I’ve only just found out that former Sons player Columb McKinley died last month.

A local lad as I recall, Columb first played senior football with Airdrie before moving to the Sons in 1975. He was centre half in the Sons side that made it to the Scottish Cup semi-fimal in 1976. I doubt a Sons team will ever achieve such a thing again. Had we won that semi-final we would have qualified for the European Cup Winners’ Cup, as the other finalists, Rangers, won the league. Sadly, despite playing well in the first game, we could only draw it 0-0. Hearts won the replay 3-0.

Columb McKinley: 24/8/1950 – 6/2/2021. So it goes.

So Alan Gilzean, whom Jimmy Greaves said was the greatest foootballer he had ever played with, has gone.

I never saw him play in the flesh, his time in Scotland being before I started watching football regularly and he was in any case in a different division to Dumbarton but he was a byword for accomplishment.

Before his move down south to Tottenham Hotspur Gilzean played for a great Dundee team, so great it won the championship of Scotland in 1962 and a year later reached the semi-finals of the European Cup. That was, of course, in the time when other Scottish clubs could compete almost on a level playing field with the two Glasgow giants. That success came in a remarkable 17 years when Hibernian (1948, 1951, 1952,) Aberdeen (1955,) (Hearts 1958, 1960,) Dundee (1962) and Kilmarnock (1965) became Scottish Champions. An incredible sequence: between the wars only Motherwell, in 1932, had broken the monopoly of Rangers and Celtic on the League Championship and subsequently only Aberdeen (1984, 1985) and Dundee United (1983) have performed the feat.

The power of money and the lucrative nature of European competition for the big two brought all that to an end. We’re unlikely to see anything like it again.

I’ve strayed somewhat from the point.

Gilzean was a great player, one whose movement on the pitch (from televisual evidence) was deceptively effortless looking, he seemed to glide over the ground in that way that only accomplished players manage to achieve. His scoring record isn’t too mean either; 169 in 190 games for Dundee, 93 in 343 for Spurs, 1 in 3 for the Scottish League and 12 in 22 for Scotland.

Alan John Gilzean: 22/10/1938 – 8/7/2018. So it goes.

Scottish Challenge Cup*, Fourth Round, The Rock, 11/11/17.

A historic moment. Certainly the first time we’ve won four games in this tournament in the one season and also the first time we’ve reached its semi-final.

This will be our first national cup semi-final since we lost to Hearts after a replay in nineteen hundred and long time ago.

Plus it’s our first ever international cup semi-final given that Irish and Welsh teams are now allowed in it.

Heady stuff. Congratulations to the lads and manager.

*I suppose I’ll have to mention the sponsors now. It’s officially the Irn Bru Cup.

The Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels, Edinburgh University Press, 2011, 470 p plus 59 p Essay on the Text, 50 p Emendation list, 2 p list of end-of-line “hard” hyphens, 40 p Historical Note, 120 p Explanatory Notes, 50 p Glossary, 2p maps of Edinburgh, iv p General Introduction to the Edinburgh Edition, and iii p Acknowledgements. One of the Herald’s “100” best Scottish Fiction Books.

The Edinburgh Edition has sought to produce the nearest approximation to what Scott intended by using as base texts the first publications and Scott’s manuscripts of the relevant novels. The Heart of Mid-Lothian – the novel which, by way of a dance hall, provided the name for a Scottish Football Club – was seemingly the work which suffered most in the hands of such intermediaries as copyists, typesetters and editors. The length of the emendation list here attests to this. In this edition the explanatory notes work out at an average of four for every page of text! To consult them with this frequency would have interrupted the flow of reading so for the most part I left them till I had finished the novel, only consulting them during its course when absolutely necessary.

The story is supposedly set down by one Jedidiah Cleishbotham as one of his Tales of My Landlord, Peter Pattieson, only he had it from conversations in an inn with three gentlemen he had helped rescue from deposition in a river by an upturned coach, two of whom were lawyers and the other once jailed through indebtedness. This is of course merely a framing device to introduce a story whose beginnings lie in the Edinburgh tolbooth (the gaol situated at the Heart of Mid-Lothian) and the Porteous riots of 1736 where a commander of the city guard was lynched after being pardoned for killing innocent civilians during a disturbance at an earlier public hanging. The story places in the tolbooth at the time Effie Deans, awaiting trial for concealment of her pregnancy, a crime taken to be evidence of intent to murder the child when it was born. Her lover, it turns out, was involved with instigating the riots and had immediately before the birth placed Effie and hence their son into the hands of old acquaintances of his who were less than reliable. Effie’s post-partum indisposition due to puerperal fever renders her incapable of accounting for her son’s whereabouts.

