Freeze a jolly good fellow for keeping our cup run going
STAY in the Scottish Junior Cup beyond Christmas – that’s one of the most common early-season targets for clubs at our level.
It’s a bit like our SPFL counterparts in European competition. Unfortunately at Johnstone Burgh our recent record in the big one reads a bit like our top sides on the Continent too.
All too often our dream has gone up in smoke before the November 5 bonfires.
But maybe not this season. A week before Santa packs his sleigh and we’re still in the mix thanks to a couple of decent wins – and a little help from Jack Frost.
That nippy wee character has put paid to our third round tie away to Lochee United three weeks running and it looks set to drag on for a week or two yet.
Today is the fourth attempt to play it and a quick glance at last night’s forecast for Dundee tells me we’d be as well starting the Christmas party early.
It’s not just us. Incredibly half of the 32 third round ties scheduled for three weeks ago have still to go ahead and that’s got to be some sort of record, especially as there’s less than a snowflake’s chance in hell of them all going ahead this afternoon.
But what do you do? Even a few artificial pitches have been deemed unplayable in the last fortnight. Summer football? I’ve already nailed my colours to that mast and it’s a no-brainer for me.
Mass postponements at this time of year are a perennial problem and it does nothing for squad morale – even hastily-arranged friendlies have been cancelled due to frozen parks.
It’s all becoming a little too familiar I must admit.
Our Cup clash with Vale of Clyde in 2009-10 was postponed 14 times. It was like a football Groundhog Day and even now I wake up on a Saturday morning and for a brief moment think we’ve still to play that match.
Four different grounds tried and failed to host it – our own Keanie Park, Vale’s Fullarton Park, Brig O’Lea in Neilston and even the perfectly named Celsius Stadium in Rutherglen as the deep freeze bit.
It did eventually go ahead and we won 2-1 on Petershill’s artificial pitch. Why they never thought of that a few months earlier I’ll never know.
Finally, junior football lost a legend this week. Not a former player or manager but one of the most loyal and long-serving supporters you could ever wish to meet.
John “Tiger” Shaw embodied the very ethos of junior football through his devotion to Pollok FC. Through the decades he served as president and vice-president and continued to follow the Glasgow side home and away right up to this season.
The tributes paid this week by players, managers, committee men and fans from across the game spoke volumes for the respect held for John, who passed away aged 94 this week.
I spoke to him to preview the 2016 Junior Cup Final his sixth as a Lok supporter. I suggested he would be known as a “superfan” among his peers but John didn’t quite pick me up right and replied: “I think Superman is a bit much –Tiger will do fine.”
I’m sure everyone connected to Pollok will raise a glass to Tiger today as the Lok take on Kilwinning at Newlandsfield.