Three priceless points

PTFC makes it two in a row against St. Johnstone

Who would have thought something as ordinary as football could matter? But I was very pleased indeed to read this morning that my team had won away from home in the Scottish Premier League. We rise to seventh place and despite the hard games ahead (against numbers one, two and three in the League - Celtic, Aberdeen and Hearts) our future in the top division looks secure for another year. Phew.

It seems one can take the boy away from the football but the game remains within the boy. The beautiful game indeed.

Doom ...

... and gloom. My team loses overnight. Our Mascot Kingsley is not happy.

Old habits die hard

Friday night  there, Saturday morning here and the day's first news: my football team back in Scotland progressed to the final 16 of the Scottish Football Cup.  Any ship in a storm Douglas.

Red Star Causewayhead

What a pleasant surprise I received this morning on my Facebook page.  Tommy Geddes, friend from my days at Stirling University in the late 1970s, posted a photograph from almost 40 years ago of our six-a-side football team.  We entered an intramural football competition, played on Wednesday afternoons as I recall.  We were not very good; might even have been bad but we enjoyed ourselves.  That was the point.

I have no recollection of the photograph being taken.  I couldn't even begin to guess at who took it.  But I'm very happy Tommy found it and shared it.  Nor can I remember much about the football; none of us can.  But that's not important in any way.  We played to win at the time because what's the point of entering a competition if you don't try - at least try - to win.  We are petty sure we lost but we would have enjoyed ourselves enormously regardless.

What a team we were (from left to right, back row then front)

• Malcolm Jenkins, Students Association Permanent Secretary
• Neil Roden, Secretary of the local Communist Party Branch
• Me, Vice-President of the Students Association
• John Reid, former President of the Students Association, 
• Harry Adam, President of the Students Association
• Tommy Geddes, Immediate past President of the Students Asociation

And what a mixture of previous, at that time and future parts we played or would go on to play.  Among us there were or would be:

• 3 members of the Communist Party (at that time)
• 1 already former member of the Communist Party
• 1 former member of the Scottish National Party
• 4 current members of the Labour Party
• 1 who would become a Member of Parliament, British Cabinet member and now Member of the House of Lords
• 1 would be awarded an OBE for services to education
• 3 of us would serve on the Scottish Executive of the National Union of Students.
• 1 would become the National Secretary of the National Union of Students
• 2 served as members of the Steering Committee of NUSUK
• 1 became Chairman of Glasgow Celtic Football Club
• 1 supports Glasgow Rangers and Southampton Football Clubs
• 2 support Partick Thistle Football Club
• 1 supported Wrexham
• 1 supported Motherwell (maybe)

Of course, all of us had and have so very much more in our lives; relationships, loves, jobs, hopes and dreams (realised or not).  But we look happy in the photograph because we were.

Don't panic, don't panic ... ok - let's panic

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear ...

So Partick Thistle lost (again) this time away from home to the not so very mighty Ross County.  Even this early the writing is on the wall ... my Facebook wall as far as these words are concerned;

I can no longer hide the truth from the world.

With eight games played, no wins, only two goals scored and with an uncomfortable gap opening up between our bottom of the league position and EVERYONE ELSE IN THE LEAGUE my unofficial Partick Thistle existential threat warning has been raised from "bit of a worry" to "moderately anxious".

The illusion of happiness is a waterlogged pitch

Partick Thistle Football Club

It was with some trepidation I logged on to the BBC Sport web site to check out the football scores back in the 'old country'.  In the traditional New Year's Day round of matches the Jags had the never less than daunting task of hosting Celtic at Firhill.  The 'tic had not won their previous two matches - even worse they'd been sufficiently careless as to lose their last encounter - and a lifetime's experience (by which I mean approximately 47 years) tells me it is never, I mean 100% never a good idea to meet the Champions a week after they've had a bad day at the office.  They feel some overwhelming 'We Are The Champions' need to give their next opponents a monumentally painful going over.  

So it was with great relief, bordering on ecstatic joy, I read that the game had been postponed because the pitch of Maryhill's finest had become waterlogged, despite the best efforts of the home team's staff.  (References to ecstatic joy in the previous sentence may border on ironic overstatement ... but only just.)

Relatively speaking, therefore, New Year's Day turned out, as it happened - or more accurately as it didn't happen - a good day for the Harry Wraggs.  We didn't lose three points while the teams below us in the league were all soundly beaten, putting more distance between us and them than had been there on Friday - at least that's my not very sound theory.   

It will not last, of course.  A day of recokoning must come.  But for now, as the saying goes, I'll take any port in a storm.