Effie is the daughter of David Deans, a staunch Presbyterian of the old school, a former Covenanter still unreconciled to the modern practices of the Church of Scotland and its accommodation with the State. Effie’s half-sister, Jeanie, has it in her power to prevent Effie’s conviction but due to her conscience and strict upbringing will not swear falsely that Effie informed her of her condition. As a result, Effie is found guilty and sentenced to death. Jeanie resolves to walk to London to enlist the help of the Duke of Argyle to petition the King for a pardon. While her encounters en route make for a novel whose parts are an interconnected artistic whole they do seem a little implausible. However, if you like loose ends to be successfully tied up you won’t be disappointed.

As with Rob Roy Scott’s wordiness can be wearing at first, but I soon accommodated myself to it.

While Jeanie is the undoubted heroine of the book the whole may also be seen as an exploration of the ramifications of an unjust law. From the perspective of two hundred years on Effie’s predicament exemplifies a pronounced tendency among religions to make women the gatekeepers to male sexuality and to punish them rather than their equally (in many cases more) culpable partner for any transgressions. I suppose women were and are easier to identify as culprits since the evidence of “sin” becomes all too readily apparent. It nevertheless reflects the not yet eradicated widespread misogyny (itself an expression of fear of women’s capabilities and of rejection; a manifestation of deep seated insecurity) prevalent throughout history.

There is, though, a reading in which The Heart of Mid-Lothian is actually a chronicle of the life of David Deans, his steadfastness and surety, and also a marking of the beginnings of the long, slow fading of the Covenanting mindset, still not quite extinguished.

Pedant’s corner:- As in Rob Roy; stupified, plus sunk, shrunk, sprung, sung, rung, run for sank, shrank, sprang, sang, rang, ran. These are Scottish usages at the time Scott was writing and still survive in some everyday speech. We also had wrang for wrung (once, but elsewhere wrung appeared) and flang for flung. The editors do say that Scott would add flourishes to certain instances of the letter “u” which may have led to some of these. Despite the care which the editors have taken we also had whichshould (which should,) ofhabitual (of habitual,) the hangman is designated the Doomster on page 217 (twice) but on page 218 is referred to as the Dempster, whisht (as I noted on Keith Roberts’s The Lordly Ones this is nowadays usually spelled wheesht but obviously Scott did not,) the text has Dumbartonshire – or shires – but the emendation list mentions one instance where Scott’s manuscript has Dunbarton Shires. I believe the spelling has altered through time, reverting to Dunbartonshire for the county by 1914. In the historical note: Presbbytery (Presbytery.) In the explanatory notes: “is a now an obsolete usage” (has one too many indefinite articles,) Galations (Galatians.)

SPFL Tier 2, Tynecastle Stadium, 14/3/15

Well I didn’t expect much from this game but at half-time we had held out well only really extended when Danny Rogers had to make a magnificent one-handed save, pushing the ball onto the woodwork from where it fell kindly back to him. We had two attempts on goal – both from Chris Duggan, one of which he made entirely for himself.

The atmosphere in the away end was livened up by the presence there of “Swiss Sons” – quite why a group of fans from Switzerland has adopted us is a bit obscure. I liked the scarf on which was written “Float like an elephant, sting like a rock.” Said scarf was brandished from the lower gangway as its bearer led the Sons choir. Great stuff.

Sadly the game went away from us. They scored after a corner but it looked as if Danny Rogers had been impeded. Their second was from another corner, a free header this time. They didn’t score from open play until we started to try to take it to them a bit in the last ten minutes. 4-0 was harsh on us.

Marvellous fun chanting, “Shall we sing a song for you,” at the comatose home support, “There’s only one Ian Murray,” then, “We forgot that you were there” when they finally roused themselves, “What a shitey home support,” after the circa 15,000 crowd was announced, “We can see you sneaking off,” when the early exodus started, as well as the usual “Dumbarton,” clap, clap, clap and “Oh when the Sons, go marching in,” – plus the Swiss inspired, “Dih, dih, dih-dih, Dumbarton.”

Still, in the second half we were restricted to long range shots. Chris Duggan wasn’t in the box enough, having to forage wide to get the ball. We miss a focal point.

