Firhill legend on how he felt as Caldwell left him on the bench in last game Doolan admits stolen goodbye to Thistle was ‘heartbreaking’
IT was the 76th minute. Partick Thistle were 3-0 up at Queen of the South on the final day of the regular season, safe in the knowledge that victory would confirm the club’s survival. Midfield stalwart Stuart Bannigan had just converted a penalty to all but seal the win for the Jags as manager Gary Caldwell turned to his bench with two substitutions remaining.
Kris Doolan was a substitute that day, but he would never be brought on. First Gary Harkins, then Joe Cardle was called on to see the game out as the visiting fans at Palmerston celebrated avoiding backto-back relegations.
Little did he know it, but that match would be Doolan’s final involvement in a matchday squad for Thistle. Caldwell had decided that the club talisman would be released at the end of the season after spending 10-and-a-half years at Firhill, and neglected to bring him on for one final appearance when the match was won for a fitting send-off to Thistle’s fourth-highest scorer of all time.
It is a decision that supporters, if not Doolan himself, hold against their former manager until this day. His release took him by surprise after a decade of loyal service to the club, and the 33-year-old readily admits that it was painful to hear that there was no longer a place for him at Firhill.
“I had no idea I was leaving,” Doolan said. “I didn’t find out until four or five days after the season was finished. I got a phone call to say to come in to the club.
“Looking back, it’s harsh because you’ve been there 10-and-a-half years and I didn’t realise that was going to be my last game. You want to say goodbye. There have been thousands of fans that have travelled and followed me through my full career, and then it’s kind of stolen away when you don’t get to say bye to them. It was great that the club managed to stay up on the last day but I think it was more relief for everybody that we managed to stay up.
“But looking back, I had no idea that it was coming.
If you’re prepared for these things, if you’re told the month before that it would be your last game for the club, then it allows players the chance to prepare for that and say their goodbyes properly. It was sad to realise late on that that would have been my last game but I was lucky enough that I had a testimonial at the club and thousands of people turned up to say goodbye properly.
“I was devastated. I don’t think there’s any getting away from that. When you’ve been at a club for so long, when you’ve done so much around the club, it’s heartbreaking to hear that there isn’t a place for you at the club at all. Managers make their decision, that’s what they do. They live and die by their decisions and that’s the life of a footballer. It was hard to take but there’s not much you can do about it.”
A return to Thistle – whether as a player, a coach or perhaps even as manager one day – remains a tantalising prospect for Jags fans. Doolan is hopeful that he will pitch up at Firhill once again in the future, but conceded that the uncertainty engulfing Scottish football means that long-term planning is virtually impossible at the moment.
“You always think that if you’ve got such an affinity with a football club, then at some point I would like to think that I’d done enough as a player to show loyalty to the club that it would be worth coming back to the club but nobody knows what the future will hold,” he said. “If it ever happened then it would be amazing. I’m just waiting to see, like everybody else is just now, what happens next. I do fancy stepping into coaching and management in the future.
“Partick Thistle is the world to me. I enjoyed every single day I was there and I was devastated when I was told there was nothing for me there at all. When you pour your heart and soul into a football club and into a job that you’re passionate about, then it just becomes your life. I was no different, that was me. It was my life for 10-and-ahalf years. It’s tough to see the club going through a difficult stage of its life but I’m sure the club will bounce back.”
World Athletics president Lord Coe has warned that athletics may have to be held behind closed doors when it returns.
A host of events, not least the Olympic Games, have been wiped out by the coronavirus pandemic, but the Diamond League is slated to provisionally return in mid-August after a revised calendar was announced earlier this week.
But Coe says those 11 events are all likely to be held without spectators.
“In the short term we may have to compromise on that,” Coe told insidethegames.
“We can’t be oblivious or tin-eared to what we are being told by local communities and public health authorities.
“It may well mean that. I don’t think anybody is contemplating this as the ideal long-term solution sport would wither on the vine quite quickly if that were the case.
“But that may well be a compromise we have to make in order to get the athletes back into competition, leagues finished, at least some kind of competition.”
Former Australian rugby league captain Arthur Summons has died aged
84, the country’s National Rugby League said.
Summons led the Kangaroos to five Test wins between 1962 and 1964, was capped 27 times, and went on to coach the side.
Initially a fly-half and a union player, he made 10 appearances for the Wallabies before switching codes, becoming a half back and turning out for the Wests Magpies in 1960.
He was inducted into the NRL Hall of Fame and his image adorns the league’s Australian league’s famous trophy alongside St George star Norm Provan.
Australian Rugby League chairman Peter V’landys said: “Arthur epitomised everything that rugby league stands for - he was a talented player, a fierce competitor, a wonderful character and extremely popular with everyone.”