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 8th 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 8th 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