Our defensive outlook here is undersatndable given the disparity in resources between the two clubs but too often our passes failed to reach their target. Theirs tended to be more into space for a man to run onto, but their players are quicker all round. We didn’t get time on the ball.

More attacking intent next week please, though.

SPFL Tier 2, Tynecastle Stadium, 18/10/14

A curious one this. Hearts were clearly the better team – the best I’ve seen against us in years, just shading Aberdeen in the cup last season – but we didn’t deserve to lose five. On the other hand we did little in the way of attacking in the first half. Andy Graham made the Hearts keeper make a save but that was about it. We definitely miss the Chrisses, Turner and Kane.

We allowed too many crosses in and the first goal came from one of them. The penalty was a penalty. I thought Scott Linton would get to the ball but the attacker was quicker. Danny Rogers touched the ball but he was unlikely to save two inside a week. He had made a great save at 1-0 though.

Second half we came out more brightly and should have had a penalty ourselves when Mark Gilhaney was tripped in the box. For their third we back-pedalled instead of closing down and the guy tucked it away.

Garry Fleming’s goal came when Colin Rhyming Slang headered a corner back across goal from a corner and was finished very well.

Their fourth was from a corner and I was lamenting the fact that we had all eleven men within twenty five yards of our goal. Leave two up and they have to leave three back.

The last was another on the counter immediately after one of their defenders had made a block and dragged the ball with his hand; so we should have had a foul.

Still, I came away thinking we hadn’t played too badly, and not too down-hearted.

It’s a funny old game.

What with the World Cup and other things intervening I haven’t yet mentioned the league fixtures for next season.

I won’t have to travel far for the first game, which is Raith away. (Further than I used to certainly – I used to be able to walk to Stark’s Park – but not far.)

October looks interesting!

Sat Oct 4 Cowdenbeath H
Sat Oct 11 Hibernian A
Sat Oct 18 Heart of Midlothian A
Sat Oct 25 Rangers H

Whatever the temptations to paraphrase Oscar Wilde’s comment about the death of Little Nell in Charles Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop (“One would have to have a heart of stone….(not to)…dissolv(e)…into tears…of laughter.”) when thinking about the administration of Rangers FC I nevertheless do feel for the genuine fans of that club. Not the hangers-on, not the glory hunters who desert at the first sign of adversity on the field, but those who have a long and deep connection – perhaps going back generations in their family.

There does, however, have to be a tinge of schadenfreude. After all, this is a club that, along with its great rival, has parleyed their mutual financial muscle into an effectively unchallenged dual hegemony, ruthlessly bought promising players from their competitors in the SPL (and before that the Scottish League as was) and buried them in their reserves to prevent any threat to their domination, pushed through changes that ensured they would receive much more than the lion’s share of any monies coming into Scottish football, perenially exercised undue influence on the governing body and (without even a nod and a wink nor anything direct, merely by their outsized prominence) on the referees who supervise their games. That such a club has been brought low by financial problems (in a misguided attempt to match those whom they regarded as their peers but were in fact always their superiors) could be regarded as karma.

I have no sympathy whatever for those in charge of the club – now and in the past – who ought to have known better: none of whom I hope will derive any financial benefit from the present state of affairs. Compounding their failures in regard to their own club – what amounted to in effect cheating their opponents – £80,000 is said to be owing to Dunfermline Athletic for tickets sold by Rangers on their behalf for Saturday’s upcoming game with a similar amount due to Dundee United for a previous away match, with Inverness Caledonian Thistle also unpaid. Hearts are owed £700,000 for a transfer fee. These are moneys the Pars in particular and Hearts with their recent difficulties could well be doing with. (Not to mention us all by way of the taxman.)

That Scottish football as a whole would be better off (in a competitive sense) without the Old Firm is probably the case but it would be in an even direr state than now were only one of these giants to remain.

And yet…. I do not wish to see the demise of anyone’s football club – even such an overblown leviathan as Rangers; even if I cannot feel that followers of Rangers know what it truly means to be a supporter (of which they may have the merest inkling now.)

The best outcome would be for the club to survive, to live within its means, and for its management (at board level) and fans not to be so greedy (for money/honours respectively.)

That’s never going to happen.

