by the magisterial, Archibald Leitch-designed main stand shaped like a jack-knifed juggernaut in the foreground. The light blue cladded structure draws the eye, which pleases me. It dominates the scene. But for how much longer? Dundee's plans to relocate to the outskirts have been re-confirmed by managing director John Nelms.

A few reporters met him just before Christmas. A Planning Permission in Principle application will be lodged this month. There's no plan B, he said. Since then, two matches have been postponed at Dens, the first an hour before kick-off. It feels like we're in time added on.

I admired Nelms’ intensity and his firm belief that this was the right course of action, despite rising construction costs and myriad other complications. I admired his optimism, too, I guess. He was still talking in terms of the summer of 2025 when it came to kicking a ball in the new stadium, which means the last Dundee derby at Dens might already have taken place (a 0-0 draw, perhaps memorable only for Ryan Sweeney making a goalline tackle with his head, two years ago next month).

The front cover of Dutch football culture magazine Staantribune with a picture of Dundee's current senior football landscape

It was hard not to be reflective while driving home from the briefing with Nelms, via a short detour up Tannadice Street into Sandeman Street. Sometimes it feels like I don’t support a football team. Rather, I support a football ground. That's not to say I had posters of Archibald Leitch on my wall as a boy but the ground where I started watching football, or at least started watching it regularly, is so wrapped up with positive, carefree memories it's hard to imagine watching Dundee elsewhere. Sometimes I wonder if I can bring myself to do so. I'll be like that Limmy sketch where he repeatedly asks the person in the ticket office for a ticket to a seaside town it becomes clear is Millport. It also emerges that it’s the time – back when he was 16 – he’s desperate to return to rather than the place.

Some may wonder why anyone would cherish a stadium associated with so little success in recent decades. As that trophy famine list that did the rounds on X recently underlines, it's been a big fat 50 years since Dundee last won anything of note. The main stand was just over half a century old when Dundee beat Celtic in 1973’s League Cup final. Now, despite the best efforts of fans with pyro stuffed down their pants, it's creaked its way past 100. As recently as Boxing Day it seemed to cope pretty well with a Category A fixture against Celtic, when I last admired its “special presence … bordering almost on the stately”, to quote Simon Inglis, the renowned stadium expert, from his seminal book The Football Grounds of Great Britain.

But I also remember ringing Inglis when Hearts were on the verge of demolishing their much-loved Leitch-designed main stand and nearly falling off my chair when he told me to relax. “The question I often ask myself is what would Archie Leitch say now?" he told me. "And I would suspect he would say: ‘that building has lasted 100 years? You are kidding me!’” In short, it has fulfilled its function and more.

Dundee United fans might titter at this existential crisis. But I like to think they too might experience a sense of loss as well as disorientation if Dens disappears and the spot where Ralph Milne stood arms outstretched after scoring the opener the day they won the Scottish title is paved over or completely obscured beneath a warren of houses. Tannadice without Dens seems a bit like the Beano without Dandy, which, again, might be the counterargument to those protesting like me. Life goes on.

A friend posted a photograph on Instagram a few days ago. It stopped me in my tracks. It was of him and his son, at the last match at St Mirren's Love Street – already 15 years ago last week.