We don’t want to be an answer in a pub quiz...

Brechin fear finishing season without single league win

NOTWITHSTANDING a scatter of lowerleague titles and local cups, Brechin City’s greatest claim to fame remains being the only club in world football to have a hedge running the entire length of one side of their Glebe Park pitch.

Unless matters take a significant upturn in the course of the final weeks of the season, however, their herbaceous perimeter will be displaced by a rather less desirable quirk. That of being just the second team in the history of the Scottish game to go an entire campaign without winning a league game.

Fourth in the regular League One season a year ago, 31 points behind champions Livingston, perhaps no one was more surprised to reach the second tier of the game via the play-offs than the Angus club themselves.

Joining Dumbarton as the only part-time teams in the Ladbrokes Championship, expectations for this term hovered somewhere between low and modest. No one, though, in their most feverish nightmares anticipated 29 games passing without victory.

The Vale of Leven side who took on the likes of Leith Athletic and Abercorn over 22 games in 189192 remain the only club to date to have failed to win a single match. But at least they managed five draws — one more than Darren Dods’ squad currently have to their names. History of all the wrong kind beckons.

‘We don’t want to be the answer in that pub quiz,’ admitted chairman Ken Ferguson.

‘We want to get a couple of wins for our professional pride and for everybody at the club.’

The inevitable consequence of such a dire run was confirmed by defeat to Morton at Cappielow last Saturday.

Since the first of the 25 defeats was inflicted at Palmerston Park on August 5, relegation seemed a matter of when and not if.

Bidding farewell to the season with at least one victory is now the all-encompassing raison d’etre.

‘It would be massive,’ said William Christie, vice-chairman of the Brechin Supporters Club. ‘That’s all I’m looking for now.

‘I was never that bothered about going down. All I want is to somehow win one game from somewhere. I just don’t want to go the whole season without winning one.’

Hope will spring eternal again on Saturday as Christie boards the bus for Falkirk. The 26-year-old has followed the club since he was ten and has grown inured to what the game can throw at you.

‘We knew it was going to be a difficult season and the chances were we were going to go down,’ he added. ‘So it was a case of going up and enjoying it as much as we could.

‘Morale among the fans has actually remained pretty good. Most of the regulars have kept going week-in, week-out.

‘Even after Saturday at Morton, when relegation was confirmed, there were still people singing on the bus on the way home.

‘It’s helped that the team’s morale has remained high. None of them have dropped their heads which has been good to see. They’ve had great fighting spirit.’

The statistics do tend to back that theory up. Despite the big fat zero sitting in the win column, 13 of the 25 losses have come by the odd goal. The Scottish Cup tie with Celtic at Parkhead in January was the only time they’ve shipped five goals.

‘That’s what’s been hardest to take,’ offered Christie. ‘In a lot of the games, we’ve been close and we’ve lost so many points in the last ten minutes when the difference between full and parttime usually shows.

‘Other than Celtic putting five past us, we’ve not really been hammered.’

Such crumbs of comfort are all very well but for the men who have had to press the flesh in the directors’ box each week, they do not amount to a great deal.

‘I can’t say it’s been the most enjoyable season we’ve had,’ said Ferguson. ‘It’s been an experience and there have been lessons learnt. There have been some positive experiences but, other than the trip to Celtic Park, enjoyment isn’t a word I’d use.

‘I don’t want to make excuses but we have had a fair bit of bad luck. We lost our No1 striker in Andy Jackson towards the start of the season and haven’t had him back for any length of time.

‘We signed Ryan McGeever to shore up the defence and then lost him in October.

‘Although some people might have thought it foolish, we strengthened in January. We brought in Kostadin Gadzhalov from Dundee. He looked excellent but got a broken nose in the first game and a dislocated shoulder in the second.

‘Craig Storie came in from Aberdeen but hurt his knee in his second match. That’s when you say to yourself: “This just isn’t going to work”.’

If it wasn’t for bad luck, Brechin would have had none at all. But not for a minute does anyone at the club feel betrayed by fortune or circumstance. It is what it is — an ill-prepared part-time team finding itself in above its neck.

‘We’re probably too good a team for League Two,’ added Christie. ‘League One is probably where we are comfortable at. The Championship is stepping out of our comfort zone.

‘I wouldn’t change it. When we beat Alloa on penalties to win promotion, it was up there with the best days I’ve seen since I started following the club.

‘To go the whole hog and win two penalty shoot-outs was unbelievable.

‘I’ve still enjoyed it. It’s been good going to some of the bigger grounds that I probably wouldn’t have gone to had we never gone up. I’d never been away to Dundee United or Inverness before.

‘Even speaking to other fans has been good. When we’ve walked away from games having lost by the odd goal, they’ve told us how unlucky we’ve been.’

One thing all at the club seem agreed on is the debt they felt they owed Dods after he guided them to the most unlikely promotion. Loyalty may be an increasingly lost notion in the game but, by sticking to their manager, Brechin have at least distinguished themselves in one positive sense. ‘I’m glad they’ve stuck by him. He’s just young and is starting out,’ stated Christie.

Ferguson agreed, saying: ‘I don’t think there’s anything else Darren could have done to have improved the position with the resources we had available.

‘We’d no time to prepare for the Championship. That’s probably been our failing.’

Despite the next fixtures on the list comprising of Falkirk, Inverness Caley Thistle and St Mirren, there is still scope for battered pride to be restored.

But if the remaining seven games come and go without the elusive victory arriving, Brechin will simply regroup and go again.

An unwanted place in the history books aside, the reality is they will be none the worse for the experience.

‘We’re going back to where we came from,’ said Ferguson.

‘We’ve had the experience of a year in the Championship.

‘Our players will have improved through that. Our finances will have slightly improved. So we are going down in a better shape than we came up. It’s not all bad news.’