December 31, 2006, 1:53 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized
Been a couple of weeks since we managed to get to a match due to Christmas and New Year, but we are planing on making the trip to Stenhousemuir next Saturday to watch them take on Albion at home. Our first third division match, so should be a good one as long as the weather improves!
After that on the 20th January we are heading down the Clyde to Greenock to see Morton, currently top of the second division welcome Stirling Albion who lie second. Both teams are over 10 points ahead of the rest with Morton slightly ahead of Stirling so this should be the best game we’ve been to yet.
With that, this will be the last post of 2006, which has had more downs than ups for some of us! Lets hope the coming year will mark an improvement and bring many great games of football for us to watch.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
P.S. here is a little video for all football fans to enjoy
What’s it called? Cumbernauld, the home of Clyde football club and also voted the most dismal place in Scotland. So there wasn’t much hope for visiting and with these low expectations we set out to see if it was worthy of this award. That being said we were hopeful that the stadium would be of reasonable quality having moved from Shawfield stadium in the south side of Glasgow to Broadwood in 1994 (with some ground sharing in-between) so it was relatively new. We arrived at the stadium and the parking facilities were pretty good with plenty of spaces and from the outside it looked smart and tidy. We were with the cheap skate that is Jamie and after hearing it was £2 for parking, the car was promptly turned around and parked in some road that looked like a haven for smack addicts, but I guess he would say it was worth it for the saving of £2 (although in my opinion we were lucky to come away with 4 hubcaps).
So we went into the main stand with the home fans and on initial viewing the stadium looked good and was definitely of sufficient class to be a ground for an average side within the SPL. The only disappointing aspect was that it was no-where near capacity with one stand noticeably closed. This gave the game a poor atmosphere and therefore the banter was distinctly lacking between both sets of fans which is a frustrating when the rain is battering down and the wind was coming in from the hills making the opportunity of good football happening next to none. Why were we here again? The first half was riddled with scrappy football with the only interesting part being Paul Lovering booting several Clyde players up and down the park before being eventually booked with not much complaint from the player. Despite being the more dominant side the Clyde team seemed to be light years away from the performance they put in against Celtic the season before to put them out of the Scottish Cup.
The second half was much of the same until the last 20 minutes when the game suddenly sprung into life with Marc Smyth being sent off after a second bookable offence and David Hutton making a superb double save in injury time to rescue a point for Clyde. Overall it was a poor game; the stadium itself was good despite there being a lack of a fourth stand in which it has been widely publicised that there have been problems with planning permission and finance and also the additional pitches and facilities make this one of the better stadiums in the First Division.
Dougie Ratings
Quality of Seat: 4 / 5
Quality of Banter: 1 / 5 (too empty for there to be any)
Quality of Ground: 4 / 5
Quality of Pie: 3 / 5 (and the Bovril was reasonable)
Our first trip to a match gets off to a great start when we turn up at the Strathclyde Home’s Stadium in Dumbarton at 2:20pm to find the shutters down, and the tumble weed blowing past.
A quick phone call later and we discover we’ve balls it up already as we’re a week early! The nearest game we can make is Partick Thistle vs Hamilton Accies so we hammer it up the road back to Glasgow in the hope we can catch some of it. After a drive around Partick we soon find out Thistle’s ground isn’t even in Partick! Why the hell are they called PARTICK Thistle then! We troop up to Maryhill and stumble across Firhill by chance, with a bit of luck, but we’ve missed at least 20 minutes of the first half, great! Fuck it anyway we’ve driven for ages trying to find the place so we’re not giving up that easily, and £10 later we’re helping the steward miss Thistle’s second goal! The numpty was telling us where to sit when Mark Roberts sticks in his 2nd goal of the afternoon. We saw it, he didn’t, and he wasn’t too happy about it either.
Anyway, its a decent ground with 2 stands having been built in the last 10 years, and an old rickety main stand that your not allowed in anymore due to the cost of letting supporters into it apparently?
Wheres the clock and the scoreboard? How can you have a football ground without a clock or a scoreboard? Apparently they did away with the clock after last season for god knows what reason, must have been fast or something!
The banter is great with some quality chants like “Sit down, shut up!”, and “go back to your village ya arseholes!”. A decent game as well with the Accies playing some good football, but proving that ain’t everything by getting pumped 3-1 in the end thanks to a Mark Roberts hat-trick.
Its Dougie Rating time!!
Quality of seat: 3/5
Quality of banter: 5/5
Quality of ground: 2/5 - no bloody clock!
Quality of pie: unknown, but I did see foot long hotdogs!?
Welcome to Halftimebovril.
Everyone who is a fan of the Scottish game will know there is nothing better than a Bovril to wash down your pie at half time, when your standing in the pishing rain, freezing your bollocks off, praying your team will at least score to make your trip worth while.
This site will be a tribute to the devoted fans who make the effort week-in, week-out to see their team in action come rain or shine.
Over the next few years we have made it our quest to visit every professional football stadium in Scotland. From shiteholes such as Cappielow (apologies to the Morton fans, but it is), to 5-star stadiums such as Ibrox.
We will be reviewing the stadiums as well as the teams involved on the day we visit, to establish where is the best football arena in Scotland, conversely the places where you wished you had never set foot! We will also determine if the Killie pies are infact the best, or whether they are best used to heat your hands at half time along with your Bovril.
