Scotland » Scottish League

SFL Kickoff: It’s the most wonderful time of the year

Ian Rose — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 02:29:04 +0000

Ladies and Gentlemen, the wait is over. League football is back across Scotland, with every team in the SFL kicking off Saturday. Scratch that – every team has fixtures. Livingston, the saddening trainwreck of the league, has decided not to show up to their Third Division match with East Stirling as part of their appeal of their double demotion. A deeply flawed plan that will only further hurt a very hurting club, and one I’m going to very soon stop filling these pages with news on – there are other stories in Scottish football. Here are the fixtures for the first weekend of the 2009-10 SFL season, all of them Saturday 15:00 kickoffs, as football should be. Enjoy.

First Division
Ayr v Partick Thistle
Dundee v Morton
Dunfermline v Inverness CT
Queen of South v Raith
Ross County v Airdrie Utd

Second Division
Cowdenbeath v Arbroath
Dumbarton v Alloa
East Fife v Brechin
Peterhead v Clyde
Stirling v Stenhousemuir

Third Division
Berwick v Annan Athletic
East Stirling v Livingston (or not)
Montrose v Elgin
Queens Park v Forfar
Stranraer v Albion

Livingston double relegation shuffles the SFL

Ian Rose — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 06:34:03 +0000

It just gets worse and worse for Livingston Football Club. On the edge of administration for months, the cash-strapped club can’t pay its staff, its players, or its rent. The rest of the First Division was understandably worried about Livvie keeping its commitment to play all of its league fixtures, and now, the SFL has double-relegated Livingston from the First Division to the Third. The team that finished third in the SPL in 2002 is now in the fourth tier of Scottish football.

As sad a day as this is for Livingston and the fans, the leagues must go on, and Livvie’s heartbreak means that there are two openings for promotion. Cowdenbeath will rise from the Third Division to the Second, and Livingston’s First Division spot will be taken by Airdrie United, who will get a chance to renew their old rivalry with Partick Thistle.

It’s never good to see a side punished for matters that have nothing to do with football. Relegation should be the cost of losing on the pitch, and I hate to see the players and fans pay such a high price for problems that should really be shouldered by the front office. That said, as a Caley Thistle fan, I too had doubts about going to their ground when there were still questions about safety certificates and whether they could pay their bills. I wish them all the luck in the world in surviving, because that’s the mode they’re in now – survival. It’s all too common of a story in Scottish football lately, that of a team that rises to the highest levels quickly, only to fall just as fast. It happened to Gretna, and I sincerely hope that Livingston can find a way to get their feet sooner rather than later.

Clyde are the anti-Galacticos

Ian Rose — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 16:40:29 +0000

It’s been a tough year for fans of many cash-strapped struggling Scottish clubs. But while Livvie fans are still waiting to find out if they have a team, Clyde FC has turned the corner, and done it in what I consider to be a very respectable way. They were forced to release 13 players just to avoid administration, a move that would cut the heart out of any squad, but today they have signed seven new names, all from open trials held this past week. They will be a side of young, relatively untested names, but considering their financial situation, I am impressed with what they’re trying to do.

The most impressive of the seven new Clyde boys is Ally Park, from Hibernian’s U-19 team that won basically everything at their level last season. He’ll be joined by defender Scott Gair (19) from St. Mirren and Conn Boyle from Ayr (18), as well as some slightly more experienced players from around the lower divisions.

Good on the Bully Wee, a strangely appropriate nickname for Clyde today. They are small, and their resources are limited. They can’t go out and buy who they want. But they are strong, and even in the very tough economic times (tougher for a lower-division Scottish side than for most), they will survive. Good luck to them in their climb back into the First Division. If they are able to secure promotion this season, it will be a hell of a story, with a team built essentially from scratch, from open try-outs. Stay tuned.

All your first-day scores

Ian Rose — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 16:20:26 +0000

Here are all of the scores from the first day in the SPL and SFL:

Scottish Premier League
Falkirk 0 – 1 Rangers
Aberdeen 0 – 2 Inverness C.T. (first ever win for Caley over Aberdeen!)
Hearts 3 – 2 Motherwell (Brace for Clarkson)
Kilmarnock 1 – 0 Hibernian

First Division
Airdrie 0 – 1 Partick Thistle
Dunfermline 2 – 1 Queen of the South
Dundee 1 – 0 Clyde
Greenock Morton 2 – 2 St. Johnstone
Livingston 2 – 0 Ross County

Second Division
Alloa Athletic 0 – 2 Ayr United
Peterhead 1 – 1 Arbroath
Raith Rovers 2 – 0 Queen’s Park
Stirling Albion 1 – 1 East Fife
Stranraer 1 – 2 Brechin City

Third Division
Annan Athletic 1 – 1 Stenhousemuir
East Stirling 1 – 0 Albion Rovers
Elgin City 1 – 1 Dumbarton
Forfar Athletic 0 – 1 Cowdenbeath
Montrose 1 – 1 Berwick

Special congratulations to Annan Athletic for getting a point in their first league match since replacing Gretna in the SFL Third Division. Great first day (especially for a Caley fan). Tomorrow, Celtic open their season against St. Mirren, and new SPL boys Hamilton Accies kick off against Dundee United Monday. Here’s to a great season!

