For the want of a Compass, the match was lost (almost)

Well, the usual has happened. We’ve been to a game and “one” of us has immediately posted something up to satisfy the eager fans or “the completists” as I like to call them. However, I’ve resisted as I need to sit back, mull over the experience, take stock of the emotions that have washed over me and…. I also bought an xbox.

So Stirling Albion it was then. After a fruitless search for a M&S sandwhich NOT infused with mayonnaise, it was off North-West to the place Dougie Donnelly always tells us is near Sterling, Tillicoultry. On arrival, memories of not one but two “sleep-related wrong railway station” mishaps flooded my mind. With a guilty glance at the photobooth (I’m sorry, ok) - it was off to see the place for a while.

Whilst Stirling passed the “could I live here test” – a sign-post to the ground could have been handy for these brave correspondents. Even putting the river right next to the railway station did not help us get the map the correct way round. The ground is near what felt like Europe’s largest (and most quiet) industrial estate. Not that I could take much in as my mind whirred with the thought of “If we miss the kick-off, how on earth can I convince Tagomi that this won’t count?”.

I like a Ground with a couple of main stands so Stirling didn’t let me down. Although warm when in the sun (why did we move in the second half?), it was a cold day with a fantastic deep blue sky. To add to this – you could see the famous “hills you can also see from Falkirk if you’ve ever lived there”.

When it started, the football was actually a bit distracting for two reasons: a) because I have an irrational fear that Tagomi is going to be thrown out whenever he takes a photo and b) we weren’t too sure which Team was which. After some fantastic Colombo-like detectiving – we realised who was who and started to get involved.

Brechin looked good especially their right-back who looked tidy and made some good runs and tackles. Stirling looked not so good. Not being a football expert – you can read Tagmi’s scribblings for a better judgement. Needless to say, it could have been 23-0 at half-time but it only reached 2-0 to the visitors. In between some good banter, Stirling Police also had to calm down one irate punter who was sat quite near one of the Stirling staff. Scotland might not win the World Cup but inventive Scottish swearing is as beautiful a part of the game as you can hear sometimes.

A strange end to the game as Stirling nabbed a goal back but the game ebbed away to a defeat for the hosts. Player of the match was the referee – some great decisions and handling, especially when calming down an excited Brechin scorer when others would have booked him. The best ref I can remember seeing.

Another highlight was the Match Programme. Although they did miss Gareth Southgate’s name off the “ten managers likely to succeed Fergie” section, I guess this was corrected when the later editions went to print. Some great stats for us and some good history of Stirling, the SPL and Brechin. Good stuff.

Lastly, as most of our long-time readers will obviously have been shouting – yes, we did get to see Roddy Grant again (see Forfar vs Brechin game way back when…). I know I didn’t have to point this out – I wanted to.

 

Dialogue avec fancy charts

Fade in.

A coffee shop somewhere in eastern Scotland.  Tagomi and Fredmadison are sitting at a rickety table discussing the next move in documenting their quest to conquer all 42 league football grounds in Scotland.

Tagomi: “I have to confess, i feel a little bit bad.  I’ve had this brilliant post ready to go for about a month and i just haven’t ever bothered to actually put it up.  What must our legions of devoted fans be thinking of us?”

Fredmadison: “‘Legions of fans’?  What are you talking about?  I’ve seen our blog stats.  We don’t have any readers.  Except for maybe your Mum. (hello mrs tagomi!).”

Tagomi: “No!  What about our legions of devoted reader/followers?  That pan-global collective of thinkers and artists who pour over our every word, desperate to glean more nuggets of truth and enlightenment from our pithy descriptions of toilet facilities at Scottish Football Grounds.”

Fredmadison: “Right.  You mean your Mum and your Dad, then.”

Tagomi: “Exactly.  Anyway, about this great post.  It’s really fantastic.  It combines a meta analysis of original primary research with innovative use of the latest GIS techniques to provide an insightful findings into our habits and preferences as regards ground location.”

Fredmadison: “You mean its a map that shows us all the places we’ve been to so far?”

