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Click to view slideshow. The passion of football in a number of countries is all part of the rich tapestry of the game in these lands. The commercial orchestration of the larger European leagues has taken something away from the fan versus the action, sanitising it all taking the games ultimate colour away in the process. Nowhere has managed to retain its passion in the stands as well as Argentina. The lunatic fringe may have brought national disgrace when the second leg of the Copa Libertadores Super Clasico final between River Plate and Boca Juniors ended up being played in Madrid because of the violent attack of the Boca team bus outside the Monumental in Buenos Aires a few weeks earlier. The game in Argentina, and a number of other countries has always had that edge, and if that disappeared completely these games would just become as vacuum packed as the corporate Manchester derby, or even Barca v Real these days. Things have in the past got completely out of hand in Argentina, and fans have tragically died. The solution within the Greater Buenos Aires area at any rate, where a large number of the clubs come from, was to ban away fans. Such an action you might think would have dampened the atmosphere in the stadiums, and while it is true that with no visiting fans, the home supporters have no one to abuse but it has opened the entirety of the stadium to home fans, and it has led a cacophony of partisan home support. These are Intimidating atmospheres for the visiting team, but supercharged encouragement for the home side as long as things are going well. In February 2000 I was at the first of over 70 games in South America and it could only have been in one stadium, Estadio Juan Domingo Peron, or El Cilindro, Avellaneda, the home of Racing Club. Even before I ever got close to going to Argentina, yo soy de Racing (pronounced Ra-sing), I am Racing! “Would your love of Racing have anything to do with the World Club win over Celtic” I hear you cry! And to an extent you’d be right! I had no idea of these encounters in the late sixties, as I was far too young at the time, but once I learned of these matches, Racing became the epitome of exotic long before it was available to watch just about every kicked of any team, anywhere in the world online. I always felt the media furore here was rather one sided, and I dreamed of both seeing Racing play, and getting the other side of the story. The closest I ever got to an unbiased neutral viewpoint came from an unplanned encounter with an elderly Uruguayan chap at a Danubio match in Montevideo. In a short half-time chat, when he realised I was Scottish he paused momentarily then said, “I saw a Scottish team once”, and I knew which team that was, but he couldn’t recall their name!! “Two very bad teams”, was his recollection, and in a nutshell a mere soundbite adding credence to the notion it takes two, and Celtic did not come away from South America as the innocents as they’d like the spin on history to have you believe. Jumping forward to November 2017, I had the great pleasure in hosting Jorge and Stella Lavrut, Racing hinchas (fans). Jorge had been in il Cilindro for the home leg in 1967, and now on the 50th anniversary of when Racing became the first Argentine side to be crowned as World Club champions he was in Scotland! On a day that started in Fort Augustus, we first visited Caledonian Stadium, Inverness for a photo or two, (becoming the 9th and 10th Argentines to visit my clubs ground, following in the footsteps of their sons!), then it was straight down the A9 as we had a booked tour of Hampden! For some reason the first leg of the World Club was played here and not at Celtic Park, and indeed the museum at Hampden houses souvenirs of these matches, and oddly nothing at Celtic, “they would rather not remember” said the guide! In the lead up to the anniversary Racing produced a souvenir “retro” football with the event embossed on it. I became one delighted recipient of one of these balls, and it now takes pride of place in my apartment. We had the ball with us for our trip to Hampden, along with Racing shirts for photos taken on the pitch side. It was a special moment for all of us, and personally it showed what a wonderful thing football can be, bringing people together from across the globe, from February 2000 my first game there without knowing anyone to November 2017, celebrating the 50th anniversary of a real high point in Racing’s history with true Racinguistas (true fans). Avellaneda is just south of Buenos Aires city, over the river at Boca, and the first suburban town of what is known at Gran (Greater) Buenos Aires (shortened to BsAs). It isn’t a place you would make a particular effort to go as a tourist, it has nothing to offer in that sense, but if you are into football, it is home to two of the biggest clubs in the country, Racing Club and Independiente, known affectionately as “rojo no existe” (red doesn’t exist!). The two canchas (stadiums) are sat right beside each other, and unlike the proximity of the two in Dundee, these are colossal sized stadiums. Rojo no existe’s ground has been modernised and looks imposing, but while I have watched football in 14 stadiums in Greater BsAs, I haven’t been to a game there, and why would you?!! The real jewel of the all the stadiums in Buenos Aires though is Racing’s El Cilindro, as it is a perfect oval, hence the name, the cylinder. It has a capacity of 61,000, with its iconic tower, as well as the view of the skyscrapers of downtown BsAs from the upper tier at the traditional home end. Okay I am bias, but it is a thing of beauty, and the atmosphere is electric. The club have plans to develop and upgrade the interior, but the shape will stay and I hope they do a proper job. Racing Club de Avellaneda were founded on the 23rd March 1903 and are nicknamed La Academia (the academy). Many teams in Argentina were founded by English settlers at the time, Banfield, Newell’s, Douglas Haig, and Almirante Brown all to this day carry English, or in the case of the latter, an Irish name. Racing were co-founded by a chap of French ancestry, German Vidaillic, a name that came from a French auto magazine! A number of sports clubs in France to this day have Racing in their name, Racing Club Strasbourg, Racing Club de Lens and Racing Metro ‘92 to name just a few. The club colours are now well established since 1910 as light blue and white stripes like the national shirt of Argentina, having been adopted to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the May Revolution. Thankfully amongst previous kits that were jettisoned, black and yellow stripes lasted merely a week as someone said they looked like Penarol across in Montevideo, and you wouldn’t want that!! A more unusual light blue and pink in four squares ala Bristol Rovers kit didn’t last too long either! Just ten years after the clubs foundation it became Champions of Argentina in 1913 following two round robin play off wins with River Plate and San Isidro, and it would be 1920 before they failed to win it again, accumulating seven titles on the spin. A big hiatus of 29 years followed, finally ending in 1949 when Racing were to be celebrating a title win again, their first in the Professional era, backing that success up with another brace of titles in the subsequent two years. In 1950 during that Championship winning campaign the beating of Velez Sarsfield 1-0 heralded the opening of El Cilindro. The last of this triumvirate of titles came via a 1-0 aggregate play off win against Banfield. Another seven titles have arrived, and a win on Sunday away to Tigre will deliver an 18th on the penultimate game of this season, which will be the clubs first league flag in five years. Failure to gather the three points might bring a tantalizing last day showdown with second placed Defensa y Justicia at El Cilindro, but they need to better Racing’s result this weekend to have a chance of a first ever title! The fifteen title in 1966 provided the club with a second entry in the Copa Libertadores, the South American equivalent of the European Cup/Champions League now. The first attempted at this relatively new International club competition saw a first round exit in 1961, but the second campaign brought Racing their only ever Libertadores title beating Club Nacional de Football from Montevideo 2-1 in the final with a double from Norberto Raffo. That victory took them to the notorious World Club matches with Celtic, going down 2-1 in Glasgow, and winning the return in il Cilindro 1-0. In the modern era they’d have won the competition on away goals, but in those days a third game was needed a few days later a cross the River Plate in El Centenario, Montevideo, a fantastic Juan Carlos Cardenas strike was a moment of beauty, worthy of winning any trophy amid the utter chaos of two bad tempered teams who had grown to detest each other. Rumours abound that while Racing were rightly celebrating this win, some naughty “rojo no existe” fans broke into El Cilindro and buried seven dead cats! In an area of the world where superstition continues to be rife, only finding six of them weighed heavily. Perhaps the curse of that missing cat is true, as it was only finally discovered in 2000, and it’s discovery coincided with a first title in 35 years the year after!! The coach Reinaldo Merlo became a hero, and a statue has been raised to this living legend who guided a team that included a young Diego Milito. In those barren three and half decades, the club had suffered a relegation in 1983, needing two terms in the second tier before getting back up again. In 1998 the perilous financial state of the club became public knowledge and led to bankruptcy, but the switch to Blanquiceleste SA Corporation in 2000 might have more been the catalyst to that 2001 title rather the discovery of the dead cat!! They say you never forget your first love, and maybe that is true of a first game in a stadium that you have long held a desire to watch a game. In February 2000, I merely knew one local lass who I had met on the plane to Europe from BsAs the year before, but we weren’t as close friends then as we would become, so it was great that my good mate Martin from Edinburgh was with me that year, and especially to experience the full Racing effect in a “clasico” encounter with Boca Juniors. These were different days down in Argentina, the Peso was pegged falsely as it turned out, one to one with the American dollar, and it made Argentina an expensive country. The taxi to and from the stadium, and the match ticket for the game set us back £60, a trip that would probably cost a quarter of that price now! Racing’s new owners hadn’t signed up at that juncture, and the team were nowhere near the top of their powers, but when Boca or any of the other “big five” are playing, the atmosphere increases in volume and intimidation. What a welcome to Argentine football, and to life in El Cilindro, this was one of the great moments of my football life. The fans sang incessantly, and when Racing scored in the 37th minute through Maxi Estevez the whole place shook! It ended in a 1-1 draw courtesy a very dubious penalty, but Boca did strike the Racing crossbar three times in the game, so maybe a draw was a fair outcome. The result wasn’t important, the whole experience had sold me Racing as I had hoped, and in the years to come I would see them play a further 12 times and met a number of people that I am proud to call great friends now. My second game in El Cilindro would be three years later when I went along with Laura’s family friend Juan Pablo, who’d become a good friend of mine too by then. We have shared a number of games together over the years, starting with Chacarita v Boca in 2002. This particular Racing game was relatively low key in comparison to the Boca game, but they dug out a 2-0 win against Talleres Cordoba. What I didn’t know then was this would be my last Racing home win I would see until 2015, a twelve year passage of time, albeit, despite seeing 8 games in that period, only three were at home! One was a distinctly underwhelming 0-0 draw with Gimnasia Jujuy, but when that long overdue win came against Guarani Asuncion 4-1 in the Libertadores in February 2015 it was a joyous removal of a monkey off my back. By now I was a regular with the Lavrut family, great Racing fans one and all, introduced to me through Juan Pablo, with the elder brother Emanuelle his work colleague. This was to be the first time we had experience a win together at El Cilindro, albeit dad Jorge was on holiday, and we have still to share a win with us all collectively gathered! Perhaps I should have retired that trip on the 4-1 high, but two weeks later I was back, craving back to back home wins for the first ever time at home, but Sporting Cristal from Peru did a number on Racing and rode out of Avellaneda with all three Libertadores points in a 2-1 win when Racing had already qualified. It was also a poignant farewell to Diego Milito, a great servant to the club in two separate stints at Racing. It was the second great hero of the club I saw play their last game! After one of the losses at El Cilindro in 2006 to Velez Sarsfield a number of us went for a late evening meal in the amusingly named Museo De Jamon in the centre of BsAs. As we were ordering it transpired that Diego Simeone was upstairs eating! The waiter was sent away to tell Diego a fan from Scotland was across to watch Racing, and it appears he agreed to meet me, but only me! I was wheeled upstairs clutching both my camera and Matais’ Racing shirt (the younger Lavrut brother) to get a signature. He was very offhand, acting as if forced into such an encounter, and while his wife was more inquisitive, after he’d posed for a photo, he threw a hissy fit at being asked to sign the shirt and I was led away by the waiter having been unsuccessful in getting my friends shirt signed. Six days later I was down in Quilmes with another friend watching Racing lose 2-1 to Estudiantes La Plata, who were using the stadium in Quilmes while a new ground was being built in La Plata. It was the last ever time Simeone played, the very next week he was Racing’s manager, off and runnning on his new career path that has seen him become a very long serving and successful manager at Atletico Madrid. One footnote to my meeting with Diego, these were still the days of film rolls for the camera for me, and somehow the film with the photos of that encounter never made it home, lost in the hotel room before the journey home, perhaps poetic justice! The away Racing days have not been excessively more impressive to my win rate, but the only two successes on the road in six games are the most prized of them all! Having met another Racing fan in El Bolson in 2001, Juan Manuel, he was to become one of life’s great friends. In 2003 he came across to Montevideo to join me for a few days to coincide with Racing playing a Libertadores match in the city. It was no ordinary match, it was a tie against Nacional who they had beaten to win the Libertadores trophy in 1967, and the game was being played in the Centenario, where Racing had last played 36 years earlier to win the World Club title! It was thrilling and momentous to be amongst the Racing faithful and watch them carve out a 2-1 Centenario success where a crazy three goals in a seven minute period midway through the second half saw Milovan Mirosevic score the winner. Seven years later I was literally wading through **** in the stairway to the top tier of the away end at Boca’s La Bombonera with the Lavrut boys on our way to the top tier. What a fabulous view of the stadium you got from up there, crammed in like sardines as we were! But hey, who was caring as Racing put on a stunning performance and won 2-1, coming back from being an early goal down almost immediately through Gabriele Hauche, and when he thumped home the winner just before half-time the away section went crazy. Hauche was absolutely imperious throughout and could have scored a third. The **** had become a sea on the way down, but we were floating on air, and a mere change of shoes in the car and I was off out for a meal in Puerto Madero at 00,30 with Laura, and all of this on my first day in the city after a 13 hour flight, but it was a treasured night!! They say that to follow Racing is to suffer, and they do put us through the ringer, 4 wins in 13 games isn’t a great return, but when they do win it is all so worthwhile. If they can get that 18th title over the line in Tigre on Sunday night it will be a wonderful occasion, and open up the Libertadores in 2020, when as luck would have it, I will be back for the first time in five years to see if my wins record came improve! Yo soy de RACING! View the full article

If you say the name Shay, the majority of “Sports” fans will assume you are talking about a famous baseball field on the other side of the pond! For the true football romantic, and supporters in the UK especially it can only be the home of FC Halifax Town. The Shay is a wonderful traditional football arena, in the truest sense of the word, it’s a proper football stadium where you can almost smell the grease paint, catch the faint whiff of a pie (They come complete with mushy peas here!), and the mighty thwack of boot to ball, all standing up, if you so wish!! The modern main East stand may have been controversial, as well as having been long in its construction (a corner remains incomplete), and the cost doubtlessly caused one of the clubs two bankruptcy issues, It does adds to the Shay a touch of modernity, yet still complimenting the other three sides that hark back to an era of standing terracing, with proper stanchions, that fill the sizeable terracing behind both goals. The South terracing is for home fans, and if a “big” away following, the North terracing will be opened, otherwise they are housed in the south wing of the main stand. The “West” stand opposite the main one, was doubtlessly a standing shed in years gone by, but is now partially seated, with room for more seats if needed to increase the capacity for another day if Halifax were ever to climb the leagues to such a giddy height where extra seating was needed. The Shay presently holds 14,061, which is more than sufficient for the fifth tier and higher if they were ever to recover their league status again. In 1921 AFC Halifax Town were among the founding members of the Division Three North, and while their CV was largely unspectacular, they were never in danger of being re-elected. In getting promotion from the bottom tier in 1970/71 Halifax found themselves involved in the short lived Watney Cup, where the top two from each of the four divisions played a mini pre-season tournament the following term. On the 31st July 1971 at the Shay, Manchester United complete with George Best et all came to play in the first round, and Halifax beat them 2-1! They then lost the semi-final 0-2 to WBA, who then lost the final to Colchester United! The competition only lasted four years, but Derby, Colchester, Bristol Rovers and Stoke all got a rare moment of silverware, and maybe like when the Anglo Scottish Cup died when Chesterfield won at Ibrox, the Watney was doomed as the bigger clubs obviously weren’t taking it seriously. That said, it was a great idea, and instead of going off on meaningless lavish global exhibition game treks for pots of money, these excessively rich clubs should be giving a little love back to the under card. Bring back the Watney!! I first caught a game at the Shay in April 2014 for a Conference (National League) encounter, a 2-1 win against Macclesfield Town, largely a mid-table joust, but I was just happy to witness a game in Halifax at last. It was the throwback nature of the stadium that bowled me over. I had been cursing my decision to take a seat in the new stand, but it was a sunny day and my decision was based on where I might catch the sun more, always a driving force at a game for me, especially when the majority of fixtures are played on such cold windy days! It did leave me with an excuse to return and experience the terracing next time. Halifax was a famous woollen mill town, now re-invented, tucked into the slopes of the West Yorkshire hills, and it has a population of 88,134. One of the Textile mills, known as Dean Clough on the edge of town has been converted in a variety of shopping, retail and hotel space, whilst retaining the original facade of the old mill. MacKintosh chocolates hail from Halifax, makers of Rollo and Quality Street, as well as still the town continuing to retain the HQ for probably the most famous Building Society, before coming a bank! Flat land is at a premium here, so respect to those who chose to build the stadium where it is. The ground is no more than a half a mile from the train station, a suitably gentle uphill walk. If coming by car, Halifax is a few miles off the M62, but once in the city limit head toward the centre and the Shay is well sign posted. There is a car park right at the ground, and some parking in the streets nearby, but if you are arriving as kick off approaches, expect