As St Mirren prepare to host Motherwell on Saturday they need to start picking up points and hoping results elsewhere go their way.
With only Hearts, still stubbornly refusing to be officially relegated, below them in the league St Mirren's 28 points leave them two points adrift in the play-off game. They remain favourites with Betfair to be in the play-off match against the second placed side from the Scottish Championship.
With the Premiership's annual split about to kick in, a win against Motherwell might give them a bit of momentum going into the final five games. That won't be easy with Motherwell tied with Aberdeen on 60 points in second place. The Steelmen will start the game as heavy favourites with Betfair.
Partick Thistle hover two points above St Mirren after taking a point on the road against St Johnstone. On Saturday they become the latest side to try and relegate Hearts as the Edinburgh side travel to Firhill with four points from their last two games.
Ross County will look to take inspiration from their 1-1 draw at Celtic Park, a point against the champions of the division which proved to be a big upset among Betfair punters. They'll be looking for a similar result in tonight's derby with a stuttering Inverness to keep the pressure on Kilmarnock and a badly out of sorts Hibs above them.
St Mirren manager Danny Lennon will be hoping his side’s home advantage this weekend will help his team gain maximum points and ensure they are in as strong a position as possible to face the crucial final five games of the season. They will be second favourites to get the better of Motherwell and need other results to be favourable to move off ninth place.
Showing posts with label Partick Thistle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Partick Thistle. Show all posts
Friday, April 04, 2014
Sunday, October 02, 2011
Friday night football: Maybe ask the fans
How was the Friday night experiment for you? Partick Thistle fan Tom Hogg has his doubts:
According to the papers, the Scottish Football League will examine the attendance at the Partick Thistle v Greenock Morton match in its trial slot of Friday evening, against last season’s equivalent Saturday fixture as a measure of whether to extend Friday night football to other matches.
The Telegraph claims that David Longmuir, the SFL Chief Executive has expressed the view that “providing more than 2,436 fans turn up at Firhill (the attendance for the corresponding game last season) then other clubs will be given permission to bring fixtures forward. “
This looks to be a shoogly peg on which to base any theory, given that football attendances are all over the place, for all sorts of reasons, many weather related and most based on the amount of cash rattling around in supporters’ pockets.
A higher attendance at this match looks (at the time of writing), to be a bit of a nap bet.
It’s payday, the weather’s great, it’s something new and interesting (until it becomes tedious and mundane), Morton are at the top of the league, Thistle are playing attractive football and so on. So I’d be willing to bet that Mr Longmuir will be in Monday’s papers telling us all about the success of this trial run and rubbing his hands at the prospect of more Friday games between the likes of Hamilton Accies and Livingston, both of whom have expressed interest.
Now I’m no expert, but I reckon that if you used Mr Longmuir’s example of empirical evidence to measure the speed of a neutrino, you’d not exactly be in the running for a Nobel prize in physics. Would it not be more scientific, more fair in fact, to ask the supporters what they think of the idea?
I have to admit a vested interest. As an Edinburgh based Jags fan, this game is a monumental pain, but I will always try my best to follow the team, regardless of where and when they are playing. By going to the game, I’m helping to confirm Mr Longmuir’s view that fans would like this change. Talk about turkeys voting for Christmas?
The subtext is that the SFL are trying manfully to grab more of BBC ALBA’s football budget and like a pushy parent, they are prodding Thistle and Morton towards centre stage as an example of how great a live SFL match could be for ALBA’s flagging figures. It’s all about money of course, and whilst folk like me moan and gnash their teeth, the SFL will have their day, the club boards will get their TV money and another nail will be battered into the coffin of Scottish football.
On the upside, at least I’ll get a decent curry before the game.
According to the papers, the Scottish Football League will examine the attendance at the Partick Thistle v Greenock Morton match in its trial slot of Friday evening, against last season’s equivalent Saturday fixture as a measure of whether to extend Friday night football to other matches.
