There’s a great appreciation of former Son Jim Lister, who retired from football last week, over at Tales From the Rock.

Jim was the undoubted surprise success of that first season back in the second tier (2012-13) which started off so badly but ended in the triumph of staying up against all the odds. His goals and presence in the attack played a major part in that achievement.

Good luck to him for his future.

Scottish League Cup, Broadwood Stadium, 22/1/17.

Well.

New season, new players – I had only seen two of the starters in a Sons shirt before (there were three from last season on the pitch by the end) – same old story. We don’t do Cups.

We never looked in trouble in the first half, passed it about fairly well but without much penetration. Loan signing Ally Roy had an opportunity to score first-time from a cross but struck it into the ground and it looped over the bar. The goal came from a corner that wasn’t cleared and from the returned ball Craig Barr headed it against the bar. It came down and was scrambled away but thelinesman gave the goal. Chris Johnston on the wing appeared lively but only once got past his man who got back to block the cross. In the end he flattered to deceive.

We didn’t step it up in the second and Clyde came more into it finally forcing Scott Gallacher into a save.

We looked vulnerable at the corners Clyde were getting but the equaliser was a fluke, a poorly cleared corner returned in a cross which looped over everyone into the corner of the net.

Their second was also poor defensively, a cross again following on from a corner not being cut out and a free header put past defender and keeper on the near post.

Christian Nade was brought on and his first touch was a drive which required a good save from the keeper. David Wilson tested their keeper in a similar fashion a minute or so later but that was it.

A bit more urgency throughout the game might have seen us win. Injuries haven’t been kind to us even so early on but this game suggested we don’t have a good depth of squad.

Early days but the league is looking a tougher proposition by the day.

A curiosity. We played in our away top but home shorts:-

SPFL Tier 2, Starks Park, 28/1/17.

What an odd set of emotions this evoked. We won and I’m still raging at the referee.

We had the better of the first half, Robert Thomson and Sam Stanton had good efforts on target and I was beginning to think we might regret not scoring when on top. I didn’t expect to lose a blatantly illegal goal. Daniel Harvie was shoved over by the forward in the build-up – how the ref and stand-side assistant missed it is beyond belief – and the subsequent cross was converted. 1-0 down at half-time having played well with nothing to show for it I feared the worst.

Second half we started brightly and got the goal when Christian Nade headed in from a cross. Then the second decision under the Val McDermid stand that was criminal. Andy Stirling cut inside the fullback and looked to be scythed down in the box. even if there was no contact he was taking avoiding action from the lunge and that still makes it a penalty. No penalty. Andy Stirling got booked for “diving”. Why would he have dived? He wouldn’t have gone over in that position if not fouled. It definitely was not a dive. No-one dives at that angle. It was a pen and a sending off. That decision could have cost us. In many a game it would have. Today though Raith weren’t up to much.

Our second was a thing of beauty. A piece of intricate passing up the right seemed to have got us up a blind alley but the ball was suddenly switched over to the left and Daniel Harvie steamed onto the ball, took a few paces and lamped it into the far corner.

Six minutes later we made it three. A low corner looked to be a wasted one but it evaded everybody and reached Gregor Buchanan beyond the far post and his shot crashed in.

We saw out the rest of the game with not much trouble and Sons’ 87 fans making a noise fit for many more.

Those two decisions weren’t the only bad ones in the game but I can’t recall any iffy ones the ref made going in our favour including loads where he let things go which he should have pulled back for a foul for us. At one point he and the assistant stared at each other for seconds not knowing what to give. Eventually it went Raith’s way, of course. But those two in particular had been so appalling that even though we were winning somehow I still felt we weren’t and had been robbed. It is apparently not the first game this ref has given baffling decisions mostly against us. Let us name the guilty man. Mat Northcroft.

I was in a junk/second hand warehouse place today and spotted an issue of Goal magazine.

Thumbing through it I came across the Sons’ league placing that week in November 1973.

Eighth. In the top Division.

Those were the days, eh? I believe we finished tenth that season.

The previous Saturday’s results were given towards the end. Dumbarton 3-0 Motherwell.

The Sons team was given as Williams, C McAdam, Wilkinson, Menzies, Cushley, Ruddy, Coleman, Wallace, McCormack, Patterson, Heron. John Bourke came on as a sub for Peter Coleman and Johnny Graham for Brian Heron. Scorers were Heron, Bourke and McCormack.

I must have been at this match (I was a season ticket holder at the time) but confess I can’t really remember it. Unless that was the day John Bourke scored his first goal for the club which was a thumping header from a corner at the Turnberry End of Boghead.

