Miserable at being crowned the worst team EVER? Not us!
They failed to win a single game this season. But Brechin City – in a joyous antidote to the madness of modern football – are unbowed
ONCE upon a time it was the town’s handsome medieval cathedral which put it on the map, later it was its distillery – the only one in Angus – and the bustling farmers market in prime cattle country.
Over at Glebe Park, Brechin’s football team plodded away in the lower leagues largely unnoticed. Only trivia buffs cared that the club enjoyed the unique distinction of having a hedge running the entire length of the pitch instead of a stand.
But, a week ago, all the town’s previous claims to fame were put in the shade when the final whistle went on Brechin City FC’s last match of the season and the club’s footsore warriors tramped back to the dressing room as history makers.
They are officially the worst performing team ever in the Scottish game. And, heart-warmingly, their manager is being kept on to give it another shot next season.
‘We’ll bounce back,’ said the club chairman Ken Ferguson this week, insisting there were positives to take from his team’s campaign.
It was back in the spring of 1892 that Dunbartonshire side Vale of Leven set a benchmark for utter failure that few in modern football imagined would ever be surpassed.
In an entire league campaign they won not a single match and managed to scrape a draw in only five of their 22 outings, thus completing the season with the grand total of five points.
Over the next 125 years there has been no shortage of challengers for the incompetence crown. Dundee FC almost stole it in 1899 when they equalled the Vale’s dismal five points – but they blotted their copy book by recording one win that season.
In the modern era East Stirlingshire seemed to be making a spirited tilt for the title when they lost 32 of their 36 Division 3 matches in 2003-04. Alas, they also fumbled two victories.
But last Saturday – to gales of laughter even from their own support – plucky Brechin City FC finally succeeded in dislodging the 19th Century Vale of Leven team from the record books by going one better. Or should that be one worse?
The statistics do not lie. Played 36. Won 0. Drawn 4. Lost 32. Points 4.
Mr Ferguson, who has been alert to the possibility of his club claiming the title for some weeks, had warned back in March: ‘We don’t want to be an answer in a pub quiz.’
At the time there were still seven games left in their Scottish Championship campaign in which to notch up a win. They lost them all – going down 5-1 in the final match against Queen of the South – and pub quiz infamy is now secure.
A glance at the league table for Scottish football’s second flight reveals the full horror of Brechin City’s season. They finished bottom, of course, 26 points adrift of their nearest rivals. In the ‘goals for’ column they managed a mere 20 – while the ball was picked out of the team’s net 90 times.
That left an eye-watering goal difference of -70.
Yet even more extraordinary than the cataclysmic scale of the team’s failure is the refreshing refusal by almost all concerned to be too downhearted.
‘They’re hard working,’ says manager Darren Dods of his players. ‘They’ve given it their all, all season, and they’ve been committed.’
Nor are the supporters overly judgmental.
‘We’d have a good laugh on the bus to away matches,’ said Brechin City supporters club chairman Dean Walker. ‘And, on the way back, obviously we’d have been beaten but we expected it and we still had a laugh.
‘We were really unlucky in some of the games to be honest.’
Nor, even, among the players is there too great a sense of dejection. It is not as if they do this full time – and, who knows, they may win a few games in the lower league next season.
As for the future of the manager Darren Dods, well, says chairman Mr Ferguson, it was always going to be a challenge for him this season and he will hear absolutely no talk of shoogly pegs.
‘Brechin has never been classed as a sacking club,’ he says.
INDEED, he sees potential. ‘A great test of a manager is how players respond to them and Darren [and his assistants] have done a great job maintaining morale in the dressing room through such a hard season.’
Is nobody to blame, then, for the most spectacularly unsuccessful season ever suffered by any senior team in the entire history of Scottish football?
Well, admits Mr Walker, 24, in the final few games there were one or two Brechin supporters who did seem to think that getting rid of the manager might help, but only a small minority. Most could see he was trying his best.
And it is here, perhaps, that the statistics do lie – or at least do not tell the whole truth – and a tale of emphatic failure offers one or two surprising shafts of inspiration.
For, while they may have been outclassed almost every time they ran on to the pitch, the team never stopped trying. And their supporters could see it.
Indeed, on the most optimistic analysis, not winning a single game all year has made the lads sharper and hungrier than ever for victory.
On the streets of Brechin – population 7,000 – voluble critics of the local side turn out to be few and far between.