PS. I was amused that Celtic took umbrage at First Minister Alex Salmond’s comment about them finding it difficult to prosper if Rangers were to go under. Chip on the shoulder or what? Without the rivalry to sustain them wouldn’t Celtic’s fans soon grow tired of an endless series of mismatches? They might well drift away. At least at the moment there are four domestic games every season where there may be the possibility of referees being biased against them. (That last sentence was sarcasm by the way.)

A slightly shorter version of this post appeared as “Dumbarton FC, The Sons of the Rock” in The Bayview, Official East Fife Matchday Magazine, Issue 5, Saturday 27th August 2011.

Just what collection of players to wear their team’s colours fans will look back on with fondness must to a large extent depend on their age. Though someone of my years and long experience of following Dumbarton might say we rather lucked into it, young(ish) Dumbarton supporters will no doubt regard the promotion winning team of 2008-9 – none of whom now remain at the club only two short years later – with a rosy glow; albeit forever tinged with sadness at the tragic death of captain Gordon Lennon only a few weeks after lifting the trophy. And that side does have to its credit not only a 3rd Division championship but the longest consecutive playing time without conceding a goal in the club’s history; over 350 mins.

But no-one alive will remember what must be Dumbarton’s greatest achievements; a single Scottish Cup (in 1883) – a time when we were in the forefront of tactical innovation in using the 2-3-5 formation – and twice winning the top division, in 1891 (shared) and 1892.

In my memory Dumbarton have won promotion a total of six times; – a seventh lies in the distant mists of 1913 when we were elected upwards – from sixth position! (In those days promotion wasn’t automatic. A Second Division Championship in 1911 still saw us in Division 2 for 1911-12.)

My father’s generation had much less to celebrate. It was fifty long years from relegation in 1922 till the Sons finally lifted themselves back into the top Division, with only the (Festival of Britain) St Mungo Quaich win of 1951 to lighten the darkness. There was, though, a tendency to romanticise the nearly men of the mid to late 1950s; a team that flirted with promotion but always fell short. It featured Tim Whalen and Hughie Gallacher (the club’s all time record scorer with 205 goals overall) whose stays overlapped with those of the long-standing full back partnership of Tommy Govan and Andy Jardine (250 and 299 appearances respectively, according to a website I consulted, most of them together.) I actually remember seeing those guys play but it was the fact that Hughie Gallacher took over in goal one game – no substitutes at all, never mind goalies, in those days – that really sticks in my mind. He was pretty good at stopping them as I recall, but we still lost that game.

One of the promotions was the elevation to the Premier Division in 1984, an adventure that lasted only the one season. A final taste of the elite alas, as we have never made it back. That team featured Bolton manager (and ex-Son) Owen Coyle’s two brothers in its midfield and leant heavily on the goals of Kenny Ashwood.

The Second Division winners of 1991-2, when Charlie Gibson and John McQuade starred, scored the single best Dumbarton team goal I can remember. Cowdenbeath had just equalised in a crucial top of the table clash at Boghead. From the kick-off the ball circulated round the team in a great passing move before, over a minute later, and without an opposition player touching the ball, John McQuade planted it in the net. Promotion was secured on the penultimate day of the season as Cowdenbeath and Alloa, the other contenders, both one point behind, only had each other to play. The Championship was duly sealed in a draw with Arbroath.

League reconstruction (as in 1922!) saw us demoted for 1994-5, placed in the new third tier. With Murdo McLeod as manager the side needed to win at Stirling – who themselves only needed to draw with us – in the last game to be promoted as runners-up. A 2-0 win sent Dumbarton fans into delirium. What happened in the next three seasons, though, was dire. Two successive relegations, including a period of over a year when we did not win a single game, ended up with us bottom of the whole pile in 1998. The following four seemingly endless years of Division 3 football saw our tenure at Boghead, at the time the longest occupancy of a single site in British football, come to an end. In this forum, though, I’d better not dwell on the result of the final game there.

Another runners-up promotion swiftly arrived in 2002. The prolific if frustrating Paddy Flannery (77 goals for the club in 175 games) was the spearhead of that side, with the less heralded Andy Brown a willing side-kick. The promotion hero, though, was goalkeeper John Wight who saved a penalty in the last minute of the last game to make sure we could not be overtaken.