The club website yesterday published a picture of the new strips for this season.

I’m not sure I like either of them. I suppose the home one is acceptable enough.

So, Livingston have sacked manager Mark Burchill.

That’s three opponents in a row whose managers Sons have seen off.

First Alloa, then St Mirren and now Livingston.

Can we dare hope to polish off the next two as well? Falkirk’s Peter Houston and Rangers’s Mark Warburton?

No; me neither.

Well, maybe Warburton.

St Augustine’s Episcopal Church, Dumbarton (above; dedicated to St Augustine of Hippo) is possibly the most important building in my life. Not just because it was where I got married – though that can’t be minimised. It was the church where my grandfather (the original Jack Deighton) was the incumbent Rector in the 1930s and 1940s. The Episcopalian ministry was more or less the Deighton family business. Not only my grandfather but his brother (my great uncle,) his son (my uncle,) and his grandson (my brother) took up holy orders – or as I used to put it, “I come from a long line of penguins.” My generation was where the tradition ended though.

The church was where I spent a fair part of each Sunday in my youth as a member of the church choir. There were two accompanied services each Sunday; Matins/Morning Prayer or Sung Eucharist in the morning and Evensong in the evening.

More germane to its importance to my life is that it was where my mother first laid eyes on my father as he entered church in the choir procession and she told herself, “I’m going to marry that boy.” At the time they were both aged nine! My mother was a strong-willed woman and knew her own mind from a young age: her mother said she was so thrawn she’d walk on the other side of the road because she didn’t want to walk with the rest of the family. My father never had a choice. Still, without that I wouldn’t be here.

Since I moved to Fife the only times I have entered St Augustine’s have been for family funerals or as in Saturday’s case a memorial service for an old family friend who died earlier in the year. It was a chance to see how cruel time is to us all. One woman said to me, “I know you,” but couldn’t work out who I was till she was told. Mind you I didn’t recognise her either. My excuse is that she’d changed her hair colour.

I took the photograph below of the chancel, high altar, reredos and stained glass window at the east end; now all much more visible from the nave since the rood screen was removed during restoration. (The pictures on the lower altar are from the life of the old family friend.) The reredos is a particularly fine example of the form.

The War Memorial to St Augustine’s congregation members used to be to the right of the entrance door. When the church was refurbished with heritage funding – the church is a grade A listed building – it was relocated to halfway or so up the left hand side:-

It only occurred to me when I got home that this was probably the last time I’ll ever attend St Augustine’s. With the loss of that old family friend I no longer have a connection to the church and none with Dumbarton – except for the glorious Sons of the Rock of course. I’m kicking myself that I didn’t take more photographs, especially of the stained glass windows facing the High Street.

Scottish League Cup, New Bayview, 1/8/15.

My first match watching the new look Sons….and we’re a work in progress. Not surprising considering that only two of last year’s squad started the game. Three finished it as one had come off but two later came on.

The match was preceded by an announcement to the owner of a Vauxhall Zafira to go back to the car – not an unusual thing to hear at a football ground but the following words were. I quote. “This is Methil and you’ve left your windows open.”

The first half was pretty uneventful. We had one close effort saved by their keeper, I think from Scott Taggart. Mark Brown didn’t have a save to make. We dominated the second half apart from a few breakaways on one of which they scored. The attacker was allowed too much room and Mark Brown had come too far off his line and was lobbed. They had the ball in the net a minute or so later but it was chalked off for a foul on the defender on the way through. For about two minutes East Fife threatened but then we got on top again.

The equaliser came from Kevin Cawley, neatly placed to head home after their keeper flapped at it a bit. We had a few more efforts on goal before the 90 minutes were up.

In extra time we carved them open several times but the ball just wouldn’t go in apart from one disallowed possibly for a foul on the keeper but who knows?

The statistics tell the story really.

So it was on to the lottery of penalty kicks. You have to say, 3-2 up with two kicks to one left we ought to have put it away. But we didn’t. Time to concentrate on the league, then. (The Challenge Cup can take care of itself. It usually does.)

Sons’ first round League Cup tie will be against East Fife at New Bayview on August 1^st.

That’s like a home game for me!

A snow-capped Ben Lomond on 2/5/2015. Photographed from stand of Dumbarton Football Stadium. Ben Lomond is the only Munro I have climbed. (I say climbed. There’s a path. You can walk up it.)

On the same day and from the same location I took this photo of Sons players applauding the fans after the last game of the season vs Raith.

Most of these players have now left the club.