STEVE Clarke has revealed that he enjoyed Scotland being based at Oriam in the wake of his assistant’s derogatory comments about the £33m national performance centre earlier this week.
John Carver described the pitches at the Edinburgh venue as “a safety hazard” and “a health risk” on Tuesday and expressed his surprise that no members of the national squad had suffered an injury on them.
However, Clarke, whose players have trained at Lesser Hampden in Glasgow in the build-up to their opening Euro 2024 qualifier against Cyprus at Hampden today, stressed that he was happy with the facilities.
“First of all, and I think this was the point John was trying to make, it has felt good to be using the facilities at Lesser Hampden, because they are really top class,” he said.
“Obviously, we are the first group to get on that pitch and train on it. They (Queen’s Park) have invested a lot of money in it. So I think in his own way, and I love John to bits, he was trying to put across how good the facility was.
“It might have come across a little bit negative going the other way, but that is not fair because Oriam was good to us. I have got some really good memories of working there.
“It is just a matter of investment. Queen’s Park have obviously put a bit of money in there. Oriam do try to improve the facilities.
“The slippy pitch? In Scotland, when you come to March you are coming out of winter, the pitch can be tricky. In November, you can have the same. It can happen. We asked Oriam to get the growing lights, they did. They improved the pitch, they did well.
“The reason Graeme Jones (SFA performance director) and myself first started looking for a different facility was we couldn’t get the hotel booked with the required number of rooms for this camp and the June camp. So we looked, Queen’s Park made a fantastic offer to us and we are happy to be there.”
Asked if Scotland would return to Oriam in future, Clarke said: “That is not for me to decide. That is something we have got to look at after these two camps. We will see how we go and then we will decide.”