Tagomi: “Exactly!  Look!  So cool!  The green bits are grounds we’ve done, the red bits are grounds we’ve still to get to!”

 

Fredmadison: “Very interesting.  I must say that is a very insightful piece of analysis you have done.  I am very impressed.  Truly you are the king of fancy chart things.”

Tagomi: “Thank you, Fred.  I particularly like the way it highlights our East Coast bias.  Look how we cling to the North Sea”

Fredmadison: “With good reason too.  Bad things happen to people who venture west of Stirling.  I ain’t never going to Airdrie, man.  You can’t make me!”

Tagomi: “And I, my friend, have an irrational fear of Coatbridge.  Nonetheless, these are barriers are ones we will have to face if our quest is ever to be completed.”

Fredmadison: “Maybe if i had a surgeon’s mask, it would be ok?”

Tagomi: “Whatever it takes, dude.”

Fredmadison: “Anyway.  Isn’t this just a very, very longwinded way of alerting the world to the fact that we have a madcap plan to go to Dingwall on Saturday to see Ross County play Dunfermline?”

Tagomi: “Indeed it is.  Very much looking forward to it I am too.  It’ll be a good chance to catch up on Ross County after having seen them last season.  And, if i’m not mistaken, this’ll be our first time seeing Dunfermline since that time when the Queen Mother died and we disgraced the nation by refusing to stand for the minute’s silence.”

Fredmadison: “I think you may be right.  I’ll see you there, shall i?”

Tagomi: “Let’s hope so.”

Fade out.

 

Forthbank Stadium, Stirling: Ground #14

We’re into October.  The nights are beginning to draw in.  The clocks go back in a week or two and there’s a little nip just starting to creep into the air of a morning.  Time, we thought, for us to realise that summer is over, the schools are back in, that the football season is long past started already.  Time, in fact, for fredmadison and I to dust off the trusty tartan travel rug and head off for another fortytwogrounds trip across the country.

 

For ground number 14 we chose Forthbank Stadium, Stirling.  “Why Stirling?”  I hear you ask, to which I can only reply: “um…well…I…you know…” (insert vague gestures as appropriate).  Listen, there is no “why”.  You should know that by now.  There is no ‘why’, no ‘when’, there are no ‘rules’ and no ‘plan’.  All there is are 42 grounds.  14 down.  28 to go.

 

Stirling Albion vs Brechin City

SFL Division 2

Forthbank Stadium

18/10/08

 

Saturday morning and we meet in Edinburgh, jump on the train fully supplied with sandwiches (don’t get me started…) and coffee and before we know it we’re getting off in Stirling and the sun is shining.  It’s a 25 minute walk to the ground, so we’ve been told, so we kill a bit of time in town before setting off, map in hand and a spring in our step.  45 minutes later we arrive breathless and scampering at the stadium (yes, three different maps and a set of printed instructions and we still manage to head North instead of South…is this why our parents can’t get a good seat at the synagogue), just in time to grab a programme and fall into our seats before the game kicks off.

 

Impressions of Forthbank?  Well it’s a decent little ground.  It’s nice to see a newbuild stadium with proper stands running along both touchlines.  It’s clean and tidy and the sightlines are good.  It’s a little disappointing not to be able to wander all the way around the ground or to get quite as close to the touchline as you can at other grounds (links park, for instance), but there are plenty of other charms to make up for that.  The views over the hills are fantastic and the crowds are crammed just close enough together to generate a good bit of banter and atmosphere (I shall never be able to look a tin of prunes straight in the eye again).

 

And so to the game itself.  Brechin started the game at the top of the table and you could see why.  Their forwards are decent and hardworking, the full backs are quick to push up and overlap, they get crosses into the box and they switch the ball quite well.  You know, they’re alright.  Stirling on the other hand…oh me!   Even allowing for the fact that this might just have been an off day – probably the poorest side we’ve seen so far.  Is that fair?  Probably. (question: would they do better if they were managed by Alan Moore, instead of Allan Moore?)   Some really, really entertaining, car crash defending all through the first half meant that Brechin could have been four or five up by half time.  As it was they took an hour to get to two and could quite easily have ended up drawing the game after a strange last half hour where Stirling upped the tempo (if not the quality) a bit and pulled one back.