to struggle to find anywhere close. The Shay has been the home to football in Halifax for 98 years, it is municipal owned now, and they share the ground with the town’s Rugby League club, which at the tail end a season sees the grass suffering from excessive use through a long wet winter. Fans of the now officially titled FC Halifax Town have been long suffering too, if you include the history of its predecessor. It caused remarkable consternation when the FC was put at the front of the name for the new club that rose from the ashes after the demise of Halifax Town AFC at the end of 2007/08. It does have a certain European swagger putting the FC first, and what is the harm in that! Judging by the banners around the Shay, the fans are embracing the change and not harking back to the old team name! The old club owed a considerable sum to the tax man, and the inevitable administration saw its demise. The new team started life in the Northern Premier Division One, effectively the 8th tier in 2008/2009, and they have relatively quickly worked their way back to the Conference or National League as it is now known, even flirting with a return to league football three seasons ago in their inaugural season in the fifth tier, losing out to Cambridge in the Play Off Semi-Finals in 2012/13. Neil Aspin, whose name will forever be written into the history of FC Halifax Town, was the manager from April 2009, until September 2015, winning more than half of his 270 games in charge. He also oversaw an incredible 30 games unbeaten at the Shay from April 2009 to November 2010. But by September ‘15 the club was struggling, and they parted ways. Neil moved on to manage at rivals Gateshead, where he’d still be when I wheeled into town to see Halifax visit in August 2017, for an entertaining 0-0. During the season 2015/16 Halifax had two further incumbents in charge to no effect after Aspin that season, and then Jim Harvey arrived, and gradually they finally found a winning formula that nearly kept them up, but a cruel missed penalty in the last game of the season helped relegated the “new” club for the first time. The second of my games at the Shay was at Easter of that particular campaign and the 1-0 win over Altrincham seemed to have them on the cusp of a great escape, but they just couldn’t get it done, and in failing to beat Macclesfield on the last day it proved fatal. However, in the wake of such tragedy, remarkably the following weekend they were off down to Wembley to play Grimsby Town in the FA Trophy Final the day after Manchester United had won the FA Cup against Crystal Palace, and more remarkably in Scotland, where Hibernian got a 114 year old monkey off there back winning the Scottish Cup 3-2 against fellow Championship side The Rangers, the first ever Scottish final not involving a top flight team! I was amongst the Shay fans, who had headed to Wembley in huge numbers, and an absolute peach of a strike was enough to secure the trophy. Amid wild celebrations, tears were flowing, a remnant of the angst of the relegation the previous week. Despite this silverware the fans had genuine fear that getting back to the National League could take years. However, they needn’t have fretted unduly as the energy of Wembley brought them straight back the very next season under the continued guidance of Jim Harvey. They have largely bedded into a mid-table for now, but I think we can expect another run at trying to get their league place back quite soon, albeit the league continues to be home to a number of monied and seriously ambitious clubs, Salford and Hyde to name two, and the likely return of Stockport and Torquay next season from the level below. That FA Trophy success was the clubs first ever “major” trophy in 105 years of football in the town, but unlike many clubs FC Halifax Town are not carrying forward the history of its AFC predecessor. Ironically, also on display that day at Wembley were Hereford FC, the new guise of the previous Hereford United, playing Morpeth Town in part one of a doubleheader in the FA Vase. Halifax Town once lost to Hereford in a Conference Play Off final to regain league status in 2006. That game was played at Leicester in the era when Wembley was being rejuvenated, by while the Bulls went back up, they have suffered even worse bankruptcy fate that Halifax dropping down to the 9th tier. Hereford had the largest support that Wembley day, but they got a real second half doing losing 4-1 from Morpeth. They have recovered from the 9th tier to the 6th now but they are still one level below Halifax, but they could be going head to head once more on the coming seasons for a shot at league football once more. Football Weekends, the magazine I write for is presently asking for nominations for the best old fashioned stadium in Europe. Given it is predominantly a UK readership, I suspect it will come down to an English ground, and I am nominating The Shay, and Edgar Street, Hereford the two mentioned above! View the full article

Last year’s World Cup in Russia was a wonderful event. It may have surprised a lot of onlookers, but those who ventured to the largest country on the planet returned home with glowing testimony. The cynical still refused to accept that Russia could so wonderfully organise the event, endeavouring to pour scorn on the positives with suggestions it was merely an elaborate stunt! I have been very fortunate in life, to travel extensively and indulge my passion for football at the same time. Despite the constant lure of Italy that has maybe accounted for around 50 trips alone, June 2018 and the Russia World Cup just happened to be my fifth World Cup and my 50th country! I had always resolved to go to Russia for the tournament, but I only really had eyes for the magnificent city of St Petersburg. Good fortune struck me again a year before the competition when I was in Kutaisi, Georgia, where something very special with a lady from St Petersburg started! One final element needed to fit into place, and that was a desire for games in the second city of Russia to be free of English involvement. I appreciate that they do not cause as much trouble these days, but I am still traumatised by the way the atmosphere in Kyoto, Japan changed in the second week of our time there when England fans arrived en masse. There was also a big threat from the Russian hooligans, who had been smacking their lips together at the prospect of getting into a fight with the English. Thankfully that never occurred, and indeed some significant behind the scenes lobbying must have taken place, as this was a wonderfully trouble free tournament. When the draw was made it was immediately St Petersburg a go, go for me as the fixtures showed real party atmosphere potential with both Brazil and Argentina coming to town. They were scheduled to be playing within a matter of days against entertaining opposition in Costa Rica and Nigeria respectively. I was swiftly logging into the FIFA ticketing system for both games, with fingers and toes crossed that I would be successful, as travel plans and accommodation needed to be booked. In my four previous editions of the World Cup, only for the first one did I officially purchase tickets in my name, for the Italia ‘90, well ahead of the option to buy online, these were acquired in an Italian bank in Genoa in April, a few months ahead of the competition! Thankfully I was successful in getting match tickets for Russia, leaving the only pre-travel angst to the securing of my return fast train ticket from St Petersburg to Helsinki despite having bought the ticket at considerable expense six months before the trip from Russian Trains. I suspect someone forgot about my reservation ahead of ticket production and the train was fully booked. Many a telephone conversation was required, as well as digging my heels in regarding a horrendous slow train alternative. Only a week before I set off it seems extra carriages were added to the fast train, and they compensated me for all the inconvenience by upgrading my travel to Russia to First Class. Aside from the first hour in St Petersburg when it felt very Soviet, I was soon bowled over by the city and it’s beauty. Arrival at Finlandskaya Railway Station saw the International train passengers shovelled through a rather unattractive side gate and a line of soldiers keeping the locals awaiting their loved ones out on the pavement. I was one of the lucky recipients of a such a very warm local embrace, always a special feeling. The Hotel St Petersburg was just a short walk along the Neva river, but in order to get to the waters edge we firstly walked by the considerable statue of Lenin in the square in front of the grand station facade reserved for more local travellers. It was an immediate reminder of the past, and the fact this was once Leningrad, his home town. The Soviet feel continued on the pavement by the Neva where we seemed to be fighting against a tide of immaculately dressed naval cadets on the way back to their barracks following a parade of some description. The hotel was right on an apex of the river, and the room afforded the most incredible views of the city across the Neva, complete with the Aurora, the famous old naval vessel where the revolution was signalled all those years ago. I never tired of that stunning hotel vista with floor to roof windows that ran the length of the room. The changing colours on the buildings across the water with the changing light were a marvel, culminating in a Saturday night extravaganza of fireworks with the best view in town restricted to a vast window facing couch for two, complete with Prosecco! Coinciding with the longest night, St Petersburg was celebrating the graduation of another year of students with a concert in the square by the Hermitage, shown live on tv, complete with the sailing of a majestic red sailed clipper through the gap caused by the visually arresting sight of the road bridge lifted to near the hotel, with a flotilla of boats in proximity to enjoy the fireworks from the water. From the minute I arrived at the railway station in Helsinki en route to Russia, the first people I saw were a small pocket of Mexican fans. This set the tone for my entire 10 day sojourn, this World Cup might have ultimately given a number of European nations a shot in the arm, but this was South and Latin Americas tournament, they came in vast numbers, and not just to see the football. Russia and neighbouring lands like Finland were privy to the curiosity and the delight of thousands of fans from every country qualified from the Americas, and in some cases, pockets of fans from non qualified lands too. One of my personal highlights was to meet, and get my photo taken with a group of El Salvador fans who had come to lend support to Costa Rica! I have been in many a beautiful city, Venezia, Paris, Prague and Buenos Aires to name merely a few, but none of them can compare to Peter the Great’s vision for a city, St Petersburg is simply stunning. It is a very large city, built on many different islands you are never that far water wherever you go. The main tourist attractions are all within a certain walkable radius, albeit it would be impossible to enjoy it all in a day. Peter and Paul fortress is built on the Peterhof island, with it’s stunning high gold gilded spires of the Cathedral which are a feature of the city skyline. Across the Neva, you can climb halfway up St Isaac’s Cathedral from where the views across the relatively flat city are wonderful. In the park in front of this church is the statue of the main man Peter the Great. On the Neva near this statue you have the option of taking a river boat cruise through the intricate canal system that gives St Petersburg the feel of a more lavish Amsterdam. The most stunning of the churches in the city is The Saviour on the Spilled Blood Cathedral, the most Russian Orthodox of them all with its iconic colourful domes and incredible paintings. The fan zone for the World Cup was in the vicinity of this church, affording a fantastic backdrop of those magnificent domes to the party atmosphere of the collectively gathered fans from all around the world. It wasn’t just because of Brazil and Argentina playing in the city that St Petersburg had a really South American carnival feel. The decision to allow fans access to the rail network across Russia between World Cup cities for free meant that fans moved around to soak up more culture in the days between matches, and of course St Petersburg is one of the top attractions in the country at any time. Peruvians, Mexicans, Colombians and the occasional Uruguayan could be spotted, bringing colour, flamboyance and excitement with them giving the city a truly International carnival feel. It was wonderful, especially for a man who was so regularly in South America until 2010, but with only one trip this decade it acted as a reminder of how much I miss it, I was in my element. The Russians were too, the sheer joy the visitor brought had a profound effect on the locals, a feel good factor pervaded the whole city. Russians are extremely friendly people anyway, but it is maybe an aspect of the country that those who have never been fail to realise as press coverage never focuses on the positives, sadly. The new St Petersburg Stadium is a little way from the centre of the city on its own island in the corner of a magnificent park. It is well served by two Metro lines that will bring you to either side of the magnificent ground. One of the underground options brings you to the far end of the park, but it was a wonderful tree lined boulevard-esque pedestrian only walk through the park to the “spaceship” like, futuristic new home of Zenit. On my two journeys to my games I had the wonderful opportunity to catch up with two great friends from South America. Ahead of the Brazil game I had lunch at a restaurant in the park with Luciano from Port Alegre. This game was just one of eight that he attended across five of the host cities, where he estimates he clocked up 6,726 km’s!! Well we walked one of those kilometres together toward the real party atmosphere ahead of the Costa Rica game. The game was never dull, and it seemed to be heading to a 0-0 draw with VAR rightly overturning a decision for a penalty as Neymar had once again clearly cheated. Indeed, one of the low points of the tournament was his incessant antics, and I think he lost another chunk of admirers through such actions. The penalty being denied brought one of two unsavoury incidents that I witnessed at the games I watched. A woman a few rows behind me had clearly been cheering for Costa Rica, and in expressing her delight at the VAR decision she was rewarded by a Brazilian woman in the row above pouring her beer all over her! A real flash point arose, but sadly, only the woman who had been soaked got removed! The drink had kicked in, and the Brazilian joy was turning to anger as the majority of the neutrals were right behind plucky Costa Rica. The woman sat beside me packed away eight beers, and she may well have met her new partner during the game, but sadly he was sitting on the other side of an elderly Norwegian, and they just invaded this guy’s space without a thought, or indeed a suggestion someone swapped seats! In the end Brazil won it, deservedly so on chances created, but the first was so late in the game it felt cruel, with the second a mere cherry on top deep into added time. The mask of the constantly happy Brazilian fan had slipped during the course of this one, but by the final whistle they could all walk out into the St Petersburg early evening sun with that happy mask back on to delude for another few days! I am more drawn to Argentina and Uruguay, everyone who knows me will testify to that, so yes, maybe parts of that last paragraph are told with glee, but what happened in the next game left me feeling enraged! However, ahead of that particular match, I was waiting outside the same Metro stop, to go to the same restaurant to meet Champi, a friend of my great friends, the Lavrut family from San Fernandez, Buenos Aires. Champi was across in Scotland with two of the family as part of a quartet in the UK for the 2015 Rugby World Cup, and in down time between games I gave them a tour of my country. It was cracking to catch up with him again, and you could feel the excitement in him, this was his first ever World Cup Finals game! It took me back to when we donned our kilts in Santa Margherita Ligure and took the train to Genoa for the tea total encounter with Costa Rica, as fan violence had meant a 24 hour drink ban within a significant radius of any hosting city! In light of the skirmishes I witnessed in the stadium in Russia, perhaps an out and out alcohol ban would be too much, but finding a way of restricting what each individual can buy would be sensible. No one should be allowed, let alone able to consume eight pints during a game, over and above however many beers my Brazilian neighbour had consumed in the run up to kick off! Anyway, Champi and I were merely trying to get a beer, but the restaurant was so busy and the service so poor, at least half of our time was lost waiting, however it did bring us an encounter with a really cool Nigerian guy. Post beer, the same walk to the stadium had a slightly different task to fulfill, as I wanted to reprise a photo from Japan 2002, with Argentine shirted me in between two Nigerian fans! It took too long and lacked the spontaneity of Kyoto, but we got one! This was the last of the round robin games in the group, and Argentina were hanging on by a thread. A draw with Iceland and a real thumping by Croatia had them on the brink, but a win here against Nigeria would get them through. The Argentine support was absolutely incredible, and the whole stadium rocked slightly when they hit full pelt! Argentine took the lead with a moment of genius from their talisman Lionel Messi, lift off!! Nigeria grew a little more confident, and the pockets of their fans who were seriously drown out started to believe. When the equaliser arrived and with Argentina misfiring, the atmosphere started to get tense. A draw was good enough for Nigeria to progress and they went back into their shell, playing the percentage game, and doubtlessly hoping the weight of angst from the seats would continue to upset albiceleste’s rhythm. In this period of parity a Boca shirted and hatted wee man squat barrel turned really nasty against Nigerians a good number of rows below. His racist chants encouraged one or two others around him, but he was largely causing outrage, and commendably other Argentine fans tried to reason with the guy, but he just turned his abusive tongue on fans wearing other Argentine club shirts, and a fight broke out. The black shirted “stewards” , who lay low until the day glow volunteers needed them waded in and at least three fans were lifted out. The Boca idiot left but not without spitting and punching anyone in his path, and a poor lad in a Venezuela shirt who had merely slapped his head having had beer thrown at him as he tried to calm the situation also got led away. One thing I feel Argentine fans need to do is lose the club shirt at an International game! I was embarrassed, and angry by this episode, but it coincided with one last hurrah of cohesive Argentine play, and it united the fans finally and the volume rose in support, you could just feel the frisson of anticipation. When the winner arrived minutes from the end the roof could have been blown off as the most incredible energy was released. It was one of the most spine tingling moments I have ever experienced in football, right up there with Steve Hislop’s winner at Clyde that sent Inverness into the Premier League! Argentina had qualified and the relief was palpable, and while the atmosphere was incredible, “the incident” had soured my night. I slipped out on full time and left the fans to party. It was already 23,00 and getting a swift metro ahead the crowds was advisable as I had a lengthy walk to the hotel from the nearest station, but it was still 12,30 before I arrived. I was up at 5am the next morning to catch the train back to Helsinki on a train full of Argentines who quite obviously hadn’t been to bed!! My World Cup was over, but I had loved the whole week. It was very special to have my very own local guide in Tania, who was struck by the colour and vibrancy the fans brought to her city despite not liking football. It will be interesting to go back when St Petersburg is less chaotic, but given people flock there every year, the queue for the Hermitage might only be a little smaller as I have yet to savour its splendours. It is always worthy of leaving something up your sleeve as a reason to go back, speaks the man who returns to his favourite cities often! View the full article