The Telegraph claims that David Longmuir, the SFL Chief Executive has expressed the view that “providing more than 2,436 fans turn up at Firhill (the attendance for the corresponding game last season) then other clubs will be given permission to bring fixtures forward. “
This looks to be a shoogly peg on which to base any theory, given that football attendances are all over the place, for all sorts of reasons, many weather related and most based on the amount of cash rattling around in supporters’ pockets.
A higher attendance at this match looks (at the time of writing), to be a bit of a nap bet.
It’s payday, the weather’s great, it’s something new and interesting (until it becomes tedious and mundane), Morton are at the top of the league, Thistle are playing attractive football and so on. So I’d be willing to bet that Mr Longmuir will be in Monday’s papers telling us all about the success of this trial run and rubbing his hands at the prospect of more Friday games between the likes of Hamilton Accies and Livingston, both of whom have expressed interest.
Now I’m no expert, but I reckon that if you used Mr Longmuir’s example of empirical evidence to measure the speed of a neutrino, you’d not exactly be in the running for a Nobel prize in physics. Would it not be more scientific, more fair in fact, to ask the supporters what they think of the idea?
I have to admit a vested interest. As an Edinburgh based Jags fan, this game is a monumental pain, but I will always try my best to follow the team, regardless of where and when they are playing. By going to the game, I’m helping to confirm Mr Longmuir’s view that fans would like this change. Talk about turkeys voting for Christmas?
The subtext is that the SFL are trying manfully to grab more of BBC ALBA’s football budget and like a pushy parent, they are prodding Thistle and Morton towards centre stage as an example of how great a live SFL match could be for ALBA’s flagging figures. It’s all about money of course, and whilst folk like me moan and gnash their teeth, the SFL will have their day, the club boards will get their TV money and another nail will be battered into the coffin of Scottish football.
On the upside, at least I’ll get a decent curry before the game.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Forgotten Scotland Players: Nicky Walker
Do our footballers ever ruminate on how a modern Scotland can persuade the rest of the world that it is embracing innovation and shifting away from our old "tartan and shortbread" image?
Probably not.
But at least one star of yesteryear is probably immensely relaxed about the nostalgic power of plaid and a unleavened biscuit phenomenon.
Joseph Nicol Walker, scion of the famous biscuit empire that bears the family name, now enjoys a position of prominence with the firm his great grandfather founded.
But before becoming the Queen's official oatcake supplier Nicky Walker enjoyed a long football career. A career distinguished enough to see him become the Scottish Football Blog's fifth forgotten Scotland player and the first goalkeeper to make our list.
It was a career that began close to home. Aberlous Villa, his first club, were formed in 1924, some 28 years after Joseph Walker founded the biscuit company that would become Scotland's biggest food exporter in the same Speyside village.
From Aberlour to the bright lights of Elgin and a teenage stint in the Highland League. A stint eye-catching enough to attract the attention of Jock Wallace at Leicester City.
Walker's stay at Filbert Street was short, perhaps a city that cherished it's fried potato snacks over crumbly sweet biscuit goodness unnerved him, but it did offer the chance to build a relationship with Wallace.
When the manager took over at Motherwell his goalkeeper followed. When a diminished Rangers called on Wallace to return and steady the ship he again took Walker with him.
But these were not vintage times at Ibrox. Rangers continued to toil and Wallace struggled to recapture former glories. Walker got his chances but was missing for the only trophy that Wallace won in his second spell - Peter McLoy started the 1984 league cup final against Dundee United.
With the sacking of Wallace and the start of the Graeme Souness revolution Walker's chance of establishing himself as a long term number one were hit by the arrival of Chris Woods.
He hung about - short loans at Dunfermline and Falkirk followed - but it was clear that only a move out of Govan would bring opportunities. In 1989 he bowed to the inevitable and signed for Hearts.
Was Walker welcomed as a hero? Not so much. This was a move that perhaps reflected managerial anxiety over incumbent 'keeper Henry Smith's ability to combine occasional ball dropping moments with longevity and Tynecastle cult hero status.
But Smith rose to the challenge and cemented his place as number one in Gorgie. It was Henry who travelled with Scotland's Euro 92 squad while Walker ended the 1991/92 season on loan at Burnley.