 

Highlights of the day: 

• Realising again that we didn’t know which team was which (hey, they were both wearing change strips.  It’s very confusing!) and having to rely on Holmes-like impeccable deductive reasoning to figure it out – ‘once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be Stirling Albion playing in blue’
• Debating the rights and wrongs of approaching a second division player and asking for his autograph because you once gave him 30 caps for Scotland in Championship Manager.
• Watching the referee having to explain the offside rule to the Brechin bench at the end of the game.
• Oh, any one of five or six fantastic defensive mishaps committed by the Stirling back four during that first half an hour.  You’d think they’d never seen a football before…

 

Match Stats

 

Stirling Albion 1(Grehan 55) – Brechin City 2 (Twigg 40, Byers 52)

Attendance: 577

 

Here are some match reports.  And here, which you totally have to see, because it completely captures the spirit of the game, are some video highlights.  I think you can see our feet at one point, if you look really closely.

 

New Seasonal Greetings

See what i did in the title there? It’s fantastic “punnery” like that which stops tagomi from committing to the longer car rides we are faced with in this journey. 

Just starting to look at the new fixtures for the 2008/9 season to see if here are any non-fife derbies we can see. Before the season has even began, we’ve already got the “will he move, will he stay” debate that has all of Britain guessing and discussing. My bet (for what it’s worth) is that Lee Cattermole WILL go to Wigan but hey, I am no seer. Or Sneer

It all starts on the 2nd of August but for us it will probably start a few weeks after that when we realise why Chick Young is back on the tele and start to arrange our travels. How long can we resist the lure of Forfar and those mad staring eyes? Can we go see Mixu again and is the East Stirling Announcer still the best ever? Some of these questions will never be, and perhaps rightly so, answered this season. Here’s hoping we have some enjoyable trips in the next 9 months or so to tell you about….

 

Dens Park, Dundee – #11

Another month gone by and still no new grounds to report on.  What can I say, life intervenes.  Sometimes its just difficult to fit everything in.  You people just have no idea of the staggering range of exciting offers fred and I have to juggle everyday.  Artists, poets, movie stars – they all come knocking on our door over here at fortytwogrounds mansions, they all want a piece of us (I mean, sure its usually to ask us to put their rubbish out for them or make sure we water the azaleas properly next time, but still).  And then, of course, things like this keep happening and your heart breaks and all the joy and hope seeps out of the world and you’re left an empty, broken man who can no longer even imagine ever enjoying anything ever again.  That can make it difficult to get up for a game too.

Anyway, to fill in the time till the next game (hopefully in May.  Probably in May.  Maybe in May), here’s another dip into the archives.  Seeing as how Dundee have just been pipped to the first division title this season, I thought it might be a good time to revisit ground number 11 -  Dens Park.

Here’re are few things we learned during our trip to see Dundee vs Livingston on 27^th October 2007.