Click to view slideshow. The capital of Uruguay is without doubt a hotbed of football. Indeed, given it hosted the first ever World Cup in 1930 single handed, its passion for the beautiful game has never diminished! The iconic Centenario Stadium, built for that tournament is coined as “the home of football” has FIFA heritage status, coupled with a fantastic museum within its walls, taking you back in time. Despite a population of only just over 3 million people, by South American standards Uruguay is a very small country, by area size too, but on the International football scene it is a name to conjure with, a team to be feared. The National team has undoubtedly been through some troughs since the Golden era (’30’s-’50’s), and while they may never win the World Cup again, the production line of talent is endless with the club football set up in the country as it is. That Golden era started with Uruguay winning the Olympic Titles of 1924 and 1928, essentially the World Club before Jules Rimet came along. It was a brave, and yet natural choice to award the first World Cup to the Gold medal holders. Europe may not have agreed, and only a handful of nations made the trip south, all sharing the same vessel, training on deck as they went! It all boiled down to the more local rivalry with Argentina in the final, with the hosts winning 4-2 to send the little nation into raptures. What is less known, while Italy won the next two editions in ’34 and 38, when Uruguay turned up in Brazil in 1950 after the war, it was their first participation since they won it twenty years earlier! If Germany’s dismantling of Brazil in the 2014 World Cup is the new “hangover” that haunts Brazilian football, their first hosting of the tournament in 1950 saw them lose the last finals group match to Uruguay 2-1 in the Maracana in front of 199,854, a record crowd for a “final”, likely never to be beaten! A draw would have oddly won it for Brazil, but in losing, such was the trauma they became convinced the white shirt and blue shorts combo that was Brazil’s colours at the time was cursed! A new kit was born soon after with the famous yellow and green of today being suggested and adopted following a competition, ironically won by a Uruguayan! While Brazil wallowed in its own self pity of sorts, they have managed to knock out five World Cup wins since, albeit never at home, in that same period Uruguay might have won a few Copa America titles, but the recapturing the big one has eluded them. However, occasionally they still reach the semi-finals, which in the modern era is still a magnificent achievement. If Hungary had a golden era that failed to spark anything beyond that generation, considering Uruguay’s size, Celeste (light blue and also the nickname of Uruguay) continues to punch above its weight on the global stage, largely thanks to a wonderful youth system buried deep with an extraordinary number of Montevideo based clubs! It is acknowledged that a trip to Uruguay is more than a weekend gig, but if you were drawn to these parts, even to watch the big Buenos Aires clubs, with all the hincha (fans) passion, a weekend across the River Plate in Montevideo would potentially offer you many opportunities to see similar passion, albeit largely on a smaller scale, unless you encounter the big two, Nacional and Penarol, whose fan bases can rival anything in Buenos Aires. 67 of my 184 games outside the UK to date have been in Argentina and Uruguay, 37 in the former, so you can see it is a land that has caught my imagination. If you factor in 69 games in Italy, Europe’s “South American” atmosphere equivalent it is easy to see it’s the edgy Latin passion in football that attracts me! Montevideo sits at the headland of the south eastern reaches of the Rio De La Plata (River Plate), and can be reached by Buquebus fast ferry direct from Buenos Aires (3 hours), or a one hour trip by ferry to Colonia, and two hours further by bus. It is a wonderful city, a well kept secret of South America, with its faded charm in the cuidad vieja area near the port, and its astonishing 27 kilometres of Rambla (coastal walkway) with beaches, little yachting harbours, as well as the country’s main link to the outside world, the enormous and always active port. Parts of the old city will remind you of Havana in a way, even if these areas are gradually being modernised, they still retain the old colonial style. In Uruguay, as well as Argentina, the names of some of the clubs show the influence of British involvement at the outset of football history in the region. Railway construction men, Banfield and Newell’s still have teams in Argentina, Almirante Brown (Admiral Brown, an Irishman) another example over there, while across in Uruguay Albion, Wanderers and Liverpool are all still playing, the latter two in the top flight. Albion were involved in the first ever game in Uruguay versus Nacional in 1900! A more recent team, Canadian has been founded by a group of Uruguayan exiles living in Canada! Both countries have a Racing and a River Plate! Significantly smaller in Uruguay, but again, both top flight teams. In England’s city of Liverpool, Everton played a friendly at home to Vino Del Mar’s (Chile) Everton a few years ago, but as far as I am aware Uruguay’s little Liverpool, who play in blue and black stripes have never been invited to Anfield, yet!! Uruguay has more recently been operating with a three tier league set up. Sixteen in the top flight, then unusually 15 in the second tier (only 13 this season), with an Amateur third tier whose numbers can vary depending on who wishes to raise a team! Since the addition of the Amateur league less than 10 years ago, three clubs Villa Teresa, Villa Espanola and El Torque have risen from the third tier to grace the top flight. In El Torque’s case it was just last season, their first ever top table nibbling, albeit briefly, and they are now back in the second flight, but intriguingly they are now owned by the Middle Eastern group who run Manchester City. Villa Espanola had reached the Primera, the First Division a few years ago but then went bust half way through that season, and their results were to expunged, something that also happened El Tanque Sisley last season! After a few years in the wilderness Villa Espanola reformed and had back to back promotions from the amateur tier to reach the top flight, a rise too quick perhaps and they went straight back down. El Tanque’s fall has been cushioned by new owners and despite going bust mid-season, they start 2019 in the second tier. Much of South America is now moving away from the Opening (Apertura) and Closing (Clausura) set up, preferring a more traditional European league set up. Uruguay is sticking by the tried and trusted formula, but they had a mini “transitional” Torneo Especial a couple of years ago so that the entire season will be played out in one calendar year, with the Apertura league winners playing the Clausura winners, and then a final versus the Tabla Anual winner (overall accumulation table). Starting in February each year they play each other home and away over the two mini championships with a break in July. Calculations over a two year averages works out who goes down, with games played divided by number points achieved. It might sound complicated, but every point is a prisoner to the lower placed teams, and end of season meaningless games don’t exist! I am long an advocate of the two “half” season idea, with an opening and closing campaign might just work in some leagues in Europe where one or two teams dominate within a smallish league, Scotland being a prime example. Three years ago, for the second time in a decade, a small rural team won one half of the Championship, that honour went to Plaza Colonia, with the previous “surprise” winners, Rocha another small team well outside Montevideo were the other. Plaza are back in the top flight again this term, but Rocha have dropped into the amateur third tier, a real fall from grace from when I saw them making their Copa Libertadores bow at Estadio Amalfitani, Liniers versus Argentine giants Velez Sarsfield, going down 3-0. Clubs like these can put together a run of results over a short 15 game half season to potentially win a title, over the longer campaign, the bigger clubs Nacional and Penarol are more likely to win it, but that’s not always guaranteed in Uruguay as they have fierce competition. During the football season, February to June, then August to early December you will always find football in the capital. Based on the current league set up, 13 of the 16 are Montevideo clubs in the top flight! In the second tier 10 of the 13 are from the capital, with the amateur league always playing their games as double headers in Montevideo, even if the teams are from “out of town”! In the professional ranks, that is 23 teams in a city of 1.3m!! They might have small support some of them, but they all have fabulous tradition, and passionate fans. One or two have tried to drift as far away as 100 kilometres outside the city to see if they can get a bigger fan base but that experiment has failed, as the majority of players come from Montevideo. Boston River and Sud America tried sharing the Laguarda stadium in San Jose, 100km away in the general direction of Colonia. Boston never seem to have had a “home” of their own in the modern era in the capital, and now share with Rentistas on the edge of Montevideo, while Sud America (IASA) had left their own Parque Fossa in Montevideo, but it has now been upgraded and they are back home for the 2019 second tier campaign. Boston River were recently promoted for the first ever time to La Primera, and they have established themselves very well, and a 2-2 draw at Nacional in the early rounds of this Apertura would suggest they’ll be around for a while yet. Last season they even had a first involvement in International competition in the South American equivalent of the Europa League, the Copa Sudamericana. Occasionally one or two others have tried similarly to base themselves away from Montevideo, but invariably they end up back in the capital. I can think of twenty one city stadia in active use. There is always much debate as to what is the closest derby match in the world. Racing v Independiente is certainly close, Dundee v Dundee United might even be closer, but you cannot get any closer than two clubs, whose grounds share an adjoining wall that runs the length of their respective pitches! Miramar Misiones play at Mendez Piana, while rivals Central Espanol are across the wall at Parque Palermo! I have been at this derby twice, once in each stadium, and remarkably, the away team doesn’t bother to use their hosts changing facilities, they just come through a gate that links the two stadiums!! So there you have it, end of debate, you cannot get any closer than that!! Remarkably, Mendez Piana is right across the road from the Centenario, and it may also be the second closest! That said, now Penarol have finally got their own new home stadium, El Siglo, the National stadium is less utilised, but some of these “wee” clubs still rent it to get a bigger crowd when they are due to host either of the big two! Writing about the closest derby for the Inverness Caledonian Thistle programme when Gretna came north many years ago in 2008, it was arranged as such because within Gretna’s ranks that day was a player who had been playing for Miramar when I saw the first of these derbies in 2007, Fabian Yantorno. He subsequently played most notably for Hartlepool and Hibernian as well as various clubs in Uruguay, and still plays for Sud America. That article started a friendship that has spanned 11 years now. A wonderful anecdote from one of my first games in Uruguay, a 10,15 am kick off (the second tier still do the early starts for TV on a Saturday!) at Parque Palladino in the La Teja district of Montevideo, home of Progreso (another small team with a title to its name!), but on this occasion it was being rented by the magnificently named, and aforementioned El Tanque Sisley who were hosting Racing, who were undoubtedly on the way back to the top flight at the time. When I entered the stadium both teams and the referees were out warming up as usual, but they seemed oblivious to what I had noticed? They all disappeared, and came out as a unit for the start of the game, and then the penny finally dropped, the pitch had no lines!! The overnight rain had washed them all away. Hilariously an elderly chap appeared with his wee paint wheeled bucket, but it was obvious for TV schedules this was going to take too long! They merely painted the important bits, and kicked off 25 minutes late!! Perhaps with Racing in steamroller mood and winning 6-0, no disputes erupted over a lack of lines! Racing who are from the Sayago area of the capital had a great return to La Primera and qualified for the Libertadores for the first time ever. They even got through the qualifying round to reach the group stages, and I was thrilled to be at their first ever Libertadores Group match at home to Cerro Porteno from Paraquay, which they won 2-0. Racing finished second in the group and in any given year such a position would have seen them progress to the last 16. However, Mexican teams had been ejected the year before due to the Swine Flu outbreak, and the two teams from Mexico were promised a place in the last 16 the following year! The two lowest point accumulations from the second placed teams meant failure to progress, and Racing were one of those, very unlucky. Thus far, they have never made it back to South America’s top International tournament. Cheering for Racing came naturally given my love of the “bigger” Racing club across the Rio, they are nicknamed La Academia, the academy, whereas Racing Montevideo are La Escuela, the school! Getting tickets for any game will be largely straight forward. If Nacional are doing well, their compact and historical Parque Central can get close to selling out. The capacity has been increasing year on year as they add a second tier, as they are a very well supported club, probably with the biggest support in the country. Penarol’s new Siglo stadium has a bigger capacity, meaning an easier chance of a ticket. When the two meet, the games get moved to the Centenario to allow an even bigger crowd. The two most successful clubs under the big duo are Defensor Sporting, whose Franzini stadium is right across from the first beach you come too as you walk along the Rambla from the port in the Ramirez district. Danubio’s Jardines stadium is a good trek from the centre, and while buses go close by, taxi’s are very cheap too! There is an enormous park in the city called Prado, and within that park you will find three stadiums! River Plate’s Saroldi stadium is separated from Wanderers Viera merely by stables! and just a little further along you will find Parque Nasazzi, named after one of the heroes of the 1930 team! This was home to Bellavista, (another former winner) who had fallen on hard times and temporarily disappeared as a club, but winning the third tier final versus Colon last December sees them back in the professional ranks in La Segunda for 2019. Villa Teresa and Albion ground share with Bellavista! Cerro (translated is hill), a hilly area with an old fortified lighthouse on the top of the Cerro, is technically another town, but is so close to Montevideo it really is just a suburb. The derby here is Cerro v Rampla Juniors, the “villa” derby as its known, villa being slum in this context! Cerro’s Troccolli stadium is a large bowl that has fallen into disrepair, while Rampla’s two sided Olimpico is right down on the water’s edge affording wonderful views across the bay to Montevideo. Halfway round that bay on the main road to Cerro you will see Parque Capurro, home to Fenix. Liverpool’s Belvedere; Progreso’s Parque Paladino; Parque Roberto, Racing’s home, and Obdulio Varela, home to Villa Espanola are not too far from the Prado park either. Villa Espanola’s derby is with Cerrito (little hill), who play at the wonderfully named Maracana!! Another Cerro exists, Cerro Largo (Big hill) but they are from Melo away up in the North East of the country. But where else can you have Hill, Little Hill and big Hill as teams!! With some early kick offs at 10.15 and various afternoon, evenings times, it is possible to see three matches in a day, and given the close proximity, even two games in 4 hours as I once did! My 37 games in Uruguay includes 35 in the capital in sixteen different canchas as they call stadiums. The two anomalies were a Copa Libertadores tie between Fenix from the capital and Venezuelan side UA Maracaibo which they moved to Parque Burgueno in Maldonado, home to second tier Deportivo, which is along the southern coast near the big beach resort for Argentine visitors, Punta Del Este. This particular match brought some national soul searching with a first ever home loss to a Venezuelan side 1,2. The other game was in San Jose to see IASA or Sud America as they are also known, hosting fellow Montevideo side Los Bichos of Rentistas. The draw here for me was to watch my friend Fabian play, and having never seen him play and win, leading 2-0 at half time it was looking good, but a dramatic late comeback saw Rentistas win 3-2. Ironically, a few years earlier, before Fabian was with them, I saw the exact same fixture in IASA’s true home Parque Fossa, and they won that day 2-1! Outside Scotland I have only seen more games in Ancona (19) than the fifteen at the home of football in the Centenario. On the 5th March 2002, my first ever day in Montevideo I was in the stadium watching an absolutely brilliant 2-2 between Nacional and Argentine side Velez Sarsfield. The very next night I was back for another cross Rio de la Plata joust in the Libertadores with Penarol edging San Lorenzo 1-0. The very next year Penarol drew 2-2 with Gremio, and the following week my most proud game in the Centenario, being amongst the away Racing fans with my great friend Juan Manuel watching them beat Nacional 2,1 in the first game they’d played there since becoming World Club Champions in 1967! Sandwiched between these matches was another Fenix International match, this time in the capital at Defensor’s Franzini were they lost, but ran Brazilian giants Corinthians close, 1-2. The recollection of games in Montevideo could go on for a while, but I will curtail with just a short paragraph of a few other gems! Another of my great friends in Buenos Aires, Osvaldo came across to Uruguay with his sister as their beloved Banfield were playing Nacional, a game moved to the Centenario, and another big crowd enjoyed a real cracking 2-2 draw, This particular fixture was the first time I had ever seen the return match until Inverness played in Europe! I was a relatively well behaved Bolso fan (Nacional) with a big grin amidst the Taladro (Banfield) as the visitors ran out 2,0 winners. Games in the Centenario have always been prized, but so have games at the Parque Central, another venue dating back to 1930. Nacional have done a wonderful job of redeveloping the ground, and it gradually is becoming an intimidating, claustrophobic stadium as the tiers rise tightly close to the field. It has developed incredibly since my first game their in 2007 a 1-1 draw with Bellavista, through a 4-0 thumping of Defensor in 2008, a 3-2 narrow win against local Racing the year after, Richard Morales et all, and a 0-1 reverse against Argentinos Juniors in the Libertadores. In 2015, the last time I was in Montevideo they weren’t at home, partly due to one of my footballing weekends being lost to a strike, but I watch games online often, and it looks an even more developed venue now, and I look forward to seeing a game in the Parque Central next year when I will be back! The wonderful world Uruguayan club football, with its many quaint parks, ropey grass pitches, curiously named clubs, passionate fans, and exciting games. It’s my staple watch on any given weekend even online for me! View the full article