For me, though, the one that sends the memory banks into raptures is 1972. That year it all came together. The club’s centenary season, 50 years since top flight football, the town’s 900th anniversary of Royal Burgh status. Kenny Wilson had an astonishing 38 goals in 36 league games, some of them in vital 1-0 wins. Mid-season he made it onto the scoresheet in a record twelve consecutive matches, and he scored all five in a 5-0 rout of Raith Rovers. And that 38 doesn’t include the free-kicks and penalties he won for Charlie Gallacher to bang in. But big Roy McCormack scored the peach. At Love Street on Christmas Day 1971 he walloped a volley from out near the touchline about fifteen yards into St Mirren’s half. It flew over the keeper’s head, hit the stanchion full on and bounced out beyond the penalty spot. It was astounding. The ref thought it had hit the bar but the linesman gave it. Roy thumped two others not quite so good in the games either side against Alloa the previous week and Clydebank the next. Sweet, sweet.

Other highlights are Jumbo Muir’s waltz all the way from our penalty area through half of the Clyde team at Shawfield before finally putting the ball in the net, Lee Sharp’s belter at Almondvale in 1996, the 5-2 win at Tynecastle in 1982* against a Hearts side desperate for promotion (we were up the park three times in the second half and scored each one) and the 0-0 draw in 1970 in the League Cup semi-final against the Celtic team that made the European Cup Final that season. The replay was 2-2, then in extra time a (Lou Macari?) cross was flagged by the linesman as out of play until Wilson headed it in. The flag mysteriously went down. (Bitter? Me? No. It’s only been forty one years.) We did have a bit of revenge. Celtic had scored another and started to play keep-ball. When we got it back we played keep-ball too. Except we suddenly switched to a quick passing move up the left, put in a great cross and scored. In subsequent seasons we had 3-3 and 2-2 draws at Parkhead in the league. After our second equaliser in the latter of those the ref was looking round desperately for someone to give him a reason to chalk it off. The linesman didn’t help that time.

Yet the real emotion wasn’t for these or any promotion. Somehow the crucial last day relegation avoiders in 1973, 4-1 against Dundee Utd, and 2003, 4-1 again, Raith the victims, have meant much, much more. Perhaps it’s the release of the fear that makes sure it’s so. The hope fulfilled. We non-glory hunters who follow lower league sides don’t get that very often.

Addendum:-
*It seems I have misremembered this game slightly. Big Rab’s blog a week or so ago featured a newspaper clipping which says we were 2-1 down at half time that day. So we were up the park not 3, but 4 times in the second half; and scored each one. Even better.

In his afterword to the article the programme editor says that in addition to being a long-term Sons fan, “Jack Deighton lives in Kirkcaldy and has taught in Cowdenbeath and Dunfermline. Jack knows all about pain.”

There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the realm of Scottish football over the results of the qualifiers for the Europa Laegue.

After the first leg comprehensive horsing of Hearts by Spurs and the draw and defeat for the ugly sisters (Rangers and Celtic for those who don’t share the disregard in which they are held by Scotland’s real football fans in the lower divisions) the BBC Scotland Saturday football airwaves were full of doom and gloom.

Since this Thursday and the – extremely predictable – elimination of all three Scottish clubs this rose to a cacophony on Radio Scotland this afternoon as I was making my way to New Bayview.

Most contributors seemed to be under the illusion that somehow or other the natural order of things had been upset and that Scottish clubs owed it to the country (or the fans, or something or other not entirely clear) always to survive these early rounds.

Well, ask yourselves. When was the last time a Scottish club outwith the Old Firm won a two-legged qualification tie? Motherwell was it, against Llanelli? And did they survive the next round? While I do remember Aberdeen doing well when Jimmy Calderwood was their manager, that was a good few years ago now. Most others have been deposited on their backsides very quickly indeed. And that is where Scottish football is and has been for a long time. This is the competition the Old Firm has to beat (and finds it ridiculously easy to do so by and large.)

This set of results has been coming down the pipe for a long time.

And they are perhaps to be expected from a small, poor country on the north-west periphery of Europe.

The riches pouring down on those clubs – and the leagues where they play – which habitually inhabit the knock-out stages of the so-called Champions League from television rights make this a circumstance not easy to alter.

That is where a lot of the disfunction lies. The Champions League is a monstrous carbuncle on the body of football ensuring (with only a few exceptions) the same old teams divi up the rewards between themselves. Only a Russian oligarch or oil-rich sheikh can have any hope of upsetting the apple cart.

Had the Champions League never been invented the world of football would be a purer, more innocent place. But Scottish football at the highest level would still be a self-serving, myopic miasma.