A late welcome to Annan Athletic

Ian Rose — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 17:44:37 +0000

Just a short note today, welcoming Annan Athletic to the Scottish Football League. The Galabankies add one more to the list of Scottish sides with fantastic nicknames, and might take a tiny bit of the sting off of the loss of Gretna, since they are local to the same area. Well done to Annan, and good luck in the Third Division. Most importantly, keep an eye on those books — it wasn’t play on the field that killed Gretna.

The Galabankies have already had their first match of importance as a league side, meeting Clyde in the first round of the Scottish Challenge Cup. Clyde took that one 2-0, and so Annan fans won’t have that particular cup to distract them from the league this year. The league cup still awaits, but just finishing respectably in the Third Division will be the top goal.

Ross County clinch 2nd Division

Ian Rose — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 17:51:24 +0000

I hope that some of you appreciate the historical importance of this post. Mark your calendars, folks. An Inverness Caledonian Thistle fan is about to praise Ross County. Though the two have been bitter rivals since the old days, when County and both of Caley Thistle’s original teams were in the Highland League, I like to think I give credit where credit is due, so here goes.

The title races in Scotland are winding down. It’s been a few weeks since East Fife wrapped up the Third Division, and now the Second Division, the third tier of Scottish football, is also decided. Ross County FC, the pride of Dingwall, clinched the Second Division title this weekend with a win over relegation-bound Berwick Rangers.

This season has been a strange one for County. In a move reminiscent of Vlad Romanov’s sacking of George Burley, chairman Roy McGregor dumped his manager, Dick Campbell, when the Staggies were top of the league table, and replaced him with a relatively young and untested man, Derek Adams. When he made the change, McGregor promised fans “style and panache” from his team, and in the months since, they have delivered, consolidating their lead with a run of eleven wins in twelve matches. In every one of those matches, you could pretty much tell you were looking at a team that had progressed beyond the rest of the Second Division field, and was ready to try their luck with the likes of Dundee and St. Johnstone.

Congratulations to Ross County. For us Caley fans, who have had some admittedly rubbish football to watch lately from our own boys, the promotion of our rivals will bring mixed reactions. For my own part, I would love to see the rivalry played out in more than just preseason friendlies, and when they are ready, I hope they get a chance to join Caley Thistle in the top flight. More importantly, I hope things don’t go the other way. After the way we’ve played in February and March, we’ll have to improve just to ensure it’s not us joining them in the second tier.

Hail the Fifers, 3rd division champs

Ian Rose — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:54:28 +0000

It might not be making the cover of any major football magazines anytime soon, but the fact is that this past weekend, the first league title of the year in Britain, probably in Europe, was decided. East Fife wrapped up their first league championship in 60 years on Saturday with their 3-0 win over East Stirling and taking home the Scottish Third Division (actually the fourth tier) title. The last time the Fifers raised a major trophy, it was the 1954 league cup. It’s been a long wait for the fans in Leven, and they deserve it. Congratulations to the all-Scottish Fifers.

The other end of that fixture was just as interesting. East Stirling has been at the bottom of the Third Division five years in a row, and thus, at the bottom of the entire SFL system. Scotland lacks an organized pyramid system for promotion and relegation beyond the top four levels, but under new rules, such a consistently underachieving team has to reapply for league membership, and it looks like they’ll be out at the end of this season unless major changes happen. That leaves the door open for an applicant from the Highland League or one of the other regional leagues to throw in their hat. For my own self, I’d like to see Cove Rangers from the Highland League get a shot (even though my personal loyalties lie with Nairn County in the HL). Cove has done well in cup competitions, and has a reasonably large fan base, for a local side. Wouldn’t be too bad to see another side from Aberdeen in the league either. We’ll see how it pans out. With Gretna falling apart, there may actually be two open spots in the league.

Stephen Kenny sacked by Dunfermline

Ian Rose — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 07:14:10 +0000

It had to happen eventually, and some, myself included, would say it should have happened before today. Stephen Kenny was sacked today as manager of Dunfermline Athletic. Kenny’s year at the reins at Dunfermline has been a strange one, with the unusual mix of relegation and European qualification, made possible by the now-defunct SFA policy gifting a UEFA Cup spot to the runner up of the Scottish Cup (if the winner qualified through the league). From the roughest possible league start, in which Pars failed to score for eight straight matches, Kenny was never on solid ground at Dunfermline. His one positive feature seemed to be his ability to guide the team through cup campaigns (reaching the finals of both the Scottish Cup and Challenge Cup), but even those brave efforts came up short, as both finals were lost. His league record was atrocious, racking up only eight wins in 38 league matches. Despite this, he has seemed to be living a charmed life at Dunfermline, and has been backed over and over again by chairman John Yorkston. He came to Scotland from Derry City, where he gained reknown by beating Goteborg in last year’s UEFA Cup, the biggest win in recent Irish football history. That campaign also saw him face down Gretna, who Derry City demolished 5-1 on aggregate. Ironically, when he left Derry to go to Dunfermline, and ultimately, to fall into the second tier of Scottish football, his team would be replaced in the SPL by none other than Gretna.

Anyway, Kenny has the potential to be a good manager, and I hope he finds his place either back in Ireland or somewhere else. But Dunfermline had to do this. Favored to spring back up to the SPL, they now sit second-to-last in the First Division table, with a second straight relegation looking much more likely to happen. The question now is whether interim manager Jim McIntyre, or his replacement, can put anything right on the heavily listing ship that is Dunfermline Athletic. There’s a long road ahead, and to be realistic, they are playing the rest of this season with survival in mind, and shouldn’t look much past that.