Click to view slideshow. The heading to this article will see smoke billowing out of any ardent Vicenza fans ears! But if they were honest, they have to be thankful for the owner of the team from Bassano del Grappa for keeping the “il biancorossi” in the third tier this term. This modern story is yet another classic Oliver Hardy tie fumbling moment of “another fine mess”, and it’s such a real shame to have fallen upon the oldest club in Veneto. Last season Vicenza were really struggling in the third division, and they fell into administration. They continued to play and avoided any undue point deductions that seem to get handed out like confetti in Italy these days. Whether such a penalty was averted by virtue of the new owners intimating their intentions I am unsure, but Vicenza did stay up under their own steam following a Play Out success, seeing off Emilia Romagna tiddlers Santarcangelo. In the summer the appropriately named Renzo Rosso, the owner of Diesel clothing, and also Bassano Virtus football club, decided to get on his white horse and ride to the savour of Vicenza Calcio. Italian football has rule that allows a team to usurp another side within a certain radius, and it has been used on a number of occasions to stop bankrupt clubs falling all the way to bottom of the ladder. SPAL, Ancona, and Nocerina have all used this rule to their advantage, the latter preferring to go into abeyance for a season until an opportunity to take over another club presented itself! What is unusual in this instance is that Bassano Virtus were also in the same league and finished much higher up the table. I saw them play at Forli, and I was very impressed by their slick counter attacking style, which swept the home side away relatively easily. Bassano Del Grappa is 33 kilometres north of Vicenza but perhaps is not a traditional footballing town, indeed their small stadium has a cycle track around it. Finishing in the top six in Serie C was maybe as good it was going to get, whereas Vicenza is a football town with a rich history. Businessmen perhaps always have an eye for a bigger ticket opportunity, as well as lacking undue sentiment, which I guess might explain why Mr Rosso closed down his senior Bassano Virtus side and moved their assets to Vicenza, adding not only Virtus to the name, but also bringing back Lanerossi, a more famous word associated with the club. You have to feel for the fans of Bassano Virtus, a name that still exists but merely having retained a junior team. While the Vicenza fans are doubtlessly grateful to still have their club in the third tier, the word Virtus is merely an anomaly as far as they are concerned, and it won’t be a word that you’ll hear the tifosi using, let alone catch it on a scarf or merchandise, or the club badge!! I would not be surprised if Virtus just gets swept away in time, but for now the new owner will wish to pacify Bassano fans, but I am curious as to whether any have followed the team after the upheaval. I was a Meadowbank Thistle fan, and my club were unusually for GB hijacked by almost the last act of West Lothian Development Council before it was wound up. They wanted a team for the growing “new” town, Livingston. The lunacy of not even allowing the word Thistle to be retained meant that none of the Meadowbank fans went on with our support, but have Vicenza kept some of the original Bassano Virtus fans? I seriously have my doubts, as Italians are passionate for their club, but they generally don’t travel very far, and they certainly don’t do neutral viewing. Indeed in my regular trips to catch a variety of games in Italy my escapades are always met with incredulity. I doubt even along the road in Verona that Hellas fans go to watch Chievo or it’s very own Verona Virtus when Hellas aren’t in town! Vicenza is a beautiful town, and in a separate article you can read all about it! The local football team have been on the go since 1902, and very early in their history they came within a whisker of a Scudetto in 1911, but came up against a Pro Vercelli side at the height of their powers and lost the final. In 1947, with Serie A now a national league as opposed to the earlier years of regional leagues with knock out conclusion, Vicenza finished 5th, and that was as good as it ever got for them. By the early ’50’s they encountered round one of financial issues, and the white knight at that juncture can in shape of a local woollen company Lanerossi, thus explaining where that portion of the name came! The Lanerossi involvement steadied the ship and from 1955 until 1975 the club were stalwarts of the top flight, which explains why the name Lanerossi is held in high regard. The great Roberto Baggio started his career with il biancorossi and in 1986 the club had won promotion back to Serie A, only to be denied as they had been found to be involved in a match fixing scandal! They have never really recovered, and the club have largely lurched from one crisis to another. I first got involved with them in early June 1990 in the days leading up to the World Cup, when a Scotsman was full of optimism ahead of the Costa Rica debacle in Genoa a few days later! The scenario could not have been more similar to last terms last gasp survival in Serie C. Vicenza were three points from safety, but oddly the situation was in their own hands as the last day visitors to the Romeo Menti stadium were Prato, the team they could catch. A home win would result in a Play off between the two in Ferrara a few days later. It is perhaps indicative of the decline in people’s passion for their local team, but in 1990, the club wanted a full house, and tickets were merely 1,000 Lira, remember them! They duly got a full and vociferous stadium, but by contrast, I watched online last May when the stadium was no more than half full when Santarcangelo were in town for the play out! Perhaps the fans thought all was lost no matter whether they won or not last term, and hadn’t reckoned on Mr Rosso saving the day and avoiding a first ever slip into D territory, the fourth tier. That June 1990 game will live long in my memory, and I was so lucky to get a ticket, but I was tucked in a corner with a low view of the pitch, with an imposing fence right in front of me. Prato were clinically swept aside 3-1, and duly dispatched to D themselves in Ferrara days later when Vicenza won 2-0. The World Cup was on the cusp of starting and I had moved across to Liguria by then, but I would have loved to have been in Ferrara! I developed a soft spot for both clubs and being an Italian calcio afficionado, I keep an eye on them both. Oddly, twenty nine years on from that encounter, Vicenza are back in C and Prato in D, just as that play off for relegation had left them! I was to be back at the Romeo Menti shortly after Scotland’s last World Cup, a much more sedate occasion in October 1998, when my own charges Ancona were in town. I don’t recall very much about the game, but I had dragged my oldest Italian buddy Andrea from the safety of Padova, for what I am sure was his only ever game in Vicenza that didn’t involve Padova! It ended goalless, a positive result on my Ancona away CV which has yet to register an away win, even Lodigiani, Sangiovannese and Port Vale denied me a win!! With a desire to see “technically” this new club, which still retains the old clubs history, I went along to the Romeo Menti recently to watch the Serie C game with third tier new boys from Imola, Imolese. A town more famed for it’s race track than football, but with the San Marino Grand Prix off the roster allegedly, the local football side are doing their bit to compensate, and try to get to the top echelon of the football circuit instead! This one also ended 0-0, and it had that look from an early point, much to the frustration of the 8,000 plus crowd, which included only 8 from Imola!! Perhaps, having played each other only a matter of weeks earlier in Vicenza in a Coppa Italia C joust, with the home side winning a scrappy game 1-0, they knew too much about each others style of play. The visitors created the better chances and are higher up the table at the time of writing, but the protracted play off to Serie B is the limit of either teams ambition. Given Cosenza went up having finished 9th in Girone C last season, any team in the 27 team play offs who can string a series of late in the season results together can progress up, and in progressing to the last eight, and in Vicenza’s case, the semi-final of the C cup, both they and Imolese have already demonstrated a cup tie winning mentality that could stand either in good stead come late May, early June. The stadium in Vicenza is fabulously well kept and a proper ground too, with a very British style main stand running the length of the pitch. The behind the goal “curvas” were two tier affairs in 1990 when I was first there, but these have been modernised into a single, sizeable sloping terracing at either end. The capacity is now reduced to 12,000, more than adequate for the third or second tier, but it will be interesting to see if the new owners manage to bring the famous red and white striped, Stoke City-esque kit back to Serie A, and if they do Virtus might just stay!! If you arriving on a train merely to go to a game, shame on you, as Vicenza deserves more of your time. But from the station, turn immediately right and follow the tracks and climb up to a junction where you want to edge left where a dual carriage road is separated by the train tracks in a hollow in the middle. When you see a rather lavish old Roman gate, you want to turn left and very soon thereafter the floodlights will come into sight. A small river means you have to go further down than you’d ideally want and then double back on yourself once crossed the wee bridge. I would allow 20/25 minutes to walk from the station. Otherwise, if you are sightseeing ahead of the game, you want to head all the way through Palladio’s marvels and when you arrive near the outside of Teatro Olimpico, you want to start nudging right! There isn’t anywhere to eat near the stadium, but under the Gradinata opposite the main stand, the Stadio Bar will serve you a beer before you go into the ground! View the full article

Click to view slideshow. Veneto is one of the most visited regions of Italy with the lure of Venetian canal splendours and Veronese balconies being the main draw. The more adventurous travellers will doubtlessly have a look at Padova too given its proximity to Venezia with it’s beautiful piazza’s and slightly less manic tourism, but equidistant between Verona and Padova on the main Milan to Trieste railway line is Vicenza, which is a real gem of a city. Here is the home of Andrea Palladio, a great architect of yesteryear, and like Gaudi in Barcelona, his mark has been left all over the centre of Vicenza, and indeed his work can be found sprinkled around the surrounding area amongst some of the most amazing rural mansions you will see anywhere, especially La Rotunda. Vicenza is more than a trip for a football match, and in many respects it is worthy of longer than a mere day trip too! As you head out of the railway station, instead of turning immediately right for the stadium, if you head down the road straight in front of you which cuts through park lands on either side. If you are in need of a refreshment before you set off, or on the way back, just before you set, having crossed the road in front of the station, on the right you’ll see a little round building with tables outside, and it really is a fabulous cafe. While it is near a busy road, if the sun is out, the tables are sufficiently back from the road to not spoil the enjoyment. The entrance to the old city is your right following a half mile walk down that straight road, and a fine city gate in the wall is what greets you. There is a very fine little park just to the left of the entrance, with a river, as well as lots of smouldering statuary and shade making it a wonderful place to chill out on a hot day. Green space inside the wall is non existent, but around it, Vicenza has a number of lovely park spaces. Through the gates and you are starting to step back in time. Like so many central areas of Italian cities, the buildings have been preserved wonderfully, and Vicenza is no exception. It is not the biggest place you will ever visit with a population of 112,000, most of whom live outside the historical centre. The centre piece of Palladian Vicenza is the Basilica, a huge building shoe horned into the surrounding piazza’s which have the Venetian lion aplenty in a variety of positions, we are after all in the realm of the Doge. The Basilica’s vast green roof is clearly visible from afar at the magnificent Monte Berico, another place worthy of note, and not just for the incredible church, but the breathtaking views its position over the city affords. If you are standing on a railway platform looking up at the hill in front of you, Monte Berico is staring right down on you. It is merely a thirty minute walk, but all uphill! Back in Vicenza, Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico is an extraordinary thing, essentially the recreation of an outdoor theatre indoors! Just across from here is another of his creations the Palazzo Chiericati. It is a vibrant little city, and along with Parma and Lucca, a place I love going back too. There is enough accommodation and eateries to keep everyone happy, and while it can get busy at times, the volume is nothing like those in the centre of Verona or Venezia. Indeed, given their proximity, Vicenza is a cheaper base to see all the great Veneto cities and any given calcio match that might take your fancy. Mantova, Ferrara and Brescia are all within easy reach too, although in the case of the latter, be aware the stadium is a long, long way from the railway station! View the full article

Click to view slideshow. Readers of a certain vintage will perhaps recall the UEFA Cup Final of 1981, when Bobby Robson’s Ipswich Town defeated AZ’67 their Dutch opponents, 5-4 on aggregate, complete with Dutchmen Arnold Muhren and Frans Thijssen in the Portman Road side. By modern day standards it was perhaps an unusual double act for a European final, but in the days before excessively seeded draws, coefficients and big money made the route for the lesser clubs to a final more protracted, the European competitions, especially the UEFA and Cup Winners Cup finals, did throw up a curve ball on occasion. That said, both Ipswich and AZ were at the height of their powers in the late ’70’s and early ’80’s so a coming together in a near “local” derby across the North Sea was no fluke. While Ipswich had already enjoyed FA Cup success, as well finishing runners up in the league twice in ’81 and ’82, AZ’67’s consolation for losing the UEFA Cup to the Tractor boys was winning the Dutch Eredivisie for the first time in the clubs history that month, and becoming the first team outside the “big” three (Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord) to win the title since the magnificently named DWS Amsterdam (Door Wilskracht Sterk, translates as Strong Through Willpower!), who won their only title in 1964. The fortunes of these UEFA Cup finalists fluctuated thereafter with both relegated by the mid to late ’80’s. AZ dropped down a level for nine out of ten seasons from ’89 to ’98, returning to the top flight just before Ipswich settled into the English second tier, where both teams have respectively been ever since, albeit the Tractor Boys look doomed to the third tier this season now. AZ’s decline coincided with departure of the club owner Klaas Molenaar, who together with his brother had arrived at the club in 1972 and invested heavily. Three Dutch Cup wins and that first ever championship were their legacy. AZ (which stands for Alkmaar Zaanstreek, the names of two nearby towns following mergers long before 1967) have always played in Alkmaar, and they moved into their new home, the 17.000 capacity AZ Stadion in 2006, with sponsorship altering the initials more recently to AFAS. It would soon be witness the clubs second league title in 2008/09, and more recently a fourth Dutch Cup win in ’12/13. Oddly, AZ’s second league title was first outwith the big trio since their last success, but the trophy didn’t go back to Amsterdam, Rotterdam or Eindhoven the next season, with FC Twente Enschede getting in on the Roll of Honour for the first time. What is even more odd is I have now seen two Dutch clubs in my life, both in the last 15 months, AZ and FC Twente, the two “rogue” Eredivisie Champions of the last 54 years, with FC Twente were sighted in the most unlikely but wonderful surroundings of a sun soaked Stair Park, Stranraer! It was a mismatch of a friendly at the start of last season, with Twente winning 5,0, but new friends were forged! AZ v Kairat Almaty is perhaps not a conventional first ever game in the Netherlands on my first ever day in the country, but the lure of the Kazakh visitors was the real draw for me! Since Kazakhstan successfully switched across from the Asian conference to UEFA, arguing the Western part of the country is within Europe as the Ural mountains are the dividing line between the two continents, their club sides have little by little progressed up the UEFA coefficient table. FC Astana from the same named modern day capital are essentially backed by the sovereign purse of the Kazakh government and they have been leading the charge, but Kairat, from the old capital Almaty have been knocking on the door of making the group stages of the Europa League too in recent seasons. In Soviet times Kairat were the Kazakh regions leading club and they occasionally graced the top flight in those days going toe to toe with the Moscow and Kiev giants. In the modern world of independent Kazakhstan, the closest Kairat have come so far to making the Europa groups was in 2015 when they made the Play Off round, only narrowly losing out to Bordeaux on the away goals rule. On that run they had played Aberdeen, and not only was I the author of the programme notes on Kazakh football and Almaty, but I got to see Kairat for the first ever time and meet some of the fans! You have to respect fans who travel from the furthest eastern extremity of Kazakhstan to anywhere in Western Europe, although some had travelled from as far as Edinburgh where they were at University! The games with Bordeaux set a new “longest distance” record for a European match at the time, but Astana’s games v Benfica might have beaten that now, although the Kazakh capital is a good bit west of Almaty. The first leg of the AZ v Kairat fixture coincided not only with a European match in Edinburgh, Hibernian v Asteras Tripolis, but also FW’s editor Jim making his Scottish capital debut at a football match here! With the time difference to Almaty at five hours, it allowed me the opportunity to view both matches and by the time I met Jim for a beer ahead of the Easter Road game, I was positively gleeful at the imperious way Kairat had seen off AZ on a sticky Almaty night. A 2-0 win for the Kazakh’s is a result that isn’t just another feather in their cap, and keeps an impressive European home record going having only lost the very first ever European game to Red Star Belgrade in 2002, but beating a team who finished third in the Dutch Eredivisie last season would make afficionados of the European game sit up and take notice! The stage was beautifully set for my trip to Alkmaar. Alkmaar (pronounced Olkmar) has a population of just 107,000, adding even more credence to fantastic achievement of winning the Eredivisie once, let alone twice! It is situated in North Holland, no more than 35 minutes by train from Amsterdam, or Schipol (change at Zaandam) and it is a city famed for its Cheese Market. The nickname of AZ is “The Cheese heads” (Green Bay Packers might want a word!!). As you’d expect, like a number of Dutch cities, water abounds with a network of canals on one side of the city. The central area is classic Dutch architecture and very picturesque as well as clean. If you are here on a warm sunny day, cafe/bar society on the canal sides or squares abound. The Railway station to the stadium is a good 45 minute walk, as the AFAS Stadion is just outwith the city limit, with motorways surrounding it as well as that old Dutch favourite, water! Indeed, if you follow the logical trail out of the city, you can see the stadium across from a very busy roundabout, but how to get to the stadium will stump you unless you are close to match time when a stream of red and white colours will show you the route. Essentially you have to follow a walkway to the left at the roundabout which looks as though you are walking away from where you want to go, but lo and behold, an underpass appears! I am sure buses will get you close to the stadium, a taxi will take you to the door, at a cost, but if you don’t want to walk, follow the lead of the locals and get yourself a bike!! I guess Dutch football has its issues with hooliganism and the away area in the AZ ground is heavily penned in, both inside and out. The three hundred or so Kairat fans were pretty much isolated, and even after the game, a separate gate is opened for them to leave, right at that busy roundabout! It was to be their night, as I had suspected it would be, having surprised a few AZ fans in a bar in town on such matters! A 2-0 lead was always going to be a useful position to defend, and they largely did the job magnificently. Things might have been different had an AZ goal not been chalked off for offside in the first 15 minutes, but when Kairat’s impressive centre forward Aderinsola Eseola was cynically blocked in the AZ penalty box on 30 minutes, the ref pointed to the spot, and Islamkhan coolly slotted home the resultant kick to send the visiting fans wild. AZ had an hour to score four, but it was never going to happen, however by half time they were level. The Kairat keeper Vladimir Plotnikov, who had a couple of wobbles amid some exquisite saves, punched the ball but it spun up ending behind him nearer the goal! It then hit someone, probably an AZ leg, before dribbling into the corner of the goal. It brought encouragement to the hosts, who tried with fire and fury at the start of the second half, but similar to the game in Almaty, nothing came of their efforts, with the midfield trio of Isael, Islamkhan and Arshavin supplementing the back line effort of Kairat led imperiously by Sheldon Bateau, a Trinidadian defender on loan from Krylia Sovietov Samara. Sitting deep, soaking up pressure and then breaking fast, it is a tactic that serves Kairat well, and they looked dangerous on the break. Eseola should have scored, and a younger Andrey Arshavin (ex Arsenal Arshavin) would have tucked away his chance having scampered from the halfway line to go one on one with the keeper, but either the legs or his mind failed him and the keeper easily saved. In the very last minute of injury time, the amusingly named Fred Friday went to ground in the Kairat box, a dive that had the AZ fans around me giggling, especially when the ref awarded a penalty, 2-1 AZ but seconds later no one from Almaty was caring. They had got through a potentially tough round against a useful side from a country proud of its footballing history, but like the Dutch National side that had hit the buffers in terms of qualification for finals tournaments before the Nationals League relaunched the Oranje, this result was a wake up to call to the shifting sands of the European club game. Kairat moved on to play Czech side Sigma Olomouc in the quest for Europa League Group stage football, while AZ had a little longer to get things sorted out ahead of the league campaign starting. In a brief exchange of words with Sheldon Bateau as he chatted to a friend by the touch line, they didn’t seem unduly concerned about Olomouc, but the Czech’s won both legs, becoming only the second side ever to win in Almaty, before going out themselves to Sevilla in the last round before the group stages. The Kazakh season runs from March until November, and maybe they have the advantage of catching sides a little lacking match fitness in July. The club are heavily geared to success in Europe, the Sigma loss saw the Spanish manager sacked, and while they maintained second place and won the Kazakh Cup, performances seemed flat, and in the winter break their has been a considerable turnaround in personnel ahead of kicking off the new season with a relatively routine 2-0 win at home to Taraz, but they did lose the Kazakh Super Cup 1-0 to the enemy, FC Astana. I have now seen Kairat twice, they have failed to win either game, but on both occasions they have taken the scalp of perceived “bigger” clubs Aberdeen and AZ over the two legs. Another away tie in the Northern parts of Europe for Kairat and I will have to see if I can get there!! Almaty a go, go one day soon! View the full article

