Racism and Football.

It's amazing the things you discover.  Racism in British football is often commented on.  But it wasn't always a problem in Scottish football.  The man above, Andrew Watson (1857– 1902) was the first black footballer in the world to play as an internationalist. He won 3 Scotland  (Yaay!  Inclusive Scotia rools!) caps between 1881 & 1882. He played as a full back.

Born in what was then British Guyana (they've dropped the British bit since becoming independent), he was the son of a wealthy Scottish sugar planter and a British Guyanese woman. He went to King's College School, Wimbledon, where he excelled at sports and went on to study natural philosophy (physics), mathematics and engineering at the University of Glasgow.

In 1876 he signed for Glasgow side Parkgrove F.C., also serving as match secretary, (which made him the first black administrator in football history). In 1880, he played in a All Glasgow team against Sheffield - the Weegies won 1–0! After marrying in Glasgow, he soon signed for Queen's Park F.C. – then Britain's biggest football team (oh, how the mighty Spiders have fallen!) and later became their secretary. He led them to several Scottish Cup wins, becoming the first black player to win a major competition.  In 1882, he was the first black player to play in the English Cup when he turned out for Swifts F.C.  In 1884 he was the first "foreign" player to be invited to join the most exclusive football team of the day (only 50 members) - Corinthians. During his time with them, he was part of the team that beat Blackburn Rovers 8 - 1 ( then the English Cup holders).

His skin colour did not matter to his contemporaries, and there is no record of institutional racism from the  Scottish Football Association. One match report was more interested in his brown boots (black boots were usual then).  Minutes record that, before one match where he was injured and couldn't play, an SFA vice-president said if Watson had been fit he would have happily drugged another Scottish international to give Watson his place. Watson won 3 caps for Scotland. the 1st Scotland v. England 12 March 1881, where he was Captain and we won 6 – 1(!!!).  A few days later Scotland played Wales and won 5 – 1. Watson's last cap was against England on 11 March 1882. This was another 5 – 1 victory for Scotland. In November 1877 he married Jessie Nimmo Armour - their son, Rupert, was born the nextyear and a daughter, Agnes Maude, in 1880. Watson later emigrated to Australia and died in Sydney in 1902.

it's heartening to think that Scottish football once upon a time showed higher ideals that the neds and money culture of the Old Firm.  Maybe it can again.

Holy, Holy ... the ref's blind!!

Well, it just goes to show that it's not all doom and gloom in the Holy Land! See this http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20101027/tod-no-bethlehem-miracle-as-priests-rout-1066d3e.html for a wee smile!

Despite a sniffle

Yes, the annual obligatory summer cold is upon us.  I still made it through tyesterday o watch Cowdenbeath beat Partick Thistle 2-1 (sorry Kenny, but to quote Kipling's "Stalky and Co" - "Aiee, I gloat!").  Mum retails the info that as passing local had told her that Max the Dog is not a mongerel - he is a "Parson's Cross" which is evidently what you call a cross breed that is half  (Parson) Jack Russell terrier.  Between snuffles it was Holy Mass and very enjoyable too!  I think some paracetemol wil settle my cold a little further.  And a nice cuppa!

Work and Play

Well, the Management aren't asking me to do the stupid tomorrow - 2 rather hefty SW's will be doing it instead:-). We went to see Thomas the Tank Engine at Bo'ness today - I recognised Thomas, but can't recall the identities of them 2 green trains. Any answers out there? Was yucked to see that the Union had asked for a 2.2% pay rise and restoration of our previous overtime rates (reduced last year due to the economic downturn for one year - ha!). The Company are proposing a pay freeze (!!!) and keeping the overtime rates as they are. Oh dear!

The mighty Blue Brazil have had their usual lousy start to the season - stuffed 2-0 by the Staggies. But we do this and still get promoted. Time will tell.

Dancing on the Streets tonight!

Not me personally, but certainly in spirit! The Blue Brazil won their play off against Drechin City today and will be in the 1st Division next year, alongside arch rivals Dunfermline ("The Townies"), Wraith Rovers (fans include Gordon Brown and Val McDermid) and sundry other mad mobs such as Falkirk, Partick Thistle Nil (Hiya Kenny!) and the giant conquering Staggies! Fun! Memo to self: get a season ticket, ya Muppet!

A nice day watching Thomas the Tank Engine at Bo'ness - actually a real live steam locomotive dressed up as him! This job is reconnecting me with my inner wean! Yesterday was the museum at Chambers Street and Tuesday Dunbar swimming pool. I am enjoying being out and about without the hassle of owning , taxing and running a car! No Church due to work and a late-ish dinner, so I shall make it to mass on the morrow methinks!