Yet the Hearts manager couldn't make his mind up. Joe Jordan - then an oft bewildered Scottish Premier League manager still awaiting his transformation into an Italian baiting Champions League coach - turned back to Walker in 1993.
And here we have our international breakthrough. Andy Roxburgh's Scotland take on Germany (managed by some chap called Vogts) at Ibrox on 24th March 1993. Nicky Walker wins his first cap.
His Scotland clean sheet lasted 19 minutes before Karl-Heinz Reidle put the Germans ahead. But that's where the scoring stopped in a sound Scottish performance that will forever be remembered as the game that Duncan Ferguson showed what might have been had headbutts, jail terms and SFA hate not intervened.
Although he remained in the shadow of Andy Goram and eventually a resurgent Jim Leighton, Walker had now become an internationalist.
But the life of a professional footballer is an oft unsettled one, managerial changes at Tynecastle saw him slip out of favour under Sandy Clark and then out of the door completely when Tommy McLean arrived as boss.
McLean's vision for Hearts - which no doubt included something unintelligble about attacking widemen playing from "in tae oot" - had room for the potential of Craig Nelson but none for the experience of Walker.
Our hero of a trillion afternoon teas found himself as the makeweight in Nelson's move from Partick Thistle. A new dawn was breaking for Nicky Walker and it was breaking over Firhill.
Nelson would go on to make only 24 league appearances for Hearts while Walker would play 53 times for Thistle. Walker would play for Scotland again. Nelson would never play for Scotland.
But it wasn't all plain sailing. Under the stewardship of Murdo MacLeod the Jags struggled in the 1995/96 season. Only seven clean sheets were kept as the team's paltry eight wins saw them slump to second bottom.
Under the short lived play-off scheme - there is no such thing as a new idea in the world of Scottish football - that meant a two-legged promotion/relegation decider with Dundee United, runners-up to Dunfermline in the First Division.
United ran out 3-2 winners and it was a relegated Walker who doubled his caps tally with an eight minute substitute appearance against the USA in Conneticut.
That match, a 2-1 defeat, was a warm-up for Euro 96 and Walker was part of the Scotland squad that graced the tournament with the usual mixture of grit, determination, passion, fleeting glory and ultimate failure. As so often with his international call-ups there was little doubt that he was very much the third choice travelling companion to Goram and Leighton.
Domestically he had emerged from a relegation season with his reputation enhanced and Aberdeen spent £60,000 to keep him in the top flight. His Pittodrie stay didn't work out and he failed to notch up even a score of league appearances. The end was nigh after - in one of Wikipedia's more ignominious football entries - "he was supplanted by Derek Stillie."
He returned to his Highland homeland and Dingwall's finest, Ross County. The move brought his most sustained run of first team action, first on loan and then as a permanent signing. Close to 140 appearances followed as County established themselves in the SFL.
2001 saw a brief, romantic return to Aberlour Villa before he signed for County's Highland rivals Inverness Caledonian Thistle.
There was a strange twist in this autumn of his career. In September 2001 he was denied an appearance in the Highland derby against his old club when he was stranded in the United States during the air traffic confusion that followed the September 11th attacks.
Inverness veteran Jim Calder took his place in a match that saw County manager Neale Cooper win his first derby after five years in charge. Walker returned in time for the next match and promptly conceded six against Airdrie.
As he approached his forties Walker was going to have to devote more of his time to the family business. Inverness were his last professional club although he remained involved with football in the Highlands.
Now production director for the shortbread behomoths he's set to carry family stewardship of the firm into another generation.
He's businessman with a past though. Nicky Walker was something of a well tanned, luxuriantly haired fixture of Scottish football for the best part of two decades. Periods of that career were spent in the shadows but he often impressed.
For a while he seemed to be forever the close-but-no-cigar fall guy of the Scotland squad, always there, always willing, never playing. But twice he got his chance.
Two memories at least to sustain a man through a biscuit based board meeting or shared as a pleasant anecdote over a nice cup of tea and sample of the family's finest.