MUCH more typical are supporters like Stewart Smith, 27, who says: ‘Never mind the results, the support has been great. Brechin is a small town and we have a small club. But it is like a family and there is a family atmosphere at the games.’
Jordan McIntosh, 32, a chef at The Stables Bar and lifelong Brechin City fan echoes his sentiments. ‘You can’t blame the boys,’ he says.
And, for all their extreme impotence in breaking down rival defences throughout the season, might he be right?
For, if ever a side were likely to outdo Vale of Leven circa 1892 in the failure stakes, it was Brechin City FC’s band of part-timers as they found themselves flung into a league way above their pay grade.
Indeed, many see the club which typically plays in front of home crowds of a few hundred, as victims of a perfect storm.
In the Scottish Championship they met the likes of Dundee United – one of the biggest clubs in the country – four times.
St Mirren, normally a staple of the Scottish Premiership, were in the same division along with burgeoning sides like Inverness Caledonian and Livingston.
Quite what Brechin’s team of plumbers, labourers and nurses who play a bit of football on the side were doing in this exalted company no one – least of all the players themselves – seemed quite sure.
The answer was they had finished fourth in the division below the year before and, despite finishing 31 points below the winners, still qualified for the play-offs to move up a league.
This, to the amazement of their own support, they succeeded in doing when they won a penalty shoot-out against Alloa.
From day one, then, they were almost certainly lambs to the slaughter – and that was before they were beset by injury problems.
‘We lost our number one striker Andy Jackson towards the start of
the season and haven’t had him back for any length of time,’ says Mr Ferguson. The tale of woe goes on... ‘We bought Kostadin Gadzhalov from Dundee. He looked excellent but got a broken nose in the first game and a dislocated shoulder in the second.’ ... And on...
Craig Storie came in from Aberdeen but hurt his knee in his second match. That’s when you say to yourself ‘this isn’t going to work’.
not to make excuses, but lady luck seldom smiled on Brechin City on the park either.
‘Hitting the post, hitting the bar – that’s been the story of our season,’ says supporters’ club chairman Mr Walker, who was at all but a handful of their matches.
even rival fans admitted on some occasions that Brechin had been unlucky not to come away with a point or more.
Mr Walker adds: ‘By halfway through the season we had been playing quite well and losing by the odd goal and you just started to think, “well, are we going to get any wins here?”’
The question echoed louder in fans’ minds the further the season progressed. Yet, even as one crushing defeat followed another, the stoicism in the stands and on the supporters’ buses was striking. The team were well out of their depth. And fans forgave them for it. ‘Up until a couple of months ago no one was calling for the manager to go at all,’ says Mr Walker.
‘Just on Saturday there a few guys started to shout towards him but only a few. I can understand where they’re coming from with having no wins and only four points all season, but let’s see what happens next season and we’ll judge it then. You’ve got to remember they’re part-time players training twice a week up against full-time players training every day. To be honest you could usually see that their players and style of play were far superior to ours.’
The gulf in talent was rarely more apparent than in last Saturday’s match against Queen of the South. By the 74th minute the Dumfries team were 5-0 up.
YeT, 12 minutes from time, something extraordinary happened. A delightful pass to Brechin City’s Isaac Layne found him with only the keeper to beat.
He would blow it, surely. But no, coolly he flicked the ball past the advancing goalie and into the back of the net. It was his team’s first goal in 850 minutes of league football. ‘everyone in the stands just stood up and laughed at the comedy of it,’ says Mr Walker. ‘We’d finally got a goal.’
The irony, perhaps, is the most unsuccessful season in Brechin City’s – or any Scottish club’s – history also gave the town a huge financial boost. With travelling supporters for big teams like Dundee United and St Mirren arriving at Glebe Park, attendances regularly climbed into the thousands.
‘We are like a family here with only 400-500 regular supporters,’ says Jordan McIntosh.
‘When Dundee United came here there was a crowd of 3,000. That’s great for the town as the pubs and restaurants were busy.
‘My mum and I do the catering at the ground so we are usually busy on match days. This season we have sold a lot more pies, but I suppose next season it will be back to normal. We’ll be playing teams more at our level. no one is too down about this season. Look forward to the next one and we will bounce back.’
They may, despite their best efforts have become the answer in that dreaded pub quiz. But, in a sport which regards defeat with such merciless contempt that football management has become a revolving door, might there be merit in giving 42-year-old Darren Dods another chance?
He was, after all, the manager who got them into the big boys’ league in the first place.
Maybe he can do the same next year. Clean slate. All to play for. Best foot forward lads.