Sons’ games in the League Cup (Premier Sports Cup) have been scheduled for:-

Tuesday July 15 – Stirling Albion (H) 19:45

Saturday 19 July – Dunfermline Athletic (H) 15:00

Wednesday 23 July – Hearts (A) – 19:45

Saturday 26 July – Hamilton (A) – 15:00

According to the club’s website we have been drawn against Hearts, Dunfermline Athletic, Hamilton Academical and Stirling Albion in this year’s League Cup (aka the Premier Sports Cup.)

Ties are to be played during July starting on July 12/13^th and finishing on July 26/27^th.

Former Rangers, Everton and Scotland manager – and sometime Sons player – Walter Smith has died.

It is fair to say his best days were with other clubs. He joined Sons from Dundee United in 1975 but in 1976 became one of the select few players ever to appear in a Sons jersey in a Scottish Cup semi-final. Arguably he and that squad appeared in two since the first game (against Hearts) ended in a 0-0 draw. We’ll draw a veil over the replay, though. 64 games for the Sons isn’t a meagre tally, though.

It was as a manager that he made the biggest impact on the football world. His Rangers teams won ten league titles in total, five Scottish Cups, six Scottish League Cups and reached the UEFA Cup final in 2008. He is also the only manager of the Scottish National side to win an international trophy (excluding British Isles only competitions,) the Kirin Cup in 2006.

Walter Ferguson Smith, 24/2/1948 – 26/10/2021. So it goes.

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.

There is only one football team named in the bible.

Such is the claim anyway.

The relevant quote comes from Matthew 12.42:-

“The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it:”

Notch one up for Dumfries’s finest.

In my present reading, Walter Scott’s The Heart of Mid-Lothian (which itself by way of a dance hall provided the name for another football team,) there is much talk of religion and quotation from the Bible. An explanatory note had this reference from Proverbs 17.3 which casts doubt on the declaration in the first paragraph of this post:-

“The fining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold; but the Lord trieth the hearts.”

Granted the relevant noun would need to be capitalised to make the abbreviation truly apposite but then so does the QoS one. At any rate I’m sure many Jambos (see nicknames in the link’s sidebar) would concur with the sentiment.

The league fixtures for next season have come out.

It might seem ridiculous given Hearts and Rangers have gone from this division but every year it just looks harder.

I don’t like the fact we’re facing Dunfermline at their place for the first game. They ought to be on a high after promotion. Mind you, what sort of form either side might be in after the League Cup section games is anyone’s guess. Their group looks reasonably tough.

As I’ve been away I only caught up with the news of the demotion of East Stirlingshire from the SPFL late yesterday.

61 years in the SFL/SPFL gone in a flash. It’s sad for them but they’ve been living on fumes for seasons on end now. It was always most likely that it would be the Shire that would be the first to fall victim to the play-off system.

Congratulations, though, to Edinburgh City. The role of third (or fourth) largest football side in Edinburgh has been taken in the past by St Bernard’s (defunct since World War 2) and Leith Athletic (demised 1955, reconstituted 1996 and as a senior team in 2008.) As those statistics suggest, surviving in the shadow of Hearts and Hibs is not easy.

Then there is the case of Meadowbank Thistle (Ferranti Thistle as was) admitted to the Scottish Football League in 1974 but weren’t satisfied with the sizes of crowds they were attracting in the capital and decamped to Livingston in 1995.

Speaking of Hibs, I see they managed to muck things up again. Hibsing it indeed. Then again they’ll probably win the Cup Final now and so put to an end the longest running “will this be the year” saga in Scottish football.

Leicester City’s fairy tale first top level title made the news in The Netherlands – as elsewhere I suspect. There was a newspaper article there about the length of time previous winners of their country’s football championship had been waiting to win it again. Schalke 04 topped the list at well over 20,000 days with Tottenham Hotspur second (also over 20,000 days.) Liverpool were about eighth on the list. I can just about make out some Dutch but a list is no problem.

I also divined from a radio report on the way back up that Roberto Martinez had lost the Everton job, paying the price for not getting enough out of a talented group of players. (An alternative possibility is that those players aren’t quite as good as their reputations would have them.)

And then there was the Scottish Parliament election, where the SNP paid the price of winning too many constituency seats and Labour actually did come second in the percentage vote in that element but not in the regional lists. We had voted by post before we left.

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.