Forgotten Scotland Players number 5: Nicky Walker, Hearts and Partick Thistle. 2 caps.
Probably not.
But at least one star of yesteryear is probably immensely relaxed about the nostalgic power of plaid and a unleavened biscuit phenomenon.
Joseph Nicol Walker, scion of the famous biscuit empire that bears the family name, now enjoys a position of prominence with the firm his great grandfather founded.
But before becoming the Queen's official oatcake supplier Nicky Walker enjoyed a long football career. A career distinguished enough to see him become the Scottish Football Blog's fifth forgotten Scotland player and the first goalkeeper to make our list.It was a career that began close to home. Aberlous Villa, his first club, were formed in 1924, some 28 years after Joseph Walker founded the biscuit company that would become Scotland's biggest food exporter in the same Speyside village.
From Aberlour to the bright lights of Elgin and a teenage stint in the Highland League. A stint eye-catching enough to attract the attention of Jock Wallace at Leicester City.
Walker's stay at Filbert Street was short, perhaps a city that cherished it's fried potato snacks over crumbly sweet biscuit goodness unnerved him, but it did offer the chance to build a relationship with Wallace.
When the manager took over at Motherwell his goalkeeper followed. When a diminished Rangers called on Wallace to return and steady the ship he again took Walker with him.
But these were not vintage times at Ibrox. Rangers continued to toil and Wallace struggled to recapture former glories. Walker got his chances but was missing for the only trophy that Wallace won in his second spell - Peter McLoy started the 1984 league cup final against Dundee United.
With the sacking of Wallace and the start of the Graeme Souness revolution Walker's chance of establishing himself as a long term number one were hit by the arrival of Chris Woods.
He hung about - short loans at Dunfermline and Falkirk followed - but it was clear that only a move out of Govan would bring opportunities. In 1989 he bowed to the inevitable and signed for Hearts.
Was Walker welcomed as a hero? Not so much. This was a move that perhaps reflected managerial anxiety over incumbent 'keeper Henry Smith's ability to combine occasional ball dropping moments with longevity and Tynecastle cult hero status.
But Smith rose to the challenge and cemented his place as number one in Gorgie. It was Henry who travelled with Scotland's Euro 92 squad while Walker ended the 1991/92 season on loan at Burnley.
Yet the Hearts manager couldn't make his mind up. Joe Jordan - then an oft bewildered Scottish Premier League manager still awaiting his transformation into an Italian baiting Champions League coach - turned back to Walker in 1993.
And here we have our international breakthrough. Andy Roxburgh's Scotland take on Germany (managed by some chap called Vogts) at Ibrox on 24th March 1993. Nicky Walker wins his first cap.
His Scotland clean sheet lasted 19 minutes before Karl-Heinz Reidle put the Germans ahead. But that's where the scoring stopped in a sound Scottish performance that will forever be remembered as the game that Duncan Ferguson showed what might have been had headbutts, jail terms and SFA hate not intervened.
Although he remained in the shadow of Andy Goram and eventually a resurgent Jim Leighton, Walker had now become an internationalist.
But the life of a professional footballer is an oft unsettled one, managerial changes at Tynecastle saw him slip out of favour under Sandy Clark and then out of the door completely when Tommy McLean arrived as boss.
McLean's vision for Hearts - which no doubt included something unintelligble about attacking widemen playing from "in tae oot" - had room for the potential of Craig Nelson but none for the experience of Walker.
Our hero of a trillion afternoon teas found himself as the makeweight in Nelson's move from Partick Thistle. A new dawn was breaking for Nicky Walker and it was breaking over Firhill.
Nelson would go on to make only 24 league appearances for Hearts while Walker would play 53 times for Thistle. Walker would play for Scotland again. Nelson would never play for Scotland.
But it wasn't all plain sailing. Under the stewardship of Murdo MacLeod the Jags struggled in the 1995/96 season. Only seven clean sheets were kept as the team's paltry eight wins saw them slump to second bottom.