Click to view slideshow. Every time I see the words “The North”, it brings back memories of a great Argentine friend of mine who had flown into Britain for the first time, lured here by Monty Python’s re-union at the 02 in London! Post the “bleedin’ demise” of that entertaining gig, the next day we set off on the drive to Scotland and as we hit the M1 just outside the capital, one the first signs he clapped his eyes on said “The North”, and every time subsequently he saw these words, he’d repeat them in a Pythonesque fashion and laugh!! I am sure the controversial columnist Julie Burchill always thought The North started just beyond Watford, but for southern English football fans, depending on how far south your club is, this will essentially determine where your perception of “north” starts! I tip my hat at all fans in lengthy lands where your club is at the extremity. I was at a Carlisle v Plymouth game a few seasons ago, the sort of game that shows the metal of a true fan. Up here in Scotland the century plus “closed shop” nature of the game meant that Aberdeen was the only real lengthy trek of the season. The expansion to include Inverness and Dingwall did bring a decade or so of top flight fans bleating that these away games were too far away! Elgin though is the furthest north venue in the Scottish league at this point! The North East tag conjures thoughts of Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough, or in Scotland the aforementioned Aberdeen, Peterhead and maybe Cove Rangers now, but the real North East might as well be the Ross Ice Shelf on Antarctica, only the brave and the adventurous get to know the true North East football of Scotland! Strap yourself in, here we go!! Beyond the Black Isle, a peninsula over the Kessock Bridge at Inverness, football is alive and kicking. The idea for this article developed the day England were playing Sweden at the World Cup! I was heading for Orkney but before taking the ferry, Wick Academy were playing Orkney for the magnificently named Ken Green Challenge Cup, and even more to my surprise, Orkney were defending the trophy! The game had a similar kick off to the WC action in Samara, but on a rare, gloriously sunny Caithness day, you can’t beat real action away from the TV! I have seen Wick a number of times in central/southern areas in Scottish Cup action, including treks to Girvan, Dalbeattie and Berwick Upon Tweed, but this was my first ever game at Harmsworth Park, and with my family island “homeland” of Orkney in town, it was the perfect opportunity. Harmsworth Park (capacity 2,412) is just inside the Town limit as you come in by car from the south. First you’ll see a cemetery on your right, and then the stadium next door where a distinctly sloped pitch awaits, but it is a very tidy Highland League home for Scotland’s most northerly SFA member. The main entrance is on main road, but up the back of the ground a gate will allow you to enter either by foot, or bring your car, where you can choose sit in it and have a perfect view of the game, as the car park terrace sits high above the pitch! This way of watching has tradition in the older stadiums on the Faroe Islands, as well as nearer at hand in Shetland and Orkney. When Wick scored in this match, a few horns would peep! I can imagine of a winter’s day, with the wind howling this is an all ticket area!! When the Highland League lost three of its incumbents during the summer of ’94, with Caledonian and Thistle merging in Inverness and Dingwall’s Ross County all joining the Scottish league, Wick were finally accepted into what is now the fifth tier of the Scottish game. They had been playing in the North Caledonian League, a small league which has no promotion to the Highland League as yet, but given the revolution in the Lowland area with the 6th tier East of Scotland league going from 13 members to 39 over the summer, times are changing. Wick, unlike Fort William and Strathspey Thistle have been a fine addition to the Highland League, and while it took them a few seasons to really get to grips with the more demanding fixtures and travel schedule (Wick to Cove and many of the Aberdeenshire sides can be a 5 hour trip!), they have become a top half team, and on occasion they’ve finished in the top six. The fact that the Highland League winner can now potentially get promoted to the Scottish League has seen more ambitious clubs, especially in the Aberdeenshire area dominate, but the North does have it’s own team that can joust with the best of them in Brora Rangers, as well as Wick on their day! Orkney have in recent years entered a team into the North Caledonian League, and it is perhaps beginning to pay dividends, winning the title last season for the first time, a new feather for the island footballers. While Orkney has its own summer league, including Rendall FC (Rendall is not only a district of the mainland but a popular Orcadian surname!) some of the lads that play for their respective “local” team, also play for the Orkney FC league side. Those who do play for both are effectively playing all year round as the Orkney league is a summer league, and the North Caledonian League runs from autumn to spring. When you factor in the travelling off the island to away fixtures as far south as Inverness, it takes a lot of dedication. Perhaps given some of Orkney’s players had been playing all summer they looked sharper straight from the kick off versus Wick and the raced into the lead. I was astonished just how useful, and fit they looked. The Scorries, Wick’s nickname (a North name for seagulls) also lost a player with a bad injury, and an ambulance was needed, but in a tremendous opening 45 minutes, Academy not only found the equaliser but went in 2-1 up after an absolute cracking drive. The second half was slower, more fractious by virtue of an astonishing number of Orkney substitutions! Wick scored a third but it should have been 3-2 right at the end when what seemed like a perfectly good goal, but it was belatedly chalked off for the visitors. Upon my arrival on Orkney, the idea for this article started growing arms and legs! Suddenly the plethora of substitutions at Wick was beginning to make sense when I learned that the 100th Milne Cup match was just around the corner, Orkney v Shetland, the old “north isle” rivalry was hitting its century of games. It started out in 1908 as Kirkwall v Lerwick, the two Capitals of the respective islands, with the Shetlanders winning 5-1. It wasn’t until 1919 that the game changed name to Orkney v Shetland, an excuse for another Centenary event next year in Lerwick of the island named fixture perhaps?! The game alternates between the islands year on year, and Shetland being that bit larger have tended to have the upper hand since the mid ’70’s at which point Orkney led the series 32-20, but going into the 100th match Shetland had turned that statistic around to lead 55-39, with five drawn games. Orkney’s only away win in that period coming in 1981 with a 1-0 success. Shetland have hosted and won the Island Games football competition, something Orkney will have the honour of hosting in 2023. Indeed before the Faroes joined FIFA, all three groups of islands would play for the North Atlantic Cup! A crowd of around 700 turned out on a dreich late July Saturday afternoon at the Pickaquoy stadium, Kirkwall (known locally as Picky) to witness this historic 100th encounter, some way short of the 6,000 record crowd in 1935, but times are a changed, and the local Kirkwall Open Golf tournament is badly timed for the same day. It was a game that will live long in the memory of Orcadian football fans, as that inaugural 5-1 loss in Lerwick 110 years on was replicated and reversed with a magnificent 5-1 Orkney win! Isn’t it strange how football scores and statistics have a habit of cropping up again, and again?! The boys in red and white raced into a 3-0 half time lead, aided by a brace from Man of the Match young Liam Delday. Shetland must have received a real tongue lashing at half time and emerged with more fighting spirit putting Orkney under relentless pressure. It took them until 15 minutes from the end to find the net though, and as they endeavoured to reduce the deficit yet further, a fit and youthfully athletic Orkney side countered at blistering pace, scoring a fourth soon after, and putting the icing on the Milne Cup cake with that all important fifth goal in added on time just after Shetland had struck the Orkney crossbar with a header. It was the biggest margin of victory in 46 years, a result built on fine fitness and great team unity, something that Orkney FC might have brought to the County team. The next stage of the evolving Orkney side is to try and win on Shetland for the first time in 38 years next July, and if they continue to do well in the North Caledonian League, and compete well with the likes of Wick Academy, that elusive away win is not an unrealistic prospect. The future of Orkney football looks bright, and if the Caledonian League becomes a Highland League feeder, might we see Wick v Orkney as a league fixture? It would be great! Back on the mainland, as you head south down the stunning, if twisty A9 road that hugs the coastline from Wick, the next major footballing “hub” you’ll drive into is Brora. Of all the teams in this region, Brora Rangers are maybe the one most people will know. In recent years they have changed from a Highland League also-ran to back to back league winners, and despite the two most recent seasons being without title success, they are still a force to be reckoned with and they are running Cove close this term. Brora were the first Non League side to be involved in the promotion play off final versus League Two’s bottom club, Montrose in 2015. I was at both these ties, and while rumours abound about a lack of desire to step up, the “Cattachs” as Brora are known, held Montrose 1-1 at their own Dudgeon Park, a 4,000 capacity ground on the southern edge of town, and they led at half time in the return leg 1-0 at Links Park. Hilariously the Brora fans were going round asking for money that they could leave with Montrose to buy a road map of the Highland League area where Montrose would have ended up had they lost! However, a harsh red card and a strong wind behind the home side in the second half both contrived to assist Montrose to a win and league safety, but it was a fine effort by the Sutherland side. Last season Brora had a poor league campaign by their own high standards, but they did go on a Scottish Cup run that will live long in the memory, that saw them reach the last sixteen of the competition beating Edinburgh’s CSS (Civil Service Strollers), Stranraer (quite a trip!), East Fife and then putting up stiff resistance at Rugby Park versus Kilmarnock. Incredibly every game was away from home! I saw them dig out a 1-0 win at East Fife, but the most amazing goal I have ever seen was scored by Brora, a late equaliser at Edinburgh University in the cup a few years ago when a shot from just inside the halfway line hit the top corner of the net at some rate, what a screamer! The final part of this Northern tale seemed to beautifully fit into place soon after my trip to Orkney when the Scottish Cup draw was made! The final may be in late May next year at Hampden, but it all started on 11th August, and as luck would have it, the last “big” north team for my story had been drawn at home, Golspie Sutherland v Burntisland Shipyard. These two were “non non” league anomalies of the Scottish Cup, but Burntisland have upped their game, turning semi-professional less than a year ago in a bid to stay more competitive in the burgeoning East of Scotland set up. They won the Fife Cup at the end of last season for the first ever time, and are slowly losing the “joke” tag that horrendous cup thumpings of old bestowed on them. So, all in the name of journalism for a good piece for Football Weekends, I drove by my own teams stadium in Inverness on a day newly promoted Ayr were bringing their five wins on the trot start to the season to town, and out over the aforementioned Kessock Bridge headed to Sutherland once more. Golspie Sutherland are still an anomaly, playing in the North Caledonian League (they have won the title 9 times), with no promotion prospects, but they are a fully affiliated SFA member allowing them to participate in the Scottish as well as the North of Scotland Cup! This was my first ever game at the romantically named King George V ground (capacity 1,000), but I have driven by on numerous occasions, and even done that classic football fan thing, stopped and had a peek over the wall! The ground is visible from the A9 but you have to know where to look especially coming into town from south, but where the round dips down to the right, beyond a play park, the wall is visible but they have no floodlights. I had seen Golspie in Scottish Cup action before, an away tie versus Gala Fairydean before they added Rovers, but upon arriving in Galashiels I discovered the game was being played in Hawick further south as the pitch was being taken up to be replaced by an artificial surface. Golspie put up a brave fight, but lost 4.1. The repetition of scores rears its head again, with Golspie going down 4-1 to Burntisland in this Scottish Cup tie, the first time in four games I have seen The Shipyard win. A red card for the home side at 0-1 aided the “Shippy” as Burntisland are known, and they scored two more before the break. However, I cannot fault the conviction and effort of Golspie, and despite losing a fourth in the earlier part of the second half, they finished the stronger, and while they only managed one consolation goal, they could easily had one or two more. So having seen off one “anomaly” of the Scottish Cup participants, Burntisland head across to Ayrshire to play another in the shape of Girvan Amateurs, the only “Junior” side that get a shot at the Scottish Cup no matter their league position as they have retained their membership! For Golspie, they’ll have the competition of Orkney in the North Caledonian League this autumn, and judging on the matches I saw for this article, Orkney could very well retain the title, but then again I might just be bias! View the full article

Click to view slideshow. When I suggested to FW’s Editor Jim a cross border raid to cover back to back Spartans games on either side of the English and Scottish divide at Christmas, it was purely on the basis of the similar name, and the idea that in their respective lands both are high profile non league sides famed for cup exploits in particular. I never imagined that both clubs would be involved in festive social media **** storms, and in one case literally! Now I have to confess I strode into the well presented Croft Park, Blyth (capacity 4,435) oblivious to a certain billboard around the field. Unusually for a stadium I found myself drawn to the advertising hoardings, and with camera in hand I found myself taking photos of a quote from the ancient King of Sparta, a local poet and another board confirming Blyth Spartans are a registered Pena, thereby affiliated with Real Betis in Sevilla by virtue of similar kits I guess! But the controversial new advert passed me by, “Visit North Korea”!! If only I had perused the programme with greater pre-match enthusiasm, but capturing images for FW was higher on my list of things to do! Subsequent photos of the advert seen online and scrutiny of my photos would suggest that in the second half, Spennymoor fans had flags draped over the “intriguing” advert. I never once caught anyone commenting on it either, granted the game was absorbing, but the only non related chat seemed to be fretting about Newcastle’s plight at Liverpool! The billboard has had enough mileage on the social media airwaves and press, so getting into its relevance I will leave for you to investigate. The Edinburgh Spartans club, although just purely known as The Spartans, is a much more straightforward tale, something I witnessed first hand in their pre-Christmas home match with Gretna. In the 70th minute or so a routine free kick to Gretna was delayed until a chap appeared a minute or so later with a shovel. Fox-gate was open, poo removed, the game re-commenced. It was a remarkable first for me, and given Gretna had warmed up in that half, as well as 70 minutes of football raging by it, are they tell us that the ball never once encountered it, or a players boot?! If the answer is yes, astonishing!! A Boxing Day trip down the A1 from Edinburgh to Blyth on a relatively balmy winter’s day was a fine outing. Oddly I had been in Blyth once before for football, an early kick off of a Northern League Second Division tie, Blyth Town v Bedlington Terriers, which to this day remains the lowest ranked football match I have ever watched! Town’s little ground is on the edge of Blyth, so on that occasion I hadn’t discovered Blyth beach as Gateshead v Halifax was the Easter weekend afternoon diet that day! Gosh, what an astonishingly long stretch of sand there is too! Blyth is by no means a seaside holiday town, but even on Boxing Day it was full of walkers and people enjoying the great outdoors. Croft Park has been home to Blyth Spartans for 110 years now and while it has been buffed up in the last decade or so, it has witnessed many a footballing upset as Blyth have long been one of the great FA Cup giant killers. Perhaps the best FA Cup run was back in ’77/78 where they beat Chesterfield at home, and Stoke City away at the Victoria Ground before holding Wrexham away and earning a replay. Had Wrexham not beaten Newcastle in the round before, it would have set up a North East derby, but as it was, the wave of enthusiasm for the replay saw the game moved to St James Park anyway, where nearly 42,000 saw Spartans narrowly lose to the Welsh side, who went on to play Arsenal in the next round. This magnificent cup run is forever captured on a detailed T-shirt available in the club shop! In 2008/09, having beaten Shrewsbury Town at home 3-2, they brought Bournemouth back to Blyth after a 0-0 draw on the south coast. This was Bournemouth of a different era, struggling in the fourth tier and they were beaten 1-0 at Croft Park, bringing a Premiership side to town for the first ever time in the shape of Blackburn Rovers. This time they played it at home, and only lost out 0-1, but they also missed out on another “potential” north east derby as Blackburn drew Sunderland in the next round! There most recent cup run of note was four years ago when they won away at nearby Hartlepool before drawing Birmingham at home. Another televised Croft Park classic ensued with the Brummies run out winners in a five goal thriller! This National League North encounter with Spennymoor Town was a “derby” but I guess Spenny’s main “local” rivals are Darlington who were playing York that day. There was no