The Bairns are Alright

My mate Raga sent me a tweet last week, telling me I’d been allowing Newcastle United to get back under my skin again. Not only that, but as a result of this, my mood was being negatively affected by everything to do with the club; a kind of seasonally affected disorder, with 2012/2013 being the season in question. To his mind, the professional game is now as irrelevant as the Jimmy Page and Rick Wakeman era rock dinosaurs were when punk came along to rattle the bars of their gilded palaces (that’s a deliberately mixed metaphor incidentally). As far as he’s concerned, the only football worth bothering with these days is the grassroots game. Now, I take his point, but as a devotee of late 60s / early 70s Folk and Prog Rock, I don’t see the punk legacy as being uniformly positive. While thanking him for his words of wisdom and agreeing with him for the most part, which is why this post has nothing to do with Newcastle United, I do vary from him in some parts of his analysis. For instance, to me top level non-league football like Gateshead and Blyth Spartans is the footballing equivalent of the thud and blunder of Sham 69 or Slaughter & The Dogs, while the absolutely marvellous Northern Alliance provides delights as rare and beautiful as Nick Drake or Fairport Convention combined with Dr. Strangely Strange. However, some parts of the professional game remain simply thrilling honey; following the demise of Rangers, the Scottish game is as enticing to me as Orange Juice, Teenage Fanclub, Josef K and Trembling Bells blended together.

Sometimes it’s nice just to get away from the pressures of every day life and watch a game of football in a ground you’ve not visited before, for simple pleasure of a relaxing, enjoyable Saturday afternoon out, with no allegiances to bear in mind, no philosophical or ideological undercurrents to consider and no great emotional involvement in proceedings. Thus, bearing in mind the free weekend caused by Newcastle United’s decision not to compete in this year’s FA Cup, as well as the second consecutive week of freezing conditions that put paid to the local non-league programme, particularly Hebburn Reyrolle versus Percy Main and Hebburn Town versus West Auckland Town, it was time to look north of the border if I wanted to keep up my record of seeing a game on every Saturday of the season, bar August 11^th when in I was in Cork and was able to give myself the birthday treat of a day off.

When it became clear the weather wasn’t going to take a rapid turn for the better, Hebburn Town media guru Andy Hudson pulled some strings and favours, getting us return tickets to Edinburgh for an impressive £17. The idea was that we’d take a rain, hail, sleet and snow check on arriving in Waverley. I’m not particularly well travelled around the Scottish leagues; with January 2^nd’s trip to Dunfermline 1 Raith Rovers 0 being only my 13^th tick in the 4 senior divisions. Consequently, it might have seemed logical to expect we would be spoiled for choice of game, though this wasn’t to be the case. Firstly train timetables and ticketing restrictions meant we were only due in to Waverley at 13.10 and were booked to come back on the 18.30, with no option of changing those arrangements. This meant that my number 1 choice of Alloa was off the agenda as we’d not have a chance to catch more than a half; also Andy had already been there, so he wasn’t keen to return.

In the end, having also rejected Arbroath, Dumbarton, Dundee United, East Fife and Morton for reasons of temporal inaccessibility and having previously visited Dunfermline, the Huns (though obviously not when they were playing) and Partick, it came down to the reasonably adjacent choices of East Stirlingshire versus Clyde, on the 4G pitch they rent from Stenhousemuir at Ochilview Park, which would have been the more historic ground, but probably not the same quality of atmosphere or experience as when the hosts were playing or Falkirk, with their compulsory at the time but now simply helpful for random ground hoppers such as us, under soil heating and giant covers from their last sojourn in the Scottish Premier, versus Airdrie United. Having seen several Airdrie United’s fans attired in SDL t-shirts in a pre-season friendly at Whitley Bay back in July, this wasn’t an immediately enticing choice of opposition, but it became our only hope when the white-out that had added 3 inches of snow to the Tyneside area had also covered Larbert, meaning the Shire game was a goner. It was the Bairns or the likelihood of breaking my January sobriety for an afternoon on the gargle, which I really didn’t want to do. Thankfully, Falkirk’s website proclaimed a perfectly playable pitch, but semi-ominously still asked for volunteers to help clear the pitch of covers, which were no doubt weighted down by accumulated overnight snow and the torrential rain that had followed the snow.

Travelling in hope as much as expectation Andy, who’d got in at 5 am after a decent night out and had already slammed two recuperative pints of Rivet Catcher down his neck in The Centurion by the time I met up with him at 11, and I shot the breeze about all aspects of football, noting that the Twitter silence from Falkirk’s official account must mean only good news. The fact that by the time we reached Dunbar there wasn’t a flake of snow to be discerned also kept our spirits up. In my case, the only cause of anxiety and distaste was the disappointing presence of so many Jambos around Waverley, as they were playing their League Cup semi-final against Inverness Caledonian Thistle, which they would tragically go on to win 5-4 on penalties after a 1-1 draw, at the home of Scottish football; my beloved Easter Road. However, I’m sure St Mirren will beat them in the final. At least I hope they do. Incidentally, I will return to see Hibs soon; GGTTH.

We arrived at Falkirk Grahamstown just after 2 and, in the total absence of signs to the ground, set off walking in completely the wrong direction towards what we initially believed to be the shiny new Falkirk Stadium; on closer inspection, it was a multiplex cinema. Thus, using the GPS on Andy’s phone, we struck out again in a second wrong direction. After 20 minutes of aimless wandering, Andy asked a random bloke if this way the way to the ground, only for the bloke to tell us it was his first time in Falkirk as well. Luckily, I spotted a fella in a Bairns scarf, who offered to show us the right route. Well, shy bairns get nowt eh? Sadly I didn’t catch his name, but if he ends up reading this, I really would like to thank him for his superb company on the walk to the game. If I ever meet him again, I owe him several pints.