Day Off

Well, my day off plan to meet an old friend went "boink", so I drank coffee, ate olives and hummus (the Lebanese have just reclaimed their world record for making the biggest batch ever from the Israelis!), mooched around some charity shops (buying a guide to bird life), made gluten free bread (quite palatable really) and wondered how we will ever cope with a ginger Scottish Secretary? I also keep on calling the new Tory Chairperson "the Kharzi of Kalabar" simply because the name Warsi makes me think of the Kenneth Williams character in "Carry on Up the Khyber" who said "She won't mind it - the British are used to cuts!" We will be soon!

The Blue Brazil will be live on telly on Saturday as they play Drechin City for promotion! Stay tuned ye faithful!

A day at the fitba

Operating on the "stuff politics, I need a break" principle, I set off for sunny Alloa to watch the mighty Blue Brazil today. Stopping briefly for a mozzarella and olive flat bread and a latte before boarding the choo-choo train (who sez footie fans have no cultyir?), I travelled on the relatively new Hillfoots line from Stirling to Alloa for the 1st time. Very scenic it is, too, in the spring sunshine. The Ochils looked simply gorgeous and you got an equally stunning vista of them from the Away terracing at Recreation Park. I like the way the names of Scottish football grounds describe their historic function like RP or location like Central Park. Wonder what went on at Gayfield? :-)

We won, the pies were excellent and very reasonably priced, the weather splendid (why do we insist in not having a winter break in football and playing into the decent spring weather?) and I returned home to enjoy pizza, salad and potato salad for my dinner. Life is good.

Sort of

Food wise a "sort of" day. A very continental breakfast of muesli, polish bread, cheese and cold meat (sort of healthy) was followed by a sort of healthy lunch which consisted of a chicken and sweetcorn wrap (that was the salad bit) and a Reese's peanut bar and a glass of orange juice. Dinner was a Jamaican chicken brown stew with boiled rice and oven chips with fruit squash to drink.

Politically it was also a "sort of" day. Lib Dem I am, but I feel somewhat queasy about an alliance with the Tories. It just wouldn't have happened under Charlie Kennedy - I didn't vote in the Clegg election, as I was disgusted and appalled at the treatment of both CK and Sir Ming. And I'm begining to wish I'd voted Communist rather than for the proto-Tory effect. A protest vote certainly, but I could at least have claimed to have rejected Thatcherism Lite. Yuk!

My antidote will be Recreation Park Alloa for the play-offs tomorrow! C'mon the Beath!

A day in the Sun!

Well. It was a snooze in the sun yesterday - neither the Blue Brazil or the Sons were on good form. 80 minutes of dross, followed by 10 minutes of lively action. Dungbarton may not win promotion, but some of their guys were definitely overlooked for the Oscar's!

The highlight of the day preceded the match. A very good session with my sponsor reviewing my 1st step - at the end of which he gave me a special coin to mark 1 year sans hooch. It's inscribed with the motto: "To thine own self be true". Good idea. Bloody difficult in the Church though - people expect you to fit into a mould if you are a priest. Perhaps being clear of the expectations of parish life helps that. Today is Church in the morning, followed by a 2-10 shift. Hey ho!

Le Week-End

I recall being much surprised that the French used the term "Le Weekend" when I was at School and learning my foreign language. I'm these days quite sure that the Academie Francais do not approve and sit in a darkened room muttering "Zut alors!" whenever they hear it.

Anyway, on Saturday I headed to Fife, saw Ma and went to watch the Cowdenbeath-East Fife derby game. We won 6-2 (should have been 6-1, but our defence went to sleep at one point) and I won the the Half Time draw which means Max (who is now with mum on a semi-permanent basis) can have the wee op the vet was recommending (lump on his tail needs removing) sooner rather than later. The evening involved a trip to the pictures to watch "Crazy Heart" (very good btw, Jeff Bridges may well get that darn Oscar tonight)- but had me trotting through 12 step patterns on auto-pilot) Sunday saw me enjoying preaching and celebrating at St Ninian's Comely Bank then meeting a friend for a tomato juice. So quite a normal week-end which was very nice indeed.

Snow stops play so..

There being no footie tomorrow this seemed the next best thing:



Rolf, yer accents actually as bad as Russ Abbot's - but we still love you!

Soccer and sanity.

