JAMIE LONGWAIT
Stenny ace Longworth’s promotion jinx finally busted as he wins promotion after SEVEN play-off defeats in a row
JAMIE LONGWORTH heard one blast of referee Greg Aitken’s whistle and knew his days as Scottish football’s biggest jinx were over.
The Stenhousemuir striker’s sequence of failing at the play-off hurdle had been halted at the eighth time of asking.
Last weekend’s 2-1 aggregate success over Peterhead signalled the end of an unwanted run that would have had the Guinness Book of Records taking notice.
A return to League One for the Warriors and the monkey off the back of the 30-year-old ex-Queen’s Park, Stranraer and Alloa hitman who admits was ready to hang up his boots if they had failed to win.
He said: “I had agreed with myself that if it didn’t happen this season then I would chuck it. This time last season I was part of the Alloa side that had just lost a Championship play-off final against Brechin to take my tally of personal failures to seven.
“Fortunately for me, No.8 was my lucky number.
“After five play-off semi-final defeats and two play-off final defeats, finally I can say I’m a winner and a player who was part of a team that won promotion.
“The full-time whistle brought a whole range of emotion. My first thought was for my team-mates and the next was for myself – at last I am no longer the bad omen. “If it had ended badly there would have been questions asked.
“I don’t know why I did it but I had mentioned to a few of the boys weeks ago that this had been my record. It was a mistake as they would have
held it against me if it had happened again. It just slipped out at training one night and I said to myself, ‘Why am I telling them this?’
“There would have been a few people staring at me on the way home from Peterhead had it not all gone according to plan.”
Longworth’s streak of misery started in 2011 with heartache for Queen’s Park against Albion Rovers and it’s been a recurring them with a collection of hard luck stories along the way.
But the Glasgow PE teacher is adamant it had reached the stage where he believed someone had a No.9 stripped voodoo doll with his name on it.
He said: “I’ve been lucky enough to play in some pretty good sides so every season I’d go into it believing we had a right good chance. But at the end of every season it didn’t happen for us in the play-offs and the more I was convinced it must be something to do with me – it must be me, I must be the jinx.
“I was convinced I was the one who was stopping my team from getting up.
“That feeling was compounded during one season when I was at Queen’s Park and faced a play-off against Stranraer.
“We had beaten them four times in the league that season but they ended up beating us 5-1 on aggregate in the play-off semi-final.
“When I looked back at things like that, in my head I was saying, ‘It must be me who’s the one who keeps gubbing this.’”
As Stenny were celebrating on the Balmoor pitch, Longmuir had an awareness to empathise with the losers and insists it’s a barbaric way to decide the end of a campaign.
He said: “There’s no getting away from it, the play-off system is brutal. I watched the Peterhead boys suffer and I’m good pals with boys like Willie Gibson and a few others who are great guys.
“There were a few of them in tears after the game but if anyone knew how they felt, it was me.
“We beat my old club Queen’s Park in the semi-final and that effectively saw them relegated. So that was a bittersweet experience for me.
“It’s absolutely brilliant for the team going up a division but when you look around at the other side, you see boys who have played 38 games and they are left scunnered.
“At the end of the day you are a Stenhousemuir player and all the focus is on that.”