police and minimal stewarding, just as it should be. A cracking match was to ebb and flow one way, then the other. Oddly, and by quirks of bankruptcy only, Spartans have never beaten Spennymoor Town (once Spennymoor United) and this was the sixth game between the two. They trotted off at the end having that record still hanging around their necks as the game ended 2-2, but as one lad said on his way out “a cracking game for a neutral”, it had a bit of everything, and thoroughly entertained the 1,133 in the stadium. There is no railway station in Blyth, so if you are relying on public transport, a bus from Newcastle will drop you at the bus station near the Shopping Centre and it is merely a 10 minute walk to the ground with an array of pubs on your way! If you want to enjoy the beach pre or post match, stick to the waterline by the harbour and the beach will present itself. Upon arrival at Croft Park, it certainly is a cracking non league ground, with a great history and the Blyth Spartans badge, is it better than The Spartans one?, you decide! The Spartans FC are based in North Edinburgh, playing their games now at the relatively modern Ainslie Park Stadium (capacity 3,000, home since 2008), so named as the ground is on what once were the playing fields of a similarly named school that has long closed. The original setting up of The Spartans in 1951 was to provide a footballing outlet for ex-Edinburgh University students, who might have enjoyed playing for the Uni whilst studying, but once graduated they were disqualified from representing them. The club have gradually become more and more successful, having accumulated nine East of Scotland League titles, the first of which was in 1971/72 before joining the setting up of the new Lowland League, Scotland’s fifth tier jointly with the Highland League. They won that inaugural title of the new league in 2013/14, but that particular championship flag did not bring the promotion play off scenario that it now allows. That opportunity had to wait until the end of last season after winning the title on a tense last day, where an unexpected 0-0 draw with East Stirling might have seen The Spartans blow the title had it not been for Stirling University who shocked East Kilbride with a 2-0 win. Two games with Cove Rangers from the north ensued, but the second leg in Edinburgh was largely a non event as ambitious Cove had put four past them in the first game. However, local pride was restored with a narrow home win in the second leg. The Spartans have a fabulous youth system with kids teams, coaching etc as well as a very successful women’s team. In this day and age it is pleasing to see kids in North Edinburgh walking around wearing Spartans tops and not big clubs shirts that are sadly viewed everywhere. They also have an offer to Hearts and Hibs fans who can buy a Spartans season ticket for half price if they have a season ticket for either of them! Indeed, this 29th December tussle was moved to a 2pm ko to allow those going to Easter Road for the second Edinburgh derby of the day the opportunity to do both! It is the Scottish Cup exploits in recent years that have been a feature of this ambitious club. In 2003/04, The Spartans were still playing across the road from the clubs present home at City Park, a real steep banked grassy terraced place it was too! Buckie were put to the sword first 6-1, then Alloa 5-3 after a 3-3 away draw, before another league scalp was claimed in Arbroath 4-1 away! That brought Premier League outfit Livingston to City Park, which had a twist of irony involved as Livingston had been Meadowbank Thistle, and prior to that Ferranti Thistle, who played their home games at City Park until 1974! A near capacity 3,000 saw the West Lothian side run out 4-0 winners but not before The Spartans had given them a scare or two! A couple of seasons later they were at it again, with Berwick Rangers, Lossiemouth and Queens Park all despatched before St Mirren came to City Park and they were given a very uncomfortable ride in a 0-0 draw. The Paisley men won the replay 3-0 but St Mirren is a name that keeps cropping up in modern Spartans history, most recently a 2-2 draw in the League Cup groups at New Love Street at the start of this campaign. Three years later Pollok (Junior side), Annan and Elgin were all beaten before going out to Airdrie. The most recent cup run in 2014/15 saw Clyde and Morton beaten before a last 16 time at home with Berwick Rangers which ended in a draw, thanks to a last gasp Spartans equaliser! By the time of the replay it was known that the winners would be away to Hibs in the quarter finals, and I found myself down at Shielfield amid an extraordinary number of away fans, but alas, a 1-0 loss ended the dream of a quarter final berth and a money spinning derby! As it was, on derby day in Edinburgh on the last footballing Saturday of 2018, The Spartans were hosting North Edinburgh rivals Civil Service Strollers who have been celebrating 100 years as a club this season. Indeed, the day CSS hosted and beat East Kilbride, the publishers had produced a brochure for the centenary dinner that night but forgotten to print a programme! The Spartans have shipped too many points to be in the running to retain the title this term, and another two points walked away as the teams shared the spoils in a 1-1 draw in a game where the compact CSS hardly threatened the hosts goal, save for the “soft” penalty award that brought the equaliser. The Spartans had taken the lead inside the first minute, and have a reputation at home for late, late goals to win games but it wasn’t forthcoming despite some close squeaks. The No. 19 or 8 bus will bring you from Edinburgh city centre to nearby Ainslie Park Stadium which is on the other side of an old railway line, that is a walkway now from Morrison’s Supermarket which is more prominently positioned on Ferry Road. Pubs in the area are non existent, a hotel at Crewe Toll will sell you a meal and beer, or you can come along early grab a drink and something to eat up the stairs in The Spartans Club room behind the goal. Blyth Spartans and The Spartans have played an occasional friendly as you might expect, but when came we introduce a European round robin feel to it, with Sparta Rotterdam and Sparta Prague completing the line up!! View the full article

Click to view slideshow. This article was written in March 2018 for Football Weekends with some of the pontification surrounding mere rumours because of the fluid nature East of Scotland league at the time. However, while bits are out of date, I hope it is still an entertaining read. The final paragraph is added and sets the agenda for 2019 groundhop, and if you are entertained or intrigued, it’s not to late to get yourself organised to get involved. An article on the new edition will follow in April, stay tuned! The face of Scottish football has been subtly changed in the lower echelons of the Professional Football League (SPFL) structure in the last few years. It is a change that has undoubtedly added results, fixtures and tables from the Highland League and the Lowland League to your mobile phone via whatever provider you use! The Highland League is a long established league, and while it was affiliated to the SFA, there was no direct route into the National league structure. The setting up of the newish Lowland League nearly five years ago now signalled a change to proceedings. Clubs were invited to join the Lowland League from two “lesser” known leagues, The East of Scotland and the South of Scotland leagues. Both were full of romantic names that only ever seemed to cross the conscience of the wider public when the Scottish Cup early rounds got trotted out! The majority of the Lowland sides came from the East of Scotland league (The Spartans, Edinburgh City (the one successful promotee thus far), Gretna and Whitehill Welfare just four of the “bigger” initial members from the East, a couple from the South (Dalbeattie Star and Threave Rovers), as well as the addition of some “west” clubs (East Kilbride, Cumbernauld Colts and more recently BSC Glasgow) who were smart enough to get in on the act at the outset. It was thought that with so many members abandoning the East of Scotland League it’s future was in doubt. Despite only having 13 member clubs this season, the league is alive and well, and set to prosper by virtue of it now being (along with the South of Scotland League) the sixth tier of the newly formed Scottish pyramid, with Junior sides rumoured to be ready to change code. A Groundhopper weekend was arranged for the middle of March, essentially a celebration of these two leagues, and while the weather did it’s best to wreck the entire card, four games out of six survived, and I went along to the Saturday matches for Football Weekends, and my own curiosity! The weekend had kick off in Lockerbie at Mid-Annandale’s ground acting the host from the South of Scotland league amid snow flurries. The day had four staggered kick offs scheduled, but before a ball was kicked the evening match at Saughton Enclosure in Edinburgh between the lengthily named Lothian Thistle Hutchison Vale and groundsharers Tynecastle had already been called off due to a waterlogged pitch. So I wouldn’t break my record of three games in a day from Montevideo, but given how bitingly cold it was, perhaps three games was going to be enough! These hardy souls, the proper Groundhoppers, some of whom have been at five games in a day! Scottish football does have some fabulously named clubs, Forres Mechanics, Wick Academy, Hamilton Academical, Queen of the South, as well as one or two I have already mentioned above, but the best for me is Burntisland Shipyard! This mythically named team have just been one of those names that popped up in the Scottish Cup on occasion. I had seen them twice before, both away, and with a 0-21 tally from these two games, you can see life wasn’t always easy for the Shipyard! When I first cast eye on them in 1996 at Huntly their was serious doubt as to whether the game would be played the next day, but it went ahead and the chat on the terracing after an extraordinary number of volunteers turned up to sweep the pitch clear of the snow, suggested the Burntisland players had been “enjoying” the hostelries of Huntly a little too late into the night! They certainly didn’t perform, and Huntly easily won 7-0! So if the Shipyard lost 7-0 in my first of my two games, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce the scoreline was doubled when they played at Bonnyrigg Rose (another cracking name!) in 2016. No excuses of booze this time they just came up against one of the really impressive “Junior” football teams of Scotland. Junior football is perhaps a bizarre concept to the uninitiated, an entire football organisation of well run, and well attended league matches with regional leagues and one National Cup away from the auspices of the Celtic and Rangers world! It was an 11 am kick off at Recreation Park, Burntisland for the groundhop opener and we were greeted with snow in the wind, complete with a bitterly cold wind too! However, most importantly the game was on, and the little stadium the Shipyard call home is a lovely tree lined affair, and very well maintained. Preston Athletic were in town, the first club to be relegated back into the East of Scotland League from the Lowland (Threave were the first go down, but they are back in the South league). At one time Preston had put together a bid to join the Scottish League and bring League football to the magnificently named Pennypit in Prestonpans. That didn’t happen, and given the “ambition” of certain clubs in the East league as we will discover, Preston might well be back in this tier of football for a number of years yet! A crowd of 166 were huddled in corners avoiding the wind, including using the trees as shelter, and they witnessed a thoroughly engaging and competitive match. Shippy as Burntisland are known took a major step forward in November last year when they abandoned the clubs “amateur” status and joined the ranks of the Semi Professional clubs. It was perhaps a way of acknowledging the new challenges in this league, and might allow them to attract more players. Seeing the Shipyard at home in the Scottish Cup had long been on my “bucket list”, but that rarely happens so I was happy to finally get a game here, and I was also hoping they would at least score! And score they did, levelling the game just before the break. Playing against the ferocious wind, they equalised with a shot that would have taken the net away had it not been securely battened down! It was one of those days where playing with the wind wasn’t easy. In the second half Preston sat in and counter attacked, regaining the lead when the home goalie showed hesitation, staying on his line when a quick burst out of the box might have snuffed out the attack. He quickly learned and he was an auxiliary sweeper thereafter. Burntisland were awarded a late penalty, a chance to draw level despite being a man down. The Preston keeper was the hero saving the effort, but the taker might have tapped in the rebound had he not taken to self pity at the miss! An away win was maybe just about right, but well played all 22 players in such difficult conditions. It was near the end that it struck me the lack of involvement from the majority of the visitors, and only a handful of us were applauding as the teams left the field, the majority were scurrying off to their buses. Okay we only had 50 minutes until the next game, but it was less than 10 miles away. As I journeyed across Fife I was contemplating what constituted the enthusiasm of a groundhopper?! I guess each has their own reason, notepads, folders and cameras were to the fore, programmes, badges and hats seemed to have been top sellers! All good income for the home sides in these games, but ambivalent, even snooty comparisons of elsewhere could be caught in the mutterings! The drive from Burntisland to Kelty takes you up and over the hills and through the old mining town of Cowdenbeath. You can’t easily see Central Park as you drive through the High Street, but it is the most central ground you will find anywhere, thus it is well named! They were hosting Elgin that afternoon, and having not won since August Blue Brazil were rooted to the bottom of League 2 almost certainly bracing themselves for a second season of Play Off action, having survived on the last day of last season by virtue of a 5-4 penalty shoot out success versus East Kilbride amid biblical rain! A crowd of nearly 2,000 that day shows the people of Cowdenbeath still care about the club. Kelty is just a few miles up the road, and seems to be a small place that is entirely built on the downward slope of a hill, with flat land at a premium! Indeed Kelty Hearts as the local side are known have undergone some significant alterations to their stadium in recent years. The sloping pitch has been levelled, it is a first class artificial 3G surface now, and with three sizeable covered areas, plus a new stand now. Rumours are that another stand will be built behind the goal at the main entrance with a cafe in its underbelly that will be open every day, thereby gaining additional revenue and further community buy-in. This is a club on the up, you can smell ambition the moment you step into New Central Park. Kelty are the pioneers of seeing a Junior club switch codes. Having won the East Region Junior league last season they surprised everyone by joining the 6th tier of the National set up! It is suggested other “bigger” East Juniors clubs may follow suit (they did and some!). Will Linlithgow and Bonnyrigg switched the battle of the Roses from the Juniors? Could Linlithgow v Bo’ness United be a Scottish League derby one day? Kelty’s progress is undoubtedly being watched closely. Kelty Hearts have been romping their way through the East fixture card, and ahead of kick off they’d won 17 out of 17 and scored more than 100 goals! In their previous home match they’d knocked 12 by Peebles Rovers for the loss of 1, who were mid table. Groundhopper Saturday had brought Berwick Upon Tweed’s second side Tweedmouth Rangers, who left the Northumberland league to join the East of Scotland league set up last season, to Kelty. They managed three wins and three draws in that inaugural season, but the side that play at Old Shielfield, right behind the shed at Berwick Rangers ground, had like Kelty a 100% record this term, the flip side, with not a single point to their name! I was thinking my 14-0 record score was in danger, but it took Kelty a while to get their sights right, and when Tweedmouth equalised on 30 minutes or so, a shock wasn’t on the cards, but it was a moment the away side enjoyed, and rightly so! It merely poked the bear, woke it from it’s lethargy and by half time it was 4-1. Seven unanswered second half goals saw an 11-1 whacking, some of the goals of exquisite quality, as Kelty put on a bit of show for their guests! You would think that Kelty are guaranteed to be in the play off with the South winner and stepping into the Lowland League, but let me put some unexpected meat on the bones so to speak! Another club have a 100% record in the league too, Lothian Thistle Hutchison Vale, albeit they have played six games less, but when the two clubs meet on 21st and 28th April, it could be the first time ever so late in a season that two clubs go into such fixtures without having dropped a point! Kelty will be fearful too, as the two clubs have met in two cup competitions and LTHV beat them 1-0 on both occasions, one away! LTHV will have a busy schedule of matches prior to playing the double header, but the irony is, should they win the title, Kelty will still be playing them and potentially a shed load of Junior giants next season as LTHV don’t have a license to go any higher as their ground doesn’t meet the standards for the Lowland League! Despite being hugely successful I know Kelty’s home crowds have dropped as the loss of the local rivalries in the Junior leagues with Thornton Hibs, Hill of Beith Hawthorn and Crossgates Primrose amongst others detracting from the enthusiasm of the fans. It is a step back to move forward, and should they go up, coupled with the possibility of Cowdenbeath coming down, they will have the mother of all derbies, albeit one that has never happened in competitive football before! A 5pm kick off on the edge of Edinburgh at Heriot Watt University meant a leisurely 90 minutes to get back across the River Forth and round the Edinburgh bypass a little for the days concluding game. I was going to watch my first ever “indoor” football match at the Oriam within the University campus at Riccarton. I know that Hearts train here, Hibs U20’s have been known to use the facility, as well Scotland who were training here ahead of the recent Costa Rica game. You would think that Heriot Watt Uni’s side could use it whenever they wanted given it is on their ground, but no! It costs £500 to hire for however wants it, and HWU don’t have the fan base to justify that level of outlay. It was the first time they’d played a game indoors there, and despite only 207 people being present, the delight at a record crowd was visible. Not only that, but they gave away a third of the takings to a local community centre to help with roof repairs. It struck me what a wonderful world the lower end of football is, the greed doesn’t exist. Football can learn from such humble ways, it should never lose sight of its grass roots. Now obviously grass was lacking at this fixture as well at Kelty, but I believe some of the “groundhoppers” were unhappy that matches were taking place on artificial surfaces on their tour, and heaven forbid, one was inside! One thing is for sure, if it hadn’t been indoors, it would have been off! Allegedly some had gone off to watch games on grass rather than go to Kelty, with Cowdenbeath/Elgin and Civil Service Strollers/East Kilbride muted as destinations. CSS were party to the groundhoppers, but inadvertently two years ago, as the Preston Athletic game was called off late and so CSS were tipped off the “hoppers” were on the way! Allegedly someone sped off to the local supermarket to buy up as many pies as they could get their hands on ahead of the swollen crowd!! Heriot Watt’s opponents that evening were Leith Athletic, another famous old name from Scottish football, back with us in the sixth tier, and champions two years ago, but like LTHV they have no license to get promotion, and with the loss of Meadowbank stadium in Edinburgh they could be on the road for some years! In there day Leith had a stadium at Powderhall in Edinburgh, where in 1896 it hosted the only ever Scottish Cup Final to have been played outside Glasgow! An all Edinburgh affair, with Hearts coming out on top 3-1 versus Hibs in a stadium long gone now. Back at the Oriam, HWU were quicker out of the traps and they looked the more accomplished side taking a 2-0 led. At one point in proceedings, despite a very high roof, the ball hit it, but they just played on! Leith who had the only away support of the day were clawing their way back, and just when it looked as though 2-2 was going to be the final score, they conjured up a winner not just fit to be the best of the 20 we had seen, but perhaps the best goal I have seen this season, an absolute belter! It kept Leith second, but they have lost to both the 100% ers and third will be where they finish this term. Twenty goals in three games, all for a total £16 entry fee, cracking entertainment whatever way you look, but I am not entirely sure the Groundhoppers from south were all that enthused! Sadly the Sunday fixture between Peebles Rovers and Ormiston fell foul of the overnight snow, and given they would have bought extra food and printed a special programme, such loss of revenue at the smaller clubs makes all the difference. I hope Peebles gets included in next seasons route, and they have been! The 2019 diet of six ties in the hop starts on Friday 29 March in Denny, where local side Dunipace will undoubtedly be put through their paces by the aforementioned crack ex-Junior side Bonnyrigg Rose, on a night when they might well clinch the title of their Conference (so many East Juniors came across, they have for one season only been split into three Conferences of 13 teams, with the winners playing a round robin for the overall winner to step up directly as no South of Scotland licensed team will win that league this season!). On the Saturday I might finally get a four game day, starting at Camelon at 11am, where Edinburgh United are in town. Then it’s an early afternoon kick off at Inverkeithing where Hillfield Swifts will look to take points off one of the East of Scotland stalwarts Heriot Watt University. A trek along the M8 to Blackburn will be a third new ground of the day, and a fourth of the weekend, as Preston are in town for a tea time kick off. Blackburn v Preston, the English groundhoppers are going to love that one! The action then transfers to Linlithgow for a night game against Perth side Jeanfield Swifts. I have never seen a side called Swifts, and like buses, two will come along in the same day! The hop concludes rightly in Peebles where the game was off last season, and whereas Rovers would have beaten Ormiston last term, they’ll struggle against Newtongrange Star, the 8th ex-Junior to be showcased in the 12 teams over the weekend. A 2019 groundhop tale to follow, as I promised FW editor that I would look after the fort while he was hosting a first ever Football Weekends readers gig across in Dortmund! Denny, Camelon and Blackburn or Dortmund? You go figure who the lucky one is, I just hope the delayed start by a fortnight this year will allow all games to take place. Had they repeated the same dates as last year, given last weekends weather the whole gig would have been washed out !! View the full article