I rarely attend the Blue Brazil's away games, but given that today's match was a clash between the league leaders (Cowden and Stirling Albion) who were only seperated by goal difference, I made the effort to head off to Stirling. Let me compliment the Bino's first: friendly welcome, lovely pies (crisp pastry, well seasoned meat and just the right touch of light grease!) and a very nice stand. And your No 9 is a cheating **** who deserved the red card he got! We scored early, dominatedthe game until the last 15 minutes and, with the opposition down to 10 men, seemed set for an extension to our top of the table lead. Then we conceded a STUPID penalty to let the Binos equalise. To make matters worse, they actually scored (a jammy fluke of) a goal and suddenly we were in big trouble. Mercifully, we bashed another one in and I came away happy with a 2-2 draw.

However, what I really did not expect to discover on the train home was a very good and well written wee article on depression and suicide. Not in the paper, but in the Stirling Albion matchday programme. It was a piece on the recent tragic suicide of the German national goalkeeper, Robert Enke. I'm going to quote quite a bit of it.

"Robert Enke didn't want to cause anyone any trouble. In the darkest hours of his mental illness his thoughts were only for Leila his adopted daughter and Teresa his wife. The swooping cycle of depression, illogical yet making perfect sense, allowed him to believe that Leila would be taken away: that the authorities would deem a loving father unfit. Having seen Teresa attempt to come to terms with the death of their biological child, he felt that it was better he disappeared than Leila.

Tony Adams knew emotional torment and its ability to destroy. His crutch was alcohol....The former Arsenal defender recognises that depression and dependency are not mutually exclusive.

Paul Gascoigne...knows alcohol abuse inside out. He struggles with depression and obsessive compulsive behaviour....now he is a lonely, semi-tragic specimen.

But Robert Enke was not an alcoholic, he was not an under-educated attention seeker. Neither is Dame Kelly Holmes. Her fighting spirit was confounded by injury. She locked herself in her bathroom and passed a steel blade through her flesh. One cut for every day's training missed.

Sport brings with it many pressures. The ultra-macho culture, the pressure to win at all costs, the blame that is always - always - meted out in defeat. It is a wonder that there are not more high profile sportspeople who struggle to cope."

A very powerful and sensitive article in a quite unexpected place. Goes to show not all footie fans are brainless knuckle draggers or utterly insensitive.

Cowdenbeath 5 (yes, FIVE!!), Peterhead Nil

What a good game! A feast of goals in our 5-0 victory over Peterhead and 3rd place in the 2nd division. We played good entertaining football and made few silly errors. Still, we have 3/4 of the season to go and bigger clubs might come a poaching players or the manager come January, so lets say I'd be very happy if the Blue Brazil finish this season in 6th or 7th place in their 1st season back in the 2nd division.

Saturday night at the Steamie.

Tonight I went out with friends and we saw Tony Roper's marvellous comedy "The Steamie". I've seen it on TV but live on stage it was truly excellent. I haven't laughed out loud so often for ages at the antics of 4 Glesca wimmin doing their washing at an old public washouse in Glasgow in the 50's. It was dated by references to Tony Curtis being good looking and the brave new all mod cons housing estate in the country to which the youngester aspired - Drumchapel!!! (For non Weegies, Billy Connoly famously described the "Drum" as "a desert wi windaes") It was great fun and 1st class.

Splendidly, the Blue Brazil beat Stenhousemuir 2-0 which sneaks them nicely up the league table. I am well chuffed as we tended not to do well against them last year. Quite an enjoyable Saturday really.

Hearing the message!

Working in mysterious ways is what God, according to the song, does. Oh, indeed! The last couple of sermons I have heard seem to have been cribbed from my therapists notes. Which may suggest I am currently sitting in the right Edinburgh pew! And it just happens to be my taste in Liturgy. Hmm! And the hymn during communion? "Father hear the prayer we offer". Which I had at my priesting. "Not for ease that prayer shall be, but the steep and rugged pathway" - God heard that prayer obviously!! God really does try to get through to you when you stop moving long enough to hear and see and listen.

It was good news indeed yesterday when the mighty Blue Brazil beat the evil Dungbarton 3-0 at Fabby Pies Stadium on the Clyde. Suddenly we're in 5th place! (That won't last!). So it's time to go for a wee bit of exercise and enjoy the sunshine! Pax et bonum y'all!

Goals, pies and the Exaltation of the Cross.

A glorious Setterday, with a trip to see Ma and going to watch the Blue Brazil beat Clyde (The Bully Wee - an odd nickname!) 1-0 for our 1st win of the season. We did deserve to win, but I do wish we wouldn't doze off in the 2nd half until the last quarter hour! The catering van with its vile curry sauce and chips has gone and the new caterers at least sell "Killie pies" which are OK, but still it is the Dumbarton pies that get my vote!

