Maybe this one was written. It’s exactly 25 years since Dumbarton were promoted to the Premier Division. (Which incidentally also makes it 25 years since my mother died, earlier in the same week that promotion was clinched. In my mind I can never separate the two events. The joy of one muted by the sadness of the other. I never made that game of course.)

For reasons I can’t quite recall I also never made it to the promotion game in 1995, but this is the third Championship I’ve witnessed.

Never underestimate the power of anniversaries in football. Dumbarton’s Second Division Championship in 1992 was on the hundredth anniversary of the club’s outright win of the whole Scottish League. We also won a Division 2 title in 1972 (which coincided with the 900th anniversary of the granting of the town’s charter as a Royal Burgh and also came fifty years after the club’s demotion in 1922) and won promotion in 2002. Note the prevalence of 2 in the years there. Roll on 2012!

Note, here, that in the back half of the 20th century Tottenham Hotspur made a habit of winning the FA cup in years that ended with a 1.

Since it wasn’t in this sequence of 2s, the 25th anniversary of our promotion to the Premier had until recently escaped my notice as being in any way significant. In regard to this, that promotion, the one in 1995 and this year’s championship are out of sync. Maybe that’s why I was so gloomy about the possibility until the last few games.

There are numerological oddities in football’s history apart from straightforward anniversaries. I once worked with a Sunderland fan who said they were all convinced they’d win the FA Cup in 1973 because it they’d won it in 1937.

I’ve also seen some numerological thing about the years in which Brazil win the World Cup but can’t remember the details.

But here’s the biggie: Cowdenbeath have won the Scottish Second Division title three times; in 1914, 1915 (no automatic promotion in those days) and 1939. You’ll notice that just after or even during these triumphs Britain was embroiled in a World War. If Cowdenbeath ever win Division 2 again, be very afraid.

*Apparently these are the correct spellings of these two words.

Being interested in both Science Fiction and history I just love that sub-genre of SF which comes under the description of Alternate History but I must say I dislike the term itself.

Alternate of course means “by turns.” Alternate History ought, then, to mean history that occurred, changed, then reverted to its first course, then back to the second, etc. etc.

Alternative is no use either as it means “the other of two” – of only two; and of course there are myriad possible scenarios for history as it wasn’t, not merely two.

Proper [ie serious] historians denote Alternate History speculations (in which they do indulge themselves from time to time) by the term counterfactual history which, while being correct in essence, is a bit Latinate and unintuitive, not exactly snappy.

Which leaves us with what?

I know it’s probably too late now, but can I make a plea that we start calling the stuff Altered History?

According to Big Rab‘s correspondent, Dumbarton is the first football club to win championships at four different levels of Scottish football.

I’ve witnessed three of them.

The club has won six championships in total.

The first was in 1891 (shared with Rangers) but we were sole winners in 1892. These two highest level wins were before even I was born, though. I also missed 1911* (level 2, when promotion wasn’t automatic anyway.)

But I was there in 1972 (level 2,) 1992 (level 3,) and now 2009 (level 4.)

*Edited to read 1911 – I had wrongly written 1912 before. (There’s a post about such football anniversaries coming up.)

The Rock, 2/5/09

I still don’t quite believe it. Barring a catastrophe we’ve won the league. Even a Dumbarton side surely can’t blow a three point and eighteen goal lead in one game; so Division 2 beckons.

Firstly, Elgin were poor and looked like a team who wished the season was already over: ideal opponents for a day like today. We took a while to score, though, and it was one of those that happens to a team at the bottom of the league. Their keeper made a good parry to Derek Carcary’s shot but it looped up and dropped down over the line despite a defender’s effort to clear. The second was beautifully worked (great cross for Dennis McLaughlin to more or less tap in) as was the third (Carcary rounding the keeper after a fine move.) The fourth was an individual effort, Carcary running almost half the length of the pitch with the ball and putting it past the keeper from what looked, from where I was, an impossible angle. Game was over and we awaited updated scores from Central Park.

The second half was a nothing, really. Carcary got his fourth taking advantage of a defensive error to round the keeper again, and Stevie Murray took a through pass and scored despite the keeper getting his hands to the shot. (But he was offside: I was in line, he wasn’t. Still, we’ll take it; it more often goes the other way.)

And the club record for consecutive minutes played without losing a goal was broken today. Considering our lack of clean sheets earlier in the season this is a minor miracle. Seven straight games now, and counting. This is Dreamland.