Click to view slideshow. Barrow AFC and AFC Workington are the Cumbrian old guard, both former Football League sides who were both voted out and sent into the non-league wilderness back in the ‘70’s, long before the pyramid system came into being. Neither have troubled the door of the league since, and in one of the most remote coastal areas of England, just surviving is commendable. I paid both clubs a visit in 2014-2015 for a Football Weekends article published in December 2015, and recently updated for blog readership! While the histories of both clubs are very different, they are connected, not solely for their proximity, but because of other league teams delighting in getting rid of lengthy treks to the back of beyond as they would have seen it. As soon as either troubled the re-election zone, the bottom four of the fourth division, sadly the knives were out for them both. It was ironic that they were both voted out in a period when the region’s “big” team, Carlisle United were at the peak of their powers, even briefly leading Division One, a good four decades and a few years ago now! BARROW AFC Barrow were founded in 1901, and they joined the Football League in 1921. They are based in Barrow-in-Furness which is situated on the coast at the most south westerly point, beyond the Lake District in Cumbria. The club spent the majority of their 51 league seasons in the bottom league, but they did enjoy two promotions to the third tier, the second of which in ‘66/67 saw them stay up for three seasons, until returning to the basement in ‘69/70. Rather harshly, given some clubs were serial re-election seekers, in finishing in the bottom four in ‘71/72, Barrow were ousted in favour of a distinctly more southern club in Hereford United, a club with its own very chequered recent history, but in those days they were trading off “that” Ronnie Radford FA Cup goal versus Newcastle United in the Edgar Street mud that still gets trotted out every year! As alluded to earlier, geography played a part in voting out the isolated Bluebirds as they are known. It appears as though the Barrow directors were contemplating putting a speedway track round the Holker Street pitch, and this was frowned upon by the beaks, which may also have hastened their departure, albeit, the track was never built, and having been at the stadium, I have no idea how they could have even managed it, as the ground is hemmed in by roads on two sides. Even though no pyramid system existed in those days, Barrow dropped into the Northern Premier League, but even at what is now the seventh tier of the English league, they were only going to be accepted as a participant if they dropped any notion of a speedway! They remained in that league until the Alliance Premier was formed, essentially the fifth tier forerunner of the National League as it is known today. Barrow were founding members, and while they were subsequently relegated back to the Northern Premier League, and in a yo-yo-ish existence, the climb back to the fifth tier has seen five subsequent relegation’s back to the sixth tier which is now the National League North. Yet, despite occasional financial issues, they have never gone any lower than the sixth level. While it is true that they have rarely threatened to make a return to the league as yet, ambition has been on the rise, especially since September 2014, when Dallas based Barrow boy Paul Casson bought the club for £600,000. He celebrated his first season as owner with Barrow winning the sixth tier, and they have been in the National League ever since. Earlier this season Mr Casson decided to step away as the travel from Texas on a regular basis was too much. The club is going down the route of fan ownership, and despite his departure Barrow are having their best season for many a decade, and had it not been for a poor start to the campaign they might have made a play off place, but that will be just out of reach come May I suspect. Going into non-league today is not the end of the world that it probably felt in the ‘70’s. In the more regionalised leagues, travel is less arduous but stepping into the fifth tier removes the regional aspect and the distances stretch to Dover at the most southerly point, but the more populated, richer southern satellite towns of London have a significant foothold at this level. All these trips add burden to the finances of such a northerly club, as well as making it trickier to entice quality players to Barrow-in-Furness with long bus trips. A fabled piece of chat is there are proposals to build a causeway bridge across Morecambe Bay, and should such a construction ever appear the Bluebirds fortunes could take a real upturn, as such a bridge would take significant time of journeys, and averting the Lake District day tripping chaos to Lake Windermere as the road just off the M6 presently suffers. While the clubs cup CV is about as uninspiring as the league performances, Barrow do have a unique claim to fame, in that they won the FA Trophy twice in more modern times in 1990 and 2010. The first at old Wembley versus Leek Town, and the second at the new Wembley seeing off Stevenage on that occasion. To date they are the only club to have lifted this trophy at both! Another recent cracking day for the club was in 2009 when they reached the FA Cup Third Round, making the “relatively” short cross country trek to Sunderland, well ahead of the Black Cats own downward spiral. A 3-0 loss for Barrow that day, but they played very well, backed by a great away support. They may have lost, but they won many new friends. The club play at Holker Street, ignoring any nonsensical sponsorship deal that may alter that name for a brief period. It is a well maintained “classic” small English ground, but with Health and Safety restrictions now the capacity is just 4,400 with exactly a quarter of that number seated in the stand. It is very much changed days from a record crowd of 16,874 that were shoehorned in to see an FA Cup tie versus Swansea Town in 1954. While the ground will never see the likes again, the future is continuing to look bright for Barrow. I headed to Holker Street on the Bank Holiday at the end of August 2015 and I hit those dreadful tailbacks of day trippers headed to the lakes. Southport, another ex-league side who were in town sporting a hideous day glow kit instead of their more Dynamo Dresden shirt, which would not have clashed with Barrow’s white top. Barrow dominated proceedings but could only muster a solitary goal for the win on a gloriously sunny day. Barrow the town is distinctly down at heel, and it might be by the sea, but industry and shipbuilding use every inch of coastline. One interesting footnote between the two clubs in this article came to light following Manchester City’s destruction of Burton in the League Cup Semi-Final 9-0. Those pesky multi-millionaires pushed a Cumbrian League Cup mauling off the roster of the top three biggest League Cup wins, when Barrow beat local rivals Workington, 9-1! WORKINGTON AFC Some 60 miles north of Barrow-in-Furness up the unspectacular and industrial Cumbrian coastline is the town of Workington, home to the local side sometimes known as Workington Reds. While they are in the seven tier, the Northern Premier League, the Reds were also once a league club for a good number of years, having been admitted to the Third Division North for the ‘51/52 season. There inaugural season largely set the blueprint for the majority of their 26 league seasons, finishing bottom, and second bottom the following term. In 1958 they made the third round of the FA Cup, hosting Manchester United at Borough Park which drew a record crowd of 21,000! Such an attendance will never be repeated when you consider the capacity is now just 3,100, with seating for 500. This cup tie was just a month before the tragic Munich air crash that claimed the lives of so many talented United players who had won 3-0 at Workington that day. The clubs heyday was in the mid-60’s when they were promoted from the bottom tier in 1963/64, even managing a giddy fifth place the following season just missing out on promotion to the Second Division. Alas, this was as good as it got in league terms, but in the same period, the Reds made the League Cup Quarter Finals two years on the trot, losing out to London giants West Ham, then Chelsea the year after, but only after a replay! The highlight of these cup runs and maybe the best result in the clubs history came on 22nd October 1964, when Workington, complete with Keith Burkinshaw and player-manager Ken Furphy beat Blackburn Rovers 5-1 at Ewood Park in the League Cup Third Round. The end of the “league” years had a familiar and inevitable ring to it, following Barrow in being voted out just four years later in 1975/76, a devastating blow for Cumbrian football. Finishing second bottom in 1974/75 wasn’t improved the following season finishing one place worse at the very bottom of the pile winning just four games. The re-election process had run its course, and Workington also dropped into the Northern Premier league. Unlike Barrow, the Reds’ journey downward did not stop there with a further demotion to the Northern First Division in 1987/88, and then the lowest point in the clubs history, tier 9 and the Northern Counties League ten years later. They bounced out of the ninth level at the first attempt, a league title that remains the clubs only Championship trophy! Reconstruction of the non-league scene aided their return to the Northern Premier even from finishing 7th in 2003/04! There was more joy the following season as they won the first ever play offs at that level to step up to National League North, a modern day high in the sixth tier. They stayed there for a few seasons before going back to the Northern Premier, and have encountered a number of hard luck stories in attempting to return. A few seasons ago, having amassed 91 points it was only good enough for second place and they lost in the play off semi-finals. The following year the encountered ambitious Salford City in the play off final, and leading 2-1 with 11 minutes to go, they ended up losing 3-2 with a heartbreakingly late winner. Those near scrapes have gradually dwindled to merely flirting with the play off zone until this season, when they have nose dived into the relegation places, and it will take a level of consistency they haven’t as yet shown this season to dig themselves out of this particular mess, but I for one hope they do! Borough Park, like Holker Street is a cracking throwback to how football stadia used to look. Unfortunately a fire claimed the main stand, and while the underbelly remains the changing rooms and social club, the exterior seating has never been re-built, replaced with an odd slanted red corrugated roof which gives an unusual appearance to one side of the stadium. I went along to Borough Park to see the Reds host Mansfield Town in an FA Cup qualifying tie when the Stags were still non-league themselves in October 2012. Workington gave it a good effort, a despite a late flurry of near chances Mansfield progressed 2-1. Cumbria’s most famous non-league duo are alive and well. Two leagues apart at present, and with differing priorities, but with moments of magic along the way, both form part of the rich tapestry of the English game, and for those who especially remember their league days, Barrow and Workington somehow continue to conjure up warm recollections of how football used to be! View the full article

Click to view slideshow. This article was first published in Football Weekends in 2016, then altered for use in Edinburgh City’s match programme for our Scottish Cup tie in the capital, and now embellished a little for blog consumption with a wee crystal ball gazing as to just how amazing the end of our 25th year might end! The magazine neutral and distant third person switches to a closer, personal descriptive way in the added bits. The title is dedicated to the sad passing of one of my musical favourites, Mark Hollis, with a re-working of Talk Talk’s famous song “It’s my life”, but then again, Inverness Caledonian Thistle will forever be my club! A man down, pegged back by an equaliser, Inverness were struggling, it felt like we were on the ropes. Was the Scottish Cup dream about to end? It was Falkirk we were playing after all, a known bogey team for us in years past. They traditionally beat us most August’s and had knocked us out of both cups, and relegated us in one season, indeed that painful demotion game was the last game between the two teams in May 2008. However, this was May 2015, a different generation of player with none of the mental blocks that we the fans associate with the name Falkirk! The clock was ticking down on a sun drenched Hampden, when suddenly the ball broke to Marley Watkins, still in our half, but he started to run, and run with the ball toward goal he sped. A little turn inside, he shot, it wasn’t his best ever effort, a trundler, but the pace caught out the Bairns keeper Jamie MacDonald who merely diverted the ball in to the path of the on rushing James Vincent, who had sprinted from our box! It fell beautifully for him; Goooooooooal!! We had just won the Scottish Cup! A club just 21 years old at that stage had just won the oldest trophy in world football! (FA Cup is an older competition, but the Scottish Cup trophy is older!). It’s a trophy bigger clubs have craved for 114 years without success, or waited more than 100 years to win for the first ever. Nearly four years on it still seems incredible, a boy’s own story, and we have another semi-final versus Hearts soon! It was my 500th game watching ICT, I’d stayed away from some European clinching matches in the run up to make it so!! We finished 3rd in the league, an incredible feat in itself, and qualified for Europe for the first time by virtue our league position alone. It was doubly endorsed by winning the Cup! Will the club ever see the likes again? That is why we are football fans, we can always dream. In business, when companies merge, very often it leads to a greater success, a synergy. Football mergers rarely happen, but when they do, it doesn’t always bring the right result. The closed shop nature of Scottish football only in recent seasons has it opened its gate to the possibility of new blood joining via a play off system. Montrose just survived the inaugural play offs with late goals snuffing out Brora’s brave challenge. Edinburgh City are the only new team in four goes thus far, but only dubious refereeing stopped Cove last term. In 1973, one of the constituent parts of the Inverness merger, Thistle were just one vote away from gaining a league place at that time. Had they been successful, I doubt history would have played out as it has now, but following their narrow failure to join, a growing likelihood of a merger grew in the town as the best way to get league football to Inverness. Both Caledonian and Thistle were top Highland league clubs in their own right, and indeed in 1988 every single honour available to the Highland clubs were held by them both. It may have had its acrimonious moments, but much of what has subsequently come to pass has surely silenced any lingering doubters that this was the right thing to have done. It is unusual perhaps for a fan to have the entire history of the club recollected within your own lifetime, but as we only started out in August 1994 that is relatively easy! While the first season was viewed as a disappointment, it was a bedding in period. A bold managerial appointment of ex-Ukrainian International Sergei Baltacha made a statement of intent. It started brilliantly, an away win at East Stirlingshire in the League Cup, followed by a 5-2 opening day league win at Telford Street, the home of Caledonian, (Kingsmill, Thistle’s home was sold for housing) with a hat-trick from the sadly departed Alan Hercher, but mid-table was where that inaugural season petered out too. Ross County, from 12 miles further north in Dingwall also joined the league at the same time, adding a great new derby to the Scottish League, now known as El Kessicko, which draws fantastic crowds to these games. While the following season saw the club still in the bottom league, a great cup run had taken us to the Scottish Cup Quarter-Final and a home tie with Paul Gascoigne and Brian Laudrup’s Rangers! It was ultimately moved to Tannadice, Dundee to accommodate fans more safely, and while we lost 3-0, it was a great day out, providing a wee glimpse of the future, perhaps! The club knew it needed a new stadium, a flagship for the merged club, away from the history of either team. Having looked at various sites around the town, the reclaimed land on the edge of Inverness at Longman by the A9 and the Kessock Bridge was chosen. On the 9th November 1996 the Caledonian Stadium was opened with Albion Rovers as the first visitors. It ended in a 1-1 draw, but perhaps the more expansive playing surface at the new ground was to the players liking, as we kicked on that season and won the Third Division title (4th tier). By then Inverness had been added to Caledonian Thistle, giving us one of the longest names in world football, but more importantly, unlike a lot of Scottish clubs, putting the City on the map too. In being awarded City status, like the football team, Inverness has gone from strength to strength. It is one of the most photogenic stadiums in the country, right down by the River Ness, with a view of the Kessock Bridge from the main stand. The following season saw a new rivalry ignite. Livingston were the incarnate of Meadowbank Thistle, the team who had denied Inverness Thistle a place in the league all those years ago. On the last day of the ’97/98 season we were staying in the third tier, but Livingston were top, albeit narrowly from the two chasing sides, Clydebank and Stranraer. We won 2-1 and the other two chasing teams also won, seeing Livingston fall from first to third in the space of 90 minutes meaning that they weren’t going up, and oh boy they weren’t happy. Roll the clock forward one year, the penultimate match of the season back at Almondvale, both teams were going up this time to the second tier, but it was a case of who would win the title. Incredibly we were 4-0 down after twenty minutes or so, but pulled it back to 4-3 with plenty time remaining! We threw everything at Livingston, but to no avail. They