Under the short lived play-off scheme - there is no such thing as a new idea in the world of Scottish football - that meant a two-legged promotion/relegation decider with Dundee United, runners-up to Dunfermline in the First Division.
United ran out 3-2 winners and it was a relegated Walker who doubled his caps tally with an eight minute substitute appearance against the USA in Conneticut.
That match, a 2-1 defeat, was a warm-up for Euro 96 and Walker was part of the Scotland squad that graced the tournament with the usual mixture of grit, determination, passion, fleeting glory and ultimate failure. As so often with his international call-ups there was little doubt that he was very much the third choice travelling companion to Goram and Leighton.
Domestically he had emerged from a relegation season with his reputation enhanced and Aberdeen spent £60,000 to keep him in the top flight. His Pittodrie stay didn't work out and he failed to notch up even a score of league appearances. The end was nigh after - in one of Wikipedia's more ignominious football entries - "he was supplanted by Derek Stillie."
He returned to his Highland homeland and Dingwall's finest, Ross County. The move brought his most sustained run of first team action, first on loan and then as a permanent signing. Close to 140 appearances followed as County established themselves in the SFL.
2001 saw a brief, romantic return to Aberlour Villa before he signed for County's Highland rivals Inverness Caledonian Thistle.
There was a strange twist in this autumn of his career. In September 2001 he was denied an appearance in the Highland derby against his old club when he was stranded in the United States during the air traffic confusion that followed the September 11th attacks.
Inverness veteran Jim Calder took his place in a match that saw County manager Neale Cooper win his first derby after five years in charge. Walker returned in time for the next match and promptly conceded six against Airdrie.
As he approached his forties Walker was going to have to devote more of his time to the family business. Inverness were his last professional club although he remained involved with football in the Highlands.
Now production director for the shortbread behomoths he's set to carry family stewardship of the firm into another generation.
He's businessman with a past though. Nicky Walker was something of a well tanned, luxuriantly haired fixture of Scottish football for the best part of two decades. Periods of that career were spent in the shadows but he often impressed.
For a while he seemed to be forever the close-but-no-cigar fall guy of the Scotland squad, always there, always willing, never playing. But twice he got his chance.
Two memories at least to sustain a man through a biscuit based board meeting or shared as a pleasant anecdote over a nice cup of tea and sample of the family's finest.
Forgotten Scotland Players number 5: Nicky Walker, Hearts and Partick Thistle. 2 caps.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Kenny Milne's Wicked Wiki
The entry begins:
Milne endured a difficult upbringing in life and was raised and looked after by a pack of wolves in the Scottish Highlands. The wolves are meant to be the only remaining one who still remain in Scotland and the bond created between the wolves and Milne was said to have stunned the experts who continued to watch this amazing real life Jungle Book story until they felt it was safe to remove Milne from his adopted parents and move him onto human parents. Nicknamed Mowgli by the adoption centre he was taken to, Milne was adopted to a married couple and began a normal upbringing in Alloa, although some people thought he would have been safer being left in the wild with the wolves. Each year Milne would spend a week back in the Highlands with the wolves until the passing of the mother wolf in 2001, the father wolf was never seen again and to this day has never been found.
More here.
Thanks to @loveandgarbage
The Scottish Football Blog News Feed
Wednesday, December 08, 2010
Hit For Six
Bit of Twitter chat about winter breaks and bad weather. Someone suggested a break could mean the return of the Tennents' Sixes. If only.
Footage above the last tournament in 1993 - will the Jags ever get to defend their title?
Vote for Scottish Football Blog at Top Ten Scottish Football Web Awards
Thursday, September 02, 2010
Partick Thistle Fans Boardroom Conspiracy
I don't know much about the story. And there are probably two sides to it so feel free to respond. An interesting read though:
A football club is nothing without its fans...
