I first met Mickey Hydes on Saturday 13th January 1996 at Portland Park when Ashington beat Alnwick Town 5-2 and immediately liked the fellow, mainly because we shared an affection for Hibernian and Teenage Fanclub. I last saw him attempting to interview the Arthurlie goalkeeper at Dunterlie Park on Saturday 12th June 2011. When Mick moved to Scotland in 1997, first to Cowdenbeath and then to Paisley, I was able to rely upon his hospitality to regularly indulge my passion for the latter whenever gigs at Barras or Motherwell were in the offing, but not for the former. Indeed at the end of September in 2006, up for the weekend to see TFC perform Bandwagonesque at Bible John’s favourite east end dance hall, the St. Mirren v Hibernian fixture was never an option (just as well as the home side won a drab game 1-0) as our deep and abiding love for the game at the non-professional level (non-league as it is known in England and the Juniors as the Scotch call it) meant that Benburb 5 Larkhall Royal Albert 0 got the nod over the Leith Brazilians.
During Mick’s Caledonian sojourn, my visits have seen me at Hampden Park museum, Cowdenbeath stock car track and Albion Rovers boardroom, but more importantly the aforementioned Benburb, but also Pollok, Petershill, Bathgate (twice) and now Arthurlie, as I attempt to make an annual pilgrimage to see a Scottish Juniors game. Over the past few seasons, the ritual has been for me to bring down the curtain on my football watching season by heading up north after all the English games are over. Two years ago, May 30th 2009 to be precise, we took in Bathgate 6 Forfar West End 2 in a crucial winner takes it all relegation crunch clash in the ACA Sports East Superleague (I simply don’t have the time or mental capacity to explain the structure of the Scottish Junior game, other than to mention it exists in West, East and Northern sections, with 63, 64 and 35 clubs in each area respectively). The welcome at this ground was the best I’ve ever had; they invited us in for a half time cuppa and handed out free shirts and scarves, so I was delighted they won this game, but don’t fret as Forfar came back up to the top flight after a year in the ACA Sports East Premier League, below which there are North, Central and South divisions.
In 2010, Mick was required to work on the only day I had free, so Saturday 12th June, when Robert Green made his hilarious howler in the England v USA world Cup game, I headed by myself to the East of Scotland Cup Final in which Linlithgow Rose beat Musselburgh Athletic 2-1 in a tight tussle. I had no trouble finding the ground as it was played at Creamery Park, home of Bathgate Thistle! In 2011, despite the terrible winter weather, the East region closed up on Saturday 4th June, though there were some outstanding (as in remaining not brilliant) cup fixtures in the West so it was definitely a case of Bathgate no more, as Craig and Charlie Reid said back in 1987.
With all of the league fixtures finishing the week before (apart from Newmacher United v RAF Lossiemouth in the twice postponed Northern Division 2 clash that ended up 4-2 to the home side), the last competition to be decided was the Evening Times Cup, a competition so labyrinthine and confusing that it could have been an element of a James Ellroy plot rewritten by Franz Kafka. The SJFA website puts it thus -:
“This is a knockout tournament played at the end of the season and features the winners of the ten West Region competitions during the preceding season. Clubs who win two or more competitions during the season enter as winners of the highest ranked tournament with runners-up qualifying from lower ranked tournaments. For the purposes of the Evening Times Cup Winners Cup, the order of preference for West Region competitions is as follows:
Order of
Preference Competition 2010–11 qualifiers
1 Super League Premier Division Irvine Meadow
2 West of Scotland Cup Arthurlie
3 Super League First Division Ashfield
4 Ayrshire Cup Auchinleck Talbot
5 Central League Cup Pollok
6 Ayrshire Sectional League Cup
no qualifier, as finalists Irvine Meadow and Auchinleck Talbot qualified through higher ranked tournaments
7
Central Sectional League Cup Shotts Bon Accord
8 Ayrshire District League Ardrossan Winton Rovers
9 Central District League First Division Kilsyth Rangers
10 Central District League Second Division Yoker Athletic
This is how the competition went (check the dates of the games):
Preliminary Round
1. Yoker Athletic 2 Ardrossan Winton Rovers 2 (8-7 pens): 28th May
2. Pollok 1 Shotts Bon Accord 2: 8th June
Quarter Final
3. Kilsyth Rangers 1 Irvine Meadow XI 1 (3-5 pens): 28th May
4. Arthurlie 1 Ashfield 1: 7th June
5. Shotts Bon Accord 4 Yoker Athletic 1: 10th June
6. Auchinleck Talbot bye
Hence, 31 years to the day since I’d seen The Clash at Newcastle Mayfair, I took a fast, packed, pricey, luxurious train to Glasgow Central and a smooth suburban one on to Barrhead, arriving under swollen, purple clouds in to the teeth of a stinging breeze slightly after noon and ran directly in to Dunterlie Park, home of Arthurlie and Mickey Hydes, notebook in hand, ready to pen his copy for the Sunday Mail.
We took a tour of the town as I searched for Bonjela to help sooth a raging mouth ulcer, realising that Barrhead is pretty much a no horse town, where the number one attraction at Rumours Nitespot that Saturday evening was DJ Nae Fitba Colours which made me glad I was here for the football and not the culture.