would go on to gain revenge for the year before by winning the title, but our consolation was in scoring an 88th minute equaliser against Alloa the following week, we may not have won the league, but became the first Scottish team since the twenties to score in every league match in a season! Livingston were to crop up in another remarkable piece of history that Barry Wilson, our ex-winger. now coach can always have to his name, Mr Millennium! For some unknown reason, our match with Clydebank kicked off later than every other game on 27/12/1999 in Inverness, and Barry scored the last goal of the last century in Scottish football in a 4-1 win! What is even more remarkable was the first game of the new millennium, we played earlier than every other game, and in scoring the opener at Livingston in a 1-1 draw, he bagged a brace of goals, and a never to be repeated wee claim to fame! A few weeks later on the 8th Feb 2000, ICT went to Celtic Park and beat them 3-1 in the Scottish Cup! It spawned a headline from the press that will never be forgotten, “Super Caley go Ballistic”. It was an incredible result. We bedded down in the second flight for a few seasons, and progressed twice in this period to our first ever Scottish Cup Semi-finals. In 2003 we lost 1-0 to Dundee, and the year after, lost 3-2 at Pittodrie in a replay with Dunfermline having drawn 1-1 at Hampden. But the 2003/04 season was to have a wonderful conclusion the first decade in existence. We went on an incredible run and clawed Clyde back at the top of the now Championship. The penultimate game at their Cumbernauld ground, saw a memorable 2-1 win, a result that put us top for the first time in the season, and we duly clinched the title the week after with a 3-1 win at home to St Johnstone. We were headed to the Premier League!! Aberdeen was to become our “home” for a passage of time until our stadium was upgraded with sufficient seating to accommodate SPL criteria. The lofty 10,000 seat requirement had been eased to 6,000 that summer, much to Partick Thistle’s disgruntlement, who having finished bottom thought they would stay up when we won the league! In 1996 when the stadium was opened it had a capacity of 5,000 with 2,280 seated in the main stand. The total capacity gradually increased to 6,280, but the seating number remained the same. We played our first 10 home SPL fixtures in Aberdeen, ironically the first was against Dunfermline again! We were to do the home double over Dunfermline that season, beating them by the same score 2-0 upon our return to Inverness in late January 2005, by which time two new seated stands had been added behind both goals taking the capacity to 7,500. It was slightly increased to 7,800 by adding seats to half the terracing opposite the main stand, but this is largely unused, however the record crowd was set on 20th January 2008 with the visit of Rangers seeing 7,753 in attendance. A few weeks before we could move home in 2005, a Scottish Cup “home” tie versus St Johnstone was played at Ross County’s Victoria Ground in Dingwall, with ICT winning 1-0. Not many teams will have played in three “home” venues in one season! We established ourselves in the top flight until a poor run of results in 2008/09, coupled with results in the post split period going against us in other matches, culminated in a final day relegation showdown at the Caley Stadium with our nemesis, Falkirk, who needed to win to stay up. They duly got the win, 1-0, marking the first blot on the short and proud history of ICT, relegated after five seasons in the SPL with the highest points total ever. It didn’t look likely for a quick return either, at one point we were 15 points behind Dundee, but like the previous promotion season, we charged toward the end and went on an unbelievable run that saw us back in the top flight at the first time of asking. Our 10th season in the top flight saw us finish in 3rd place, and as mentioned previously, also winning the Scottish Cup! Following that was always going to be hard, but as a European football lover, it was always my dream to see my team play abroad. So much so, on 6th July 2005 I was one of only 5 visiting fans in the town of Nykobing, in southern Denmark, to see us lose 2-1 to Nykobing Falsters Alliancien in a friendly, with Liam Fox able to claim our first ever goal on the continent. Three days later one or two more fans had joined as we won our first continental match against the now more famous Nordsjaelland, 1-0 in Farum, with David Proctor grabbing the goal in our first ever overseas win. But having qualified for Europe for the first ever time, an incredible 500 or so Inverness fans flew to Romania and journeyed down to the Bulgarian border town of Giurgiu to see if we could overturn a 1-0 home loss and play West Ham in the next round! Alas, a brave effort in the heat ended 0-0, and sadly we left the European stage without even a goal to cheer, but seeing my team run out that night in Romania was one of the proudest moments for me in the history of the club. My little claim to fame will always be, as none of the other 4 from Nykobing, including Don Taylor and his family made the trip to Romania, so I might be the only ICT fan to see them play the first friendly and competitive games in Europe! It was such a great experience in Romania, I am sure I am not alone in hoping we see the likes again! A future article on Romania to follow, but my one regret was that none of my small “central belt” gang of fans were able to make the trip. I decided to go, and even though I only left Edinburgh at 6am on the day of the game, even with changing plane in Amsterdam and losing two hours in the time difference, I had time to check into my Bucharest hotel and still be across the Danube to Ruse in Bulgaria for a late lunch before heading back to Romania for the game across the water! I had been very lucky in respect of a Port Alegre, Brazil based friend Luciano, who put me in touch with a translator chum in Bucharest, and he very kindly acted as my driver, guide and companion at his first and only ever ICT game, just one seven different countries that have been represented with me at one of our games! The International contingent of ICT followers has undoubtedly been increased by my efforts over the years throughout my considerable chums throughout the world, I am a lucky chap. I have had three Italians at our games, and one most likely has a collection of 600+ ICT programmes as well as having been at 10+ games! The Scottish Cup Final programme and DVD also resides in Skopje, and Buenos Aires, where ten friends have all been through the Caledonian stadium doors, a few of whom got to lift the Scottish Cup, and while only one was here when a game was on, he was at Banff for a friendly with Deveronvale, respect! An American had the misfortune of being at Greenock on a Friday night when we got murdered 5-0! Two Chilean girls ended up at a Scottish Cup tie at Stair Park, Stranraer as they would! The aforementioned Brazilian was at a rare home win versus Motherwell, as was a Bulgarian at Fir Park for an equally rare win the last time we got relegated. That International theme I always endeavoured to bring to the Inverness programme for some five years in our first spell in the top flight under the banner “A look at world football”, one of which was written to coincide with Gretna’s first ever visit to the stadium, and especially their Uruguayan player Fabian Yantorno. That article helped start a friendship that has spawned 12 years now, and I have subsequently seen him play in England and Uruguay. Doing these articles for Bryan the editor of the programme got me the proud opportunity to present the Programmes Player trophy to Don Cowie, and as a tipping of the hat to my “foreign” legion, I wore my Racing Club shirt for the occasion, see slide show! It has been a real bone of contention for me that the club have chosen to go down the route of an awful “online” programme, especially in this our 25th year. There was irony in attending the QOS match earlier in the season and to be handed a flyer for a Programme and Memorabilia event at the stadium. A programme is a cherished piece of memorabilia for a fan, and digital is just a nonsense. There, I got that off my chest!! There have been a more lows than highs since with a second relegation from the top flight. If we’d managed to score one or two penalties late that season, or if two St Johnstone players hadn’t both been sent off at Hamilton for fighting each other, gifting points to Accies, we’d have clawed back that one point between the two sides at the final count. Instead, we went down with the second highest ever points in a 12 team top flight, beaten only by our first demotion! One season on, another incredible run towards the end of last season would have brought Play off action to the club for the first time were it not for a very late Dunfermline equaliser in Inverness. This season, the league form started with that “unbeaten” streak, a new club record, albeit a draw or five too many in that amazing 25 league games unbeaten, but clawing back a 3-0 deficit to draw, and nearly winning that game in Dumfries shows that the belief is strong in the squad, although the Scottish Cup Semi Final could prove a distraction, reaching the promotion play offs is still within our grasp, and on our day, while we lack quality or belief at times, we can beat anyone. So when the dust settles on the first 25 years of our history, wouldn’t it just be magnificent if we could be involved in the Scottish Cup Final and the Play Off Final, and even win them both!! View the full article

Click to view slideshow. Elgin and Inverness are separated by a mere 39 miles of the A96, but a Scottish Cup 4th Round tie (FA Cup Round 3 equivalent!) between the two cities main football teams at the end of January 2017 brought together two old foes (or three?!!). Elgin City FC have a proud Scottish Cup tradition, and they were hosting a top flight team for the first time in 45 years! The visitors Inverness play in the “new” guise of a merged team, and whereas they once went toe to toe for silverware in the Highland League, a three tier chasm existed between the two clubs at that time. The form book goes out the window in such cup ties especially with the hosts playing well and Inverness bottom of the Premier League without a win since late October. It had all the hallmarks of a potential shock, and as the Elgin fans took great joy in singing, “you’re not Caley any more”, it was a hint at those bygone days, and the anticipation of a cracking tie. It had been a “Red” letter day from the minute the draw pitched the two clubs together, but sadly the significance was largely missed by the Central Belt media, but we are used to that! As the Black and Whites, Elgin City, and the Blue and Reds of Inverness Caledonian Thistle (ICT) trotted out in front of 3,624 fans, a fabulous crowd, these two names were once three stalwarts of the yesteryear Highland League. Remarkably this was the first ever competitive fixture at Borough Briggs, Elgin’s wonderful home stadium, between the two clubs as they are today! The kick off was even delayed to let the crowd in, a rare occurrence these days sadly! They had met once previously, having been drawn together in the same round of the Scottish Cup in January 2010 in Inverness, when two very late goals denied Elgin a deserved replay. Sadly, the Scottish weather caused great issues with furious wintry snow fall across the mountain passes of the A9, thus preventing me from getting up from Edinburgh to see that match. I was doubly determined not to miss this one! It’s the weight of the past, nee nostalgia that makes this a special fixture. Given the 22 year absence of regular league matches between Inverness and Elgin, a generation or more have grown up without knowing anything about those days gone by. If you consider the fact that between these “three” Highland Clubs, they have 42 League titles between them (Caledonian 19, Elgin 15, Thistle ? it emphasises how Caledonian v Elgin was the big fixture of any given Highland League card. Caledonian and Thistle came together as one, albeit it was understandably thorny at the start, joining the league at the same time as Ross County in 1994, thus instigating a “nouveau” derby of Highland significance, amusingly known as El Kessicko, as the Kessick Bridge partly separates the two by the fastest route across the Black Isle! Yet Ross County have a mere three Highland League titles, two arriving in the clubs “purple” patch in the early ’90’s, coupled with them taking some league club scalps in Scottish Cup campaigns in that period too, which nicely coincided with the Scottish League inviting clubs to apply for an expanded league format. Given both ICT and Ross County have both established themselves in the Scottish top flight, and have both won a National Trophy (They held the two big cup trophies, the Scottish Cup and League Cup, briefly at the same time!), their impact on modern day Scottish football is irrefutable but it could have panned out so differently. In 1994 it must have been a frustration for Elgin watching these clubs step into the Scottish National League set up, as they had won the 1992/93 Highland League in the clubs centenary year, only to see that title stripped from their grasp?! They had brought a game forward to relieve two players of suspension ahead of a crucial match, needlessly too! I have read more on this shabby incident in recent times, and it seems this practise was not uncommon at the time, but the whole title stripping centred more on a witch-hunt against the Elgin boss, John Teasdale, who was a charismatic character to some, an an outspoken idiot to others. I have signed a petition to get this harsh decision overturned, and the title re-instated for the Borough Briggs team! Had this situation not arisen they surely would have applied to join, and I suspect, they would have been favourites for acceptance ahead of County! As it was, a further expansion six years later allowed Elgin, together with Peterhead to also come out of the Highland League. Neither of them have had the same impact as the pioneers of the northern inclusion, indeed, in many regards the ghost of that title stripping has been slow to clear at Borough Briggs, and they have merely ploughed a furrow in the 4th tier of Scottish football ever since. The signs are that they are getting closer to being able to make that first step up, as they are regulars now flirting near the play off zone, whereas in the earlier years they were sadly jousting with East Stirlingshire predominantly to avoid the bottom spot. This term, a play off looks unlikely, as Elgin would require an Annan collapse to claim fourth spot. They have the fan base, and another game I was at versus Forfar in late 2016 drew a crowd of 1,100, (a rare 4 figure attendance for the basement these days!) and with nearly 4,000 at the Inverness cup tie, the potential is there for Elgin if they can advance. One less known fact outside the highlands, is that Elgin City are the most northerly league team in Scotland! With a population of just over 23,000, Elgin is significantly bigger than Dingwall home of Ross County! Elgin is perhaps by normal standards too small to be a city, the same could be said of Brechin with an even smaller population, but both are Cathedral cities and by ancient rules could be classed as a city by virtue. Elgin’s Cathedral is a mere ruin these days, but it is the capital of the Moray Region nearly halfway between Inverness and Aberdeen on the A96, and with no bypass, the traffic shuttling along this main artery can cause very busy roads through the city. The River Lossie flows through Elgin, and is right behind the covered terracing side of Borough Briggs before emerging into the Moray Firth at Lossiemouth a few miles further north on the coast! Until recently, when significant sums were spent on flood prevention, Elgin would suffer all to often from the vagaries of raised river levels. The centre of Elgin is compact as you’d expect of a small city, but it can be very busy. The pedestrian precinct main shopping area is a welcome escape from the traffic, and is a mere 10 minute walk from the stadium. The Bus station is even closer by a couple of minutes, but if you arrive by train, allow 15/20 minute walk to the ground! Bars and places to eat are all in the central area, with no real amenities other than a Tesco or Aldi near the ground. Match day catering will keep you fed and watered inside, all at reasonable prices, served with a friendly smile. A visit to Elgin for any length of time will pitch you right in the middle of many possibilities to taste Highland League action with Lossiemouth, Rothes, Forres, Nairn, Buckie and Keith no distance at all! This is whisky country, with the whole county awash with distilleries, another opportunity not to be missed! The Scottish Cup was the only way Highland clubs of yesteryear could pit their wits against clubs from elsewhere, but even with access to such competition more freely available now, the Scottish Cup still has a special place in the heart of a “highland” fan. Elgin’s proudest moment in the National competition came in 1967/68 when they reached the Quarter- Finals of the cup, going down 2-1 away to Morton, but it remains the only occasion a Highland League club has ever got that far, albeit Brora Rangers came mighty close last season. In an earlier round, Elgin drew a crowd of 12,608 (a record crowd, never to be repeated with health and safety constraints, let alone diminished crowd pulling capability of all teams!) packed into Borough Briggs to see them host and beat Arbroath. This ironically is a regular Scottish League fixture now and rarely will it trouble the 800 mark! A few years earlier in 1960 Celtic came calling to Elgin (oddly not the record crowd, only 11,207!) and it is told that two late goals by the Glasgow giants snuffed out an Elgin opener and gave them a 2-1 win, but undeservedly so on the day! History was about to repeat! Given ICT’s horrendous period without a win in the ‘16/17 season, and having been off in “winter shutdown” mode since Hogmanay, would a three week holiday make them ring rusty and allow a buoyant Elgin to claim a famous win? Well in the first half it seemed like a shock was really on! After a reasonable opening by ICT, Elgin grew into the game and were causing real problems for the Inverness back line. Amongst the Elgin forwards was Shane Sutherland, an ex-ICT player, whose claim to fame will probably still make him the toast of Ibrox?! To this today, the fixture at the Caledonian Stadium that season between ICT and Celtic remains the only time that a post split fixture saw two teams in separate “groups” play, as a combination of heavy rain claiming the original date, and Celtic’s heavy fixture card resulted in this anomaly. Big Shane broke free and scored the winner in a 3-2 success for ICT, a result that stopped Celtic going top and effectively helped Rangers win what was there last ever title before meltdown! If the Caledonian Stadium had gone wild that night, Borough Briggs did likewise as Mark Nicolson’s free-kick “trundled” round the wall and over Welsh International keeper Owain Fon Williams to give the hosts the lead. For a period thereafter they had Caley Thistle rocking, and all those uncertainties I’d witnessed in countless games in the last two months of 2016 were rearing their head again. The one bright light that gradually shone brighter and brighter was our on loan starlet from Fulham, Larnell Cole (Andy’s boy!). He’d dribbled through the Elgin ranks once or twice and they were struggling to handle his trickery, and before they could fathom out the best way to stop him, he did it once more this time with great success bringing the tie level, and steadying the panicky visiting fans with a lovely finish. All level at the break, but what a different ICT came out in the second half, controlling the proceedings and pushing Elgin backwards. Only dreary finishing, a common theme in the last few ICT seasons, was preventing another goal. Losana Doumbouya, a hard working lad signed from Cercle Bruges has the right attitude, if at first you don’t succeed, try and try again. A variety of glaring chances had been passed up, but eventually the tall striker got the angle right on a header and we were 2-1 up!! Despite continuing to boss proceedings, with only a goal lead you always know the opposition will get another chance, and in those last minutes, throwing caution to the wind, Elgin came within a whisker of scoring an equaliser. Big Shane shanked an effort that might have troubled the keeper or the net. The final whistle brought relief and delight at the visiting end, but Elgin had competed brilliantly and given a glimpse into what a fabulous fixture this would be if a regular on the football roster. I wish Elgin well, indeed, when I can’t get north to watch ICT and they are playing in the central belt I always make an effort to go see them to add my support! We “highland” fans need to stick together in a central belt orientated world! View the full article