Initially he seemed a little suspicious of us, presumably believing us to be Airdrie fans, but when I explained the nature of our visit and that I’d seen Falkirk once before, in the 1998 Scottish Cup semi-final at Ibrox when they lost 3-1 to Hearts, we began to get on famously. On the lengthy 25 minute walk out of town to the stadium; we shot the breeze about the ground, Falkirk and Scottish football in general. I learned he had a season ticket in the main stand, having previously been in the family enclosure, but that his 12 year old son had abandoned his home town team and was now a lap top Arsenal fan, that he would be by himself today as his mate was at a kid’s birthday party, unlike him of course, who’d managed to escape the bairns to see The Bairns and that he worked in Glasgow. We parted with a handshake outside the main stand, as Andy and I saved £4 each to sit in the North Stand, noticing adverts for a music festival in June when Altered Images headline the first night and Status Quo the second. I’m not sure what to say about that line-up; truly I’m not.

Scottish football isn’t cheap; it set us back £18 to see this second tier game but, being positive, it is undeniably a wonderful experience every time I see a game up there. Today we didn’t have the incessant, intemperate abuse that Dunfermline fans had for Raith Rovers three weeks before, in fact there was little discernible atmosphere at all and certainly no singing or chanting that lasted beyond a few seconds, but  neither did we have a dull, cagey affair settled by the one moment of quality in an otherwise sterile 90 minutes; instead, we saw a bloody great game dominated by two defences who were united in their abject atrociousness, which made it a superb spectacle, played out in front of 2,715 people, including approximately 60 from Airdrie, in an impressive, well designed and far more accommodating ground than so many of the dreary, functional new builds I’ve been to. Unfortunately, arriving right on kick off, we were forced to take up some less than advantageously situated seats behind the goal; literally right behind the goal. If we’d got there in time, we’d probably have seen the Handsome Groundhopper himself, Shaun Smith, in the same stand. However, we didn’t.

On a soft pitch, Airdrie showed first, with a couple of testing attacks that resulted in the ball ending up in Falkirk keeper McGovern’s hands more by luck than judgement, before the Bairns took the lead after 9 minutes with almost their first attack. Gangling, rangy striker Lyle Taylor got the decisive touch and, rising to applaud the goal, I noticed it had been celebrated more in the manner of a maiden over on the first morning of a County Championship game at Hove than a goal in the white heat of Scottish football. Perhaps the home support were a little ashamed of the fact the tannoy saw fit to announce the opening strike with a deafening 20 second blast of “Show Me The Way To Amarillo” that not one person either joined in with or appeared to appreciate.  Again, on 23 minutes when Stuart Murdoch, taking time out from his duties as lead singer and chief songwriter with Belle & Sebastian, thumped home a glorious angled second from the edge of the area to double the lead, the reaction was a polite ripple of applause rather than orgiastic yelps or clenched fist salutes. If it had been the Byres Road beatnik who’d scored, I’d have expected nothing less than a full rendition of the climactically appropriate “The Fox in the Snow” in tribute.

On 34 minutes, it appeared the game was all but over when Taylor bundled home his second after his initial effort had hit the bar, making it 3-0. Almost immediately afterwards, the crowd came to life, in an outpouring of profane invective at the linesman who had given Airdrie a corner when many thought the ball hadn’t gone out of play. It soon was, for a home goal kick, but the splenetic abuse, now directed at the referee, who looked about 15, for not overruling his assistant continued intermittently until the break. During the interval, I stuck my phone on charge (thanks for the electricity Falkirk FC) and sample a steak, rather than scotch pie; it was rather tasty but, as the rapidly deteriorating Andy pointed out, almost impossible to eat because of the shape.

Suitably fortified, we found a loftier perch for the second period and saw a rejuvenated Diamonds taking it to the Bairns, aided by a soft penalty after 56 minutes, converted by Paul Di Giacomo. Falkirk sought to reassert themselves and Taylor twice missed easy chances to complete his hat trick, by blasting the ball at the keeper when through on goal. The second of these saw a corner resulting and from it Bairns skipper Darren Dods smuggled the ball in at the back post for a seemingly unassailable 4-1 lead, which persuaded Andy and I that we could safely leave, bearing in mind the 30 minute walk to the station and the 17.23 departure for Waverley we had to catch, not to mention the burgeoning blister on my left heel (the curse of new footwear and stylish hiking socks) with the contest effectively over. Two muffled shouts, but no accompanying Tony Christie vocal stylings, as we made our way back up the main road told us of late Airdrie goals, which we’ll be fated never to see (I’m not playing £45 for an annual subscription to Falkirk TV) as the game ended 4-3. It’s a shame to miss goals, but we had to get that train. In conclusion, I’m glad the home side won and I’m glad to see defending worse than the Mike Williamson personal master class that 2012/2013 has turned in to.

We took a random bus back to Falkirk, but not the station. Alighting in the middle of a shopping street, Andy succeeded in finding a chap slumped in a doorway who was almost insensible with drink to ask the way; he was only able to issue confusing and contradictory instructions, but we found Grahamstown station anyway and thence caught a packed train to Waverley that was polluted with gleeful Jambos, before arriving home at almost 8pm at the conclusion of another fantastic and always entertaining Scottish adventure.  I can’t wait for the next one.

So, where do we go next? Well, there are still 28 grounds to go for me until I complete my Scottish set; realistically, bearing in mind travel timings and the financial cost of overnight stays, Stenhousemuir, Alloa and Motherwell are sensible targets for the immediate future. Scottish football may be a collection of rough diamonds, but it’s got to be better than spending an afternoon with Jeff Stelling when the grassroots game is off.