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.

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