Southampton author sings praises of the Fort and Highland League
Fort William FC features is a new book that examines some of the UK's less glamorous football grounds and the teams that grace their pitches.
Southampton-based writer Mat Guy is the author of Barcelona to Buckie Thistle: Exploring Football's Roads Less Travelled.
He told the Lochaber Times this week: 'I have just completed my book for Edinburgh-based Luath Press, in which I explore the Highland League, as well as Europe's minnow football nations.
'My year travelling through the Highland League will live with me forever, and I hope that is made apparent in the pages of the book, which was released last week (November 15). Despite living in Southampton, I venture north five times, covering six games, featuring 10 different teams. I also make it to 14 of the 18 (as it was then) Highland League grounds – taking in the communities that populate this proud league. At the very least, my travels have converted me into a fan of the Highland League and the region it spans. I am in the midst of organising more trips north as I write.'
In the extract on Fort William FC, Guy writes: 'The thick wall of firs that encircles the ground looks like it was planted in the early 1970s when the club moved here.
'Too tall now to be topped out without the aid of a significant cherry-picker, they screen the club from the rest of the world, save for a small break and a sliver of a view rarely beaten by any other sporting venue the length and breadth of the country.
'At the foot of this break, a Narnia-esque entrance beckons. Between the branches, a narrow gate, a little hut, and then the Nevis mountain range rearing up behind the far goal: a silent Holt End, The Kop, Gallowgate End.
'It takes a moment to sink in. Thankfully, there isn’t a queue. A mountain range is an impressive natural 12th man.
'This awe-inspiring view must have drawn an error or two from a visiting keeper, not through intimidation like its constructed brethren of Birmingham, Liverpool and Newcastle, but through a simple distraction and wonder as clouds ripple and dapple, changing complexion and contour like a geological chameleon.
'Cut adrift to the right, that concrete stand beckons. Dislocated from the dimensions of the pitch when the white lines were rotated ninety degrees a few years ago to try and aid drainage (Claggan Park often falls foul of waterlogging), it now stands a forlorn figure.
'Too full of memories to simply tear down, this smaller version of the one at the shinty club, and no less loved in its time, now slips into dereliction.
'Fenced off to prevent the failing roof from falling in on similar lovers of sporting architecture, it and the ghosts of crowds gone by crane from afar to view modern-day matches.
'Where it was once centre stage, distance and unkempt weeds and shrubs now obscure its view. Saplings and bushes replacing supporters on the crumbling terracing, commemorating favourite spots, regular haunts among friends.
'With failing rafters once reverberating with the roar of that famous cup game against Stirling Albion, an inaugural Highland League win over Clachnacuddin, it now cuts a sorry sight, although at least it remains, of sorts, a memorial to the past, looking on jealously at the two small pre-fab stands either side of the reconstituted halfway line, beginning to come to life as game night begins.'