...but that doesn’t seem to be the view at Partick Thistle, where the first supporters trust in Scotland was set up in 1998 after the “Save the Jags” campaign prevented the club slipping into administration. The Jags Trust’s reward back then was to be gifted one fifth of the newly created shares in the club and a promise of a place on the board. This new dawn for Scottish football saw hard working directors Brown McMaster and Tom Hughes being gifted the same amount of shares as “custodians”, in order to make sure that control of the club could never again be held by one individual and the club would never again sleepwalk into a financial crisis.
Fast forward to 2010, where the club has just told the Jags Trust (after discussing the matter at two recent board meetings) that its latest board nominee has not yet been invited to join the board. This doublespeak (they’ve not said no, just not said yes) seems to indicate that the club now has a problem with the concept of supporter representation on its board, at a time when Stirling Albion’s move to fan ownership has only recently been announced.
To the outsider looking in, the trust’s announcement on its own website holds little in the way of a clue as to what the heck is going on in the Firhill boardroom. The club chairman, Allan Cowan, who was instrumental in the 1998 fans campaign, has reportedly told the Jags Trust that it needs to “concentrate on activity which directly benefits the club”.
This is confusing, since, amongst other activities in the recent past, trust members voted to merge their own, profitable fundraiser, with the club’s new scheme, allowing the club to take direct control of an income stream that is vital to continuing to pay its debts. Jackie McNamara’s loan signing last season was funded by the trust, prompting the chairman to say “without their financial assistance we would have been unable to bring Jackie to Firhill at this point and our grateful thanks are extended to the Jags Trust”.
It seems that as one boardroom is being opened to the fans at Forthbank, the door at Firhill is being closed in the face of an active and supportive trust. At least two board meetings have now taken place with no representative of the fans present, a development that can only be viewed with suspicion in the absence of any reasonable explanation.
Thistle fans are entitled to wonder what on earth is going on in the boardroom that will not stand the scrutiny of their representative, while fans of other clubs with a place in the boardroom will now be looking over their shoulders in case the habit is catching. Conspiracy theorists will no doubt watch this with interest – here’s hoping that it can be sorted out soon and that it will all turn out to be a misunderstanding, because if it isn’t then there’s a clear message to Thistle fans that they are not welcome at the top table.
Friday, April 27, 2007
McCall over bar the shouting
Another season, another club, another departure.
Just what is wrong with Ian McCall?
His “amicable” split with Queen of the South marks the end of his sixth spell in management.
It is suggested that his next stop will be Partick Thistle. Which seems obvious enough because Thistle are a club crying out for a manager that seems to offer no stability whatsoever.
Clydebank (during which time they tried to move to Dublin), Airdrie (the last manager in their history), Morton (too expensive), Falkirk (jumped ship after 30 games), Dundee United (28 games won, 40 games lost) and Queen of the South (different ambitions from the board). Six clubs, six departures, no periods of stability.
Now, there is bad luck, there are misunderstandings and there are personality clashes.
But McCall seems to attract all three with unerring regularity.
Yet still he gets jobs. He’s underachieved as a manager as he underachieved as a player but a scary number of clubs seem to want his services.
Why?
Firstly, and it’s only my theory, McCall is a media darling. He lives in Glasgow’s West End which remains Scotland’s media centre. He’s the BBC’s main analyst despite having the incredible ability to make one pine for the commentary of Jock Brown.
But the media deem McCall a character: this relates to anecdotes from his playing days when he first defecated from a step ladder at Rangers (leading Graeme Souness to boot him out) and then defecated in player-manager Simon Stainrod’s shoe at Falkirk (what boot Stainrod kicked him out with is unclear).
Clearly this is a classy guy with a frightening level of sophistication.
Secondly, Scotland is a small country. That’s why the same actors appear in Take the High Road, Taggart and River City. And it’s why the same managers keep cropping up at different clubs. And, to short sighted club directors, McCall is attractive because of the high media profile that his moments of comedy excellence have so deservingly brought him.
So McCall keeps getting jobs and fans keep getting promised great things only to be awarded with mediocrity and abrupt departures.
But perhaps anyone hunting for new managers should study McCall’s comments yesterday: "The First Division is not easy, and will be even harder next year."
The challenge is never quite so appealing when you know the BBC will keep you in beer money.
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