• Dundee taxi drivers are totally mental.  No, seriously.  Really worryingly scary.  Like the guy we had who made us promise not to walk back into town after the game because the Hilltown is far too dangerous for the likes of us (I think because fredmadison confessed to having a copy of the Guardian in his bag) and we’d totally, definitely get knifed.  Way to promote your town, by the way.
• Dundee’s stewards are even more totally mental.  Particularly the guy with the mad, empty eyes (much like Dick Campbell) who spent the whole game staring us out (looking for all the world as though he was imagining what our intestines would look like wrapped around his neck) and shuffling menacingly over to intimidate the young boys sitting along from us.
• Livingston don’t have many fans.  We sat in the away end for this one (partly so we might have some company on our dangerous, daredevil walk back to the train station after the match).  The Bob Shankly stand was pretty sparsely populated that day, I can tell you.
• Fredmadison’s polo fetish continues unabated.  Maybe time to add another product to the growing list of controlled substances around here (along with haribo space mix, kettle crisps and, oh, too many, many things to mention in a public forum like this)
• Dundee were a decent side this season, or so it seemed to us.  They went behind to a breakaway goal early on (which had the two or three livvie fans around us dancing in joy), but still kept passing the ball around quite nicely.  Kevin Mcdonald in the middle of the park did look just about as good as some of his press says he might be.  Bob Davidson was not too shabby either, scored with a screamer just after livvie’s goal (although, as I recall, the Livingston keeper (huge bloke, he was, huge) left a lot to be desired all the way through the game).  All in all, Dundee weren’t flattered by the score at all and seemed to score just about every time they went forward during the second half.  Livingston were just a bit rubbish all round, by contrast – all long punts and no composure. 
• Dens park is another one of these slightly depressing places.  One of these grounds that’s been developed in bits and pieces over the years as the club bounced around between the top two divisions.  The result is a lopsided sort of a feel with two clean, but pretty characterless stands behind either goal and a couple of ramshackle old stands running along each touchline.  The North stand also has a very odd curve to it that makes it feel as though it’s a long way away from the action.  Odd all round, though the view we had over the badlands at the outskirts of the city was quite striking.  Not pretty in anyway, mind you, but ‘striking’.
• On the way back after the game we ignored the advice of our taxi driver mentalist and braved the walk down Hilltown to the city centre.  Its not so tough.  We’ve seen worse.  We might be bourgois, middle class, Guardian-reading men in suits these days, but we’ve been around.  We’ve seen worse.  I have some scars I could show you (not all of which are mental), if you want the proof.

Here’re a couple of match reports dundee-4.

And here’s somebody else’s flickr site with some more pictures taken at the game.

Vital Match Statistics

Saturday 27^th October 2007

Scottish Football League Division One

Dens Park, Dundee

Dundee 4 (Davidson 20, Zemlik 61, Davidson 68, Lyle 73) – Livingston 1 (Pesir 14)

Attendance: 3,639

 

Ground #2: the best stadium announcer in the world

Time for another quick dip into the archives, I feel.  Mr Fredmadison has now returned from his travels (and is sporting the least convincing texas drawl you ever heard in your life.  Honestly, think Tommy Lee Jones mixed in with a bit of…I don’t know…Jerry Lewis (which, come to think of it, is not a bad description of the man himself, actually.) so there’s a decent chance we’ll get around to organising another game fairly soon.  Maybe by October or so.

Anyway.  On to the second ground on our schedule, and probably one of the highlights of our travels so far.  Really, we’ll have to go a long, long way before we have a day as good (and as weird) as this one.  The date was 8^th February 2003.  The ground was Firs Park, Falkirk, and we were there to see East Stirlingshire vs Elgin City.  Here’s what we remember about that day:

• Walking along what seemed like a perfectly normal residential street, thinking ‘this can’t possibly be the right place’ and then stumbling across the turnstiles to the ground jammed, or so it seemed, right in between two big blocks of terraced flats.  Not the sort of ground you see for miles before you arrive at it, then…
• Having a mild panic when we realised that neither of us knew what colours either side played in.  Swallowing our pride and asking the guy who was selling the programmes (It’s black and white for East Stirlingshire, by the way (I think).  Just like Juventus).
• The programme.  Wow, the programme.  Might have mentioned this before, but this was just great.  A kind of photocopy and tippex job that looked like it had been run off in someone’s back room the night before.  Great stuff.
• The ground itself.  Well.  Here’s what we scribbled about it at the time:

“On the one hand it has to be said that this is a desperately, desperately sad place.  A horrible, delapidated (never was a word more appropriate) muddy hole; the ground consists of two sides of open terracing (fenced off and unsafe for use), one bank of shallow, ash covered, railway-sleepered terracing roofed over with a stretch of rusty, pigeon infested corrugated iron and one rickety-looking, wood constructed main stand – you don’t know what to worry about more, what you’re stepping in or what you’re standing under.  All this is hemmed in on all sides by housing developments and retail parks – never did a ground seem more out of place, out of time and unloved.  I tell you, I have been in some holes in my time but this place took my breath away.”