Church didn't quite happen today as I stayed on to deal with late breakfasters and make sure the roast veggies were edible - but they self-immolated and I had to start again to ensure Sunday lunch wasn't mainly carnivorous.

Tomorrow is Holy Cross Day, which has been a festival I have always valued, due in no small part to my admiration of the slum priests of the ilk of Alexander Heriot MacConnachie and Charles Fuge Lowder in London, and John Comper in Aberdeen, all of whom were SSC (Societas Sanctae Crucis or Society of the Holy Cross). I was fiercely proud of my own membership of SSC and greatly regretted giving up it up because I could no longer uphold it's line on not taking communion from women priests when I went to work in Falkirk with a female NSM. However I think this quote from St Anselm is worth batting about if you observe it:

"We do not acknowledge you because of the cruelty that godless and foolish ones prepared you to effect upon the most gentle Lord, but because of the wisdom and goodness of him who of his own free will took you up".

In other words, we don't oberve this feast to celebrate an instrument of torture or to dwell on the effects of human sinfullness, but to celebrate the means of grace and the depth of the Divine Love that never stops seeking us out and rescuing us from the consecquences of our personal folly and weakness. So truly we can say:

"We adore you O Christ and we bless you.

Because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world"

We arra peeple!

Shock, horror! The Blue Brazil have just been promoted. Admittedly, it is because Livingston FC (or Meadowbank Thistle in the Country) were not exactly solvent at the end of last season and were forcibly demoted from the 1st Division to the 3rd. Accordingly, the BB go up into the 2nd div and Airdrie United (Airdrieonians Really) go 2nd to 1st. Splendid - except this was announced TODAY and the season starts on Saturday. So instead of playing East Stirling in sunny Larbert, we are hosting Arbroath at Central Park. Don't you just love the efficency of the Scottish Football League? No, because the vital buying close season was done with the prospect and the funding of the 3rd Div in mind and people who might have signed for a 2nd div club or even stayed have been missed. Darn it- this is sloppy.

New year!

Well, here we go again: the panto was most enjoyable, the kids enjoyed it and, strangely enough, the King's Theatre wasn't quite as far from the town centre as I recalled. Karen Dunbar was a 1st class lead, Gerard Kelly excellent as Buttons and it was nice to see Andy Gray back from his troubles. Indeed, the day was only blighted by 2 small factors: my vertigo (seats in the upper circle) and the outrageous car park pricing at the Buchanan Galleries.

And today the footie is off again due to a deep frozen pitch. Why in the name of heaven do we insist in playing in the middle of winter? Surely a summer season would make more sense? It's not as if we are a mad keen cricketing nation, so it would hardly clash with anything and you might well get a better turn out at games.

The Madness of the PC.

There are moments in one's cyber-life when an item just appears and you giggle, grin or loft at least one eyebrow towards the biretta you sometimes wear. Today, I got the news that the Central Scotland Racial Equality Council are organising a Family Day @ Falkirk Footie Stadium for Ethnic Minority families. Very commendable. It's on a Saturday. Match day in the real world. On offer are free tickets to the Falkirk/St Mirren game. What in the name of Dagon have our local ethnic minorities done to deserve such a fate and threat? St Mirren - last time I watched them was at Pittodrie and Charlie Nicholas scored a hat-trick against them for Aberdeen! Why do FFC want to expose the ethnic folks to the baying mob of Ferguslie Park residents and Thunderbird swigging shell suits? Are they mad? Or just desperate to fill the ground a bit more on a duff Saturday?

And tomorrow is a day in sunny Stirling on hospitals and Spiritual direction. Life's rich tapestry, etc.

Praise where praise is due!

As has doubtless been noted by the Internet Thought Police, I am not the chair of the Falkirk branch of the Alex Salmond Fan Club. But all credit to the man, he was actually very good last night impersonating the Rev I M Jolly for Children in Need. Funnier than Tony Blair when he did "Am I bovvered?" with Catherine Tate. Mind you, I don't personally find her terribly funny anyhow and I always was a Rikki Fulton fan. Humour is a very personal thing and I never found Russell Brand amusing but I love Frankie Boyle.

Today it's off to the old home town to watch the Blue Brazil take on Stenhousemuir. Who are a Falkirk team. Divided loyalties? Nope, I am a faithful BB and will back my team. A draw would be fine, but we need to beat them if we are to keep up our promotion prospects. And as I spellchecked this blog, Stenhousemuir was queried and the machine suggested that I meant to type "satanism"! So let's hope for a victory against the goat sacrificers of Larbet!