MORE than 20 years have passed since Dumbarton Football Club left their historic Boghead Park and moved to their current home in the shadow of the Rock - but the famous old ground still has the ability to stir the emotions among Sons fans of a certain age.

Boghead is one of many old British football grounds featured on the 'footballgroundguide' channel on YouTube.

In common with most of the videos on the channel, the Boghead footage was shot in 1980 - just after the 100th birthday of the famous old ground.

Parts of the ground were little changed from the day it had opened in 1879 - in fact, by the time it reached the end of its days at the turn of the century, Boghead was the oldest stadium in Scotland still in continuous use.

By its final days the stadium was very much showing its age - in 1994 Dumbarton were ordered to build a fence in front of the toilets after local residents complained that they could see inside.

When the YouTube footage was shot, Boghead could still hold up to 10,000 spectators, and that remained the ground's capacity when Dumbarton made it to the dizzy heights of the Premier Division in the mid-1980s.

But eventually, as it fell into a state of disrepair, capacity was slashed to 5,000 - and then, in its final days, to not much more than 3,000.

Sons'  last match at Boghead was played almost exactly 21 years ago - a 2-1 win over East Fife on May 6, 2000, watched by a capacity crowd of 3,031.

Dumbarton shared Albion Rovers' Cliftonhill Stadium in Coatbridge for a few matches at the start of the following season before their new home - known in those days as the Strathclyde Homes Stadium, now the C&G Systems Stadium - was ready.

One YouTube comment certainly appreciates the spirit of the Sons' old stadium, saying: "I think that could be loosely described as a ground with character."