• On the upside, the ground does have the best stadium announcer in the world.  Bar none.  Honesly, this guy was amazing.  Starting a good fifteen minutes before kick off we were treated to a constant stream of tightly scripted, dry witted, self-deprecating gags the like of which might have seemed not out of place in one of woody’s niteclub routines, like, from the sixties or something (had woody allen been born a middle aged football fan from central Scotland, obviously).  Reluctantly stopping himself just as the game kicked off, he then proceeded to do the same thing all over again all the way through half time.  Totally Captain Fantastic!
• And the game itself?  Well, 90 minutes of pretty mundane fare from 2 struggling sides (this was the ‘shire during their ‘haven’t won a game for two years phase, not the relative success of recent times) brightened up by four fantastic goals (actually I can only clearly remember one of them, but I’m pretty sure they were all just great).

Other sundry recollections:

• Some guy getting ejected from the ground (around 0.5% of the attendance) in the first half and having a fight with the steward.  We think that  he had tried to steal the takings. Hey, we could have lent him a tenner if he needed it so bad.
• The substitute striker who kept standing at least two metres off-side at all times, then shouting at the linesman and his team-mates every time he got flagged.   Sometimes you go to a football game (especially down the divisions) and you just know you’re better than someone who’s playing – this was definitely one of those occassions. He must have been caught offside on about 25 occasions.
• The announcer giving the official attendance as “179, or 178 if we don’t count the guy who was thrown out in the first half” (which will always make me laugh until I die)
• The deaf/dumb guys who stood at the side of the pitch bellowing incoherently at the linesman all the way through the second half.  The word you’re looking for is ‘surreal’.  That’s ‘surreal’.

Here’s a link to another blog covering a trip to the shire just a few years after us.  all good stuff, i think.

Vital match stats:

Saturday 8^th February 2003

Scottish Football League Division Three

Firs Park, Falkirk

East Stirlingshire 2 (Maughan 26; McAuley 54) – Elgin City 2 (Ross 8; James 50)

Attendance: 178

 

Station Park, Forfar – #1

In the absence of any new trips to report on, here’s one from the archives…

On 9^th of November 2002  – so far back in the distant mists of time that a loaf of bread only cost 2d and you could get 6 pints, a new suit and a bag of chips and still have some change left from a pound note – fredmadison and I first set out on this grand tour around the footballing theatres of Scotland.  First game up was Forfar Athletic versus Brechin City at Station Park, Forfar.  Why we chose this as a starting point is still not quite clear even to me, but I suppose it was as good a place as any.  A reasonable road trip for us, an Angus derby, a chance to see lower league goal machine Roddy Grant before he hung up his boots…this was always going to be a good day out.  Here are some things we remember about the trip:

• A long, long drive, or so it seemed, to Forfar in fredmadison’s little car (for, primitive though it seems to us now, back in those days people still used petroleum fuel and the internal combustion engine as a principal form of transport.  How barbaric!). 
• Getting to Forfar and realising neither of us had done the necessary research to find out where the ground was.
• Stopping in a local butchers shop to ask directions.  Feeling nauseous and declining politely when he (rubbing his bloody hands on his apron all the while) offered to sell us some pies for after the game.
• Walking into Station Park and having an instant, overwhelming feeling that this was going to be a great day, that this ‘round the grounds’ thing was a brilliant idea and that all was right in the world.  Here’re some notes we made about the ground at the time:

“Classic, reasonably well maintained old school football ground.  Nice main stand on one side of the ground, with 3 banks of narrow terracing around the other sides.  The walls around the back of the terracing were just low enough for us to make out the hills in the distance and catch the last of the afternoon sun dying behind them.  Great crowd – really good numbers of away fans behind the goal where we were standing, all passing banter with the players and the home supporters walking past to get to the main stand.  Very, very weird toilets (weird here being a polite way of saying ‘horrid’).  There’s a little wall at an end of the ground – you simply turn around this and pee against the back of it.  Note to self – remember not to wear trainers if we go back.”