Mickey regaled me with a story about his role as a Community Relations Officer for the Fire Brigade in Barrhead, when he’d phoned up an elderly lady who’d won a Mothercare voucher in a tombola he’d been running. Realising that the woman was too old to need such a thing, he asked if she had children or even grandchildren who could have made use of it. The reply was she’d one daughter but “her sort don’t have children.” Further ramblings by the old dear revealed that they didn’t have girls like that when she was a lassie and that there are always programmes on Channel 4 late at night about these sorts of women, but she’d forgotten the word to describe this type of female. A deeply embarrassed Mick attempted to end the call, only for the woman to announce she’d remembered the word to describe her daughter. The word she’d been searching for was not what Mick, steeling himself for a Sapphic soundbite, had been expecting. The daughter in question was a career woman!!
Entering the ground around 20 minutes before kick off, it was clear that Dunterlie Park is an absolute diamond; a glorious 4 sided traditional ground with steep, uneven terracing at one end and a covered enclosure down one side, with a crowd of well over 700 in attendance, including about 50 malodorous English groundhoppers and one fragrant one; me.
I’d been to Irvine once before. Back in the late 80s I walked out with a young lady from Dublin who was training to be a histologist. Her clinical practice involved a stint at Ayrshire General in Irvine. The hospital may have been top quality but the town was a dump. We spent the weekend getting drunk and arguing in July 1988, so I didn’t even get to see any football. The Irvine fans here today were armed with carry outs (Tennents and 20/20 being the beverages of choice) and many were attired in that frightening Huns away shirt that looks like a Mackem one; never has a football top aroused such feelings of acute nausea in me. Therefore, bearing in mind the fantastic ground, the fact that Mickey had introduced me to Ed the Arthurlie official photographer and that the Irvine fans were scruffy sods, meant I was rooting for the home side attired in Coventry City style sky blue stripes.
After an uneventful opening 30 minutes, the Lie (sadly pronounced Lee) took the lead when Jan Koller lookalike John McLay, who was Man of the Match by a street, sidefooted home from inside the box. It seemed as if this would be the only goal, but two errors by home keeper Neil Parry, the second a foolish missed punch, late in the second period seemed to have handed the Medda, as they are known, the tie. However, deep inside the 3 minutes of additional time (after 92.56 to be precise), an unmarked Stephen McKeown lashed home a loose ball, to provoke a joyous pitch invasion by a couple ofd dozen exciteable young lads who’d kept up a series of pro Lie anti Medda songs all match. In the Juniors, extra time does not exist, so it was straight to penalties.
Happily, Parry saved 2 Medda kicks and so the Lie advanced to the final at Newlandsfield, home of Pollok FC, where they’ll play Shotts Bon Accord who defeated Auchinleck Talbot 3-1 in the other semi final on the Monday evening. As well as Bathgate no more, it was a clear case of Irvine no more, in the Evening Times Cup at any rate. I have to say the pitch invasion after the shoot-out was the most joyous celebration I’ve seen all season. This is what the Sunday Post said about the game -:
NEIL PARRY admitted he owed his Arthurlie team-mates the penalty heroics that booked their Cup Winners' Cup final place.
The big keeper denied Meadow hitmen Brian McGinty and Mick Hughes in the shootout as Lie dumped the holders in a dramatic finish.
Parry's blunder had let Hughes put the West Region champs 2-1 ahead with just a few minutes left, only for the West of Scotland Cup winners to level deep into injury time and take it to penalties.
The keeper's saves made it five stops in as many days after saving three as Sandy MacLean's Barrhead aces beat Ashfield on penalties in Tuesday's quarter-final.
Now Parry wants to sign off in style before signing for Queen's Park - by helping Lie lift the trophy in the final game of the junior season on Thursday, when they face the winners of Monday's second semi between Auchinleck and Shotts.
Parry said: "I owed the boys that after the mistake I made at the second goal.
"I shouted for it but never got near it and I should never have come for it, it wasn't my ball at all.
"But all credit to the boys for keeping going and forcing that equaliser right at the end, then it was down to me.
"I always fancy myself when it comes to penalties, I've got a decent record and it's been a good week for me in the shootouts.
"Now I want to help the lads lift the cup on Thursday. That would be a perfect way for me to bow out."
John McLay fired Lie into the lead but Meadow hit back and Hughes nodded in crosses from Keir Milliken and John Dillon. Arthurlie refused to give up and Stephen McKeown's effort took it to pens.
Dillon and Richie Barr netted for Meadow while Lie were perfect from the spot through McLay, Callan Adam, David Merriman and Andy Arbuckle.
Meadow boss Chris Strain said: "I don't know where the ref got all the injury time from."
Post match I emerged, dazed and happy, and took a direct train from Barrhead to Newcastle; a cold, deserted, freezing train that had no buffet car. All I’d had to eat that day was an Arthurlie pie which appeared to be filled with something from a Cormac McCarthy novel (Blood Meridian meets The Road I was thinking), so I dozed most of the way home and listened to Teenage Fanclub, turning my back on the evening redness in the West.
I love Scottish music and I love Scottish football; I can’t wait for my next fix of the Juniors.
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