• Decent game all round. Brechin City ended up that season being promoted as Division 2 Champions and you could see that they were the most accomplished side all round. They always looked like they had a plan (we like sides who look like they know what they’re doing. We like order. We despise chaos.) and stroked the ball around quite nicely. Having said that, Forfar went and won the game with two goals on the breakaway, so what do we know…

Other sundry recollections:

• Roddy Grant (playing for Brechin at the time) being probably the fattest professional footballer we’ve ever seen, but having a great game and finding time for some brilliant banter with the crowd. The stuff that legends are made of.
• Dick Campbell (Brechin manager at the time) having mad, mad eyes, the likes of which have to be seen to be believed and looking like the hardest man in the universe, bar none.
• Seeing Neil Cooper (Forfar manager at the time) in the car park looking glum.
• Driving back to Fife afterwards, almost ending up in Perth and having a lovely morroccan chick pea stew thing at Ms Tagomi’s mother’s place afterwards (and getting a bit scared by her dog, who was having one of it’s ‘mad’ days).

Vital Match Stats:

Saturday November 9^th 2002

Station Park, Forfar

Scottish Football League Division 2

Forfar Athletic 2 (Bavidge: 15, 73) – Brechin City 1 (Templeman: 70)

Attendance: 868

Epilogue:

It was a couple of months after this game that Stevie Paterson embarked on his ill-fated reign as Aberdeen manager and took Neil Cooper with him as under-21 coach.  The early months of 2003 were filled with extremely disturbing (for dandy don fans, anyway) rumours linking Aberdeen with Forfar strikers Paul Tosh and Martin Bavidge.  I’d have rather had Roddy Grant, myself.

Here’s a match report(forfar.doc), by the way.  Stolen from ‘the courier’, i do believe.

 

Holding pattern

The sharp eyed amongst you, our happy band of merry readers, will have noticed that there hasn’t been a whole load of a lot of fortytwogrounds type action over here in the past month or so.  Truth be told things have been a little busy.  February sort of buzzed past in a blur of tricky deadlines, missed cultural events and other such stuff.  March hasn’t been too much different.  Now one of our number (hey, let’s name names – it’s fredmadison) has only gone and zipped off on holiday for three weeks!  (important information for stalkers – its Rekyavic, New York, Austin, New York, London…or something like that)

Anyway.  Upshot of all that is that we haven’t been to any games since January and it doesn’t look as if we’ll make it to anymore until April.  So it goes.  Good thing is that there should be some cracking games to look forward to when we get back on the road again.  I’m thinking title deciders, meaty, old fashioned relegation battles, end of season play offs…all that sort of thing.

In the meantime we’ll be aiming to fill in the gap with a few notes on the games we made it to in the days (so many, many long years) before this blog/journal/scrapbook thing was up and running.  Look out for those coming up in the next few days.

 

“We’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.”

I thought it might be amusing to step back a little and give ourselves a quick rundown of the stuff we’ve seen on the pitch in the 13 grounds we’ve been to so far.  That’s “amusing” in a sort of ‘playing about with statistics, giving me an excuse to construct excessively elaborate spreadsheets of the sort that makes everyone around me go a bit quiet and shuffle their feet’ kind of a way, i know, but bear with me.  honestly, some of this is quite good…

13 games

37 goals

2 penalties (both converted)

3 sending offs (one, at East Fife, for the finest right hook in front of the referee i’ve ever seen)

6 home wins

5 away wins

2 score draws

No 0-0 draws at all (its thrills every time in our experience)

Highest attendance = 13,461 (at Tynecastle)

Lowest attendance = 178 (at Firs Park)

A total game going audience of 38,785 people (or an average of 2,983 per game…or a pretty poor CIS cup attendance at Parkhead or Ibrox))

A total of 23 different teams (hey, that’s more than half!).

We’ve seen two teams both home and away (Dundee & Forfar Athletic) and one team away from home on two occasions (Peterhead – both of which they’ve won…).

Given the incestuous nature of Scottish Football teams (“um…are you sure you want to say that?”- nervous legal editor) we have the general sneaking suspicion that we’ve probably seen loads of players turning out for different sides.  Without getting toooo train-spottery (like pouring over match reports and cross-checking stats at soccerbase) about it we do know that we’ve definitely seen four players more than once.  They are:

Elliott Smith (no.  not that one.) – Berwick Rangers & Forfar Athletic

Ludovic Roy - Ayr United and Dundee

Mark Cairns – Queen’s Park & Forfar Athletic

Steven Craig – Aberdeen & Livingston (and, yes, he did look surly and adolescent for both of them)

um…what else…

We’ve seen 4 or more goals scored on 4 seperate occasion…we’ve seen 3 games with only 1 goal.  Of the 26 sides who’ve started games in front of us only 5 have kept clean sheets (we are not good omens for defences and goalkeepers, i think)…on average we see 2.85 goals a game…we’ve seen 2 SPL games, 4 each from SFL Divisions 1 & 2 and 3 from Division 3…

…oh, crikey, i could keep doing this all day, i really could, but i can see that you’re beginning to drop off a bit at the back there so i’d probably better stop. 

More interesting posts coming soon, i promise.

 

the curious case of the hesitant linesman

Yes well, off to Cowdenbeath with more than a passing interest in the result. Having a bona-fide fan of one Team with us was something new. The only time I’ve ever really supported one of the Teams on our visit was when I felt intimidated by Tagomi’s description of the Campbell brothers at Brechin. I felt I HAD to support them that day or else. 

Well, I went from not knowing exactly Cowdenbeath was to knowing it is slightly less colder than than Montrose. As I was sitting (next to a man of the cloth I’ll have you know), my feet could not pull off the amazing dance moves still being talked about in hushed tones at Links Park. At least I was slightly more protected than the youngest and smallest Ball Boy I have ever seen. Poor lad – no-one laughed when his Mother stepped onto the Speedway track and made him put his hood on and motioned he should move about a bit to stop from keeling over.  

Saying that, there wasn’t much laughter at the football on show especially in the first half. We’d just sat down at the start of proceedings when a Cowdenbeath defender decided to head a cross into his own goal. Not the best start but luckily lightning never strikes twice. Oh, but it did actually – as another cross was turned in past the home keeper by an embarassed colleague AND a goalkick was allowed to squirm out of the goalkeeper’s grasp and onto the feet of one of the 10 on-rushing County players (it was like watching Zulu).

Ho hum. I believe County have been described as a “big, physical team” but this doesn’t really do the County players justice. Being full time football players obviously means they were quicker (in thought and deed) but doesn’t explain the difference in height between the two teams. Only when a slightly taller than average Cowdenbeath substitute come on did the home side win a header (well, own goal aside).  The SFA should investigate this as a matter of urgency.

Six goals but the football on show wasn’t as good as previous games. If you’d cut out some of the catastrophic defending – it would have been a lot more closer but a lot less entertaining. Saying that, the freezing conditions and the driving rain were not conducive to free-flowing football. The ground as well maybe didn’t help – it was one of the more quieter grounds I’ve been to. This is mainly because the Speedway track means that fans are really far apart. We could hear the odd shout (and comedy swearword) from across the other side of the pitch but not much banter. One thing that did unite the dispersed masses was the one of the linesmen. Far be it from me to criticise these people (my dad used to be a referee) but I loved the way he’d take a quick glance at the referee before giving a throw-in. Some of the time, he was clearly in the wrong but he couldn’t take his cue from the ref so he just picked a direction at random. Great stuff – a good trip and much obliged for being granted access to the Boardroom. I’ll go back there – in the Summer – I may also renege on the Vegetarianism as well. The Cowdenbeath pies looked the nicest we’ve seen at the 13 Grounds we’ve done so far.