The weekend before last I took Two of Two back to Scotland to attend the Meadowbank Thistle reunion. Father of Two, Sucks Unwitting Seven Year-Old Into Dark Underbelly of Scottish Lower Division Football.
A brief history: Meadowbank Thistle came into the Scottish League in season 1973-74. They played in Meadowbank Stadium in Edinburgh to general disinterest for twenty years. In the early 90's they were sold down the river for commercial interests, moved town and became Livingston. Not even Livingston Thistle, just Livingston. The people who moved them didn't want anything to do with Meadowbank, and the team was dead.
The reunion was to celebrate twenty years since we won the Scottish Second Division Championship, and involved a small exhibition, a game between ex-players and a dinner afterwards. Those in attendance were divided into three categories. Players, the players' families, and supporters. Of those three categories, the latter was probably the smallest. That's how it usually was, and that was what was good about it. We supported a small team that played in a big stadium, usually outnumbered by visiting fans. When you told someone that you supported Meadowbank, they checked you for the lobotomy scar, or said, 'Ah, you're the one...'
The guy who sold them out in the end, Bill Hunter, argued that the club wasn't financially viable, and that they had to move to survive. He never seemed to understand, or didn't care, that by moving to another town and away from our incongruous stadium, the club died anyway. Maybe his business interest didn't die, but the team did. Livingston went to the Premier League, they qualified for Europe, and he probably felt justified. But that wasn't what Meadowbank was about. It was a small group of players and fans and officials with no money and a rented park in a council stadium, that won a division and came within a few games of getting promoted to the Premier League the following year. Success on the proverbial footballing shoestring, due to wonderful coaching and a good team. Livingston? Just another small team in another small town, where most of the football supporters get on a bus to Ibrox or Parkhead every week. Meadowbank were different from everyone else, that's why all the other teams thought we were weird, and that's what made it special.
After the exhibition game, Two of Two and I went onto the pitch and had a penalty shoot-out in one of the goals. This was a big moment for me. For twelve years I'd gone to watch this team with my dad and brother, and now here I was playing with my seven year-old on the green, green grass of home. Two of Two, on the other hand, didn't seem so excited or moved. He was just having a penalty shoot-out with some bloke.
One bleak and cold day in 1985, the three of us were sitting at half-time at one of those dire games that football is all about. Scottish second division, Meadowbank 0 Raith Rovers 0. No goals, no football, no excitement. The cold chilled you to the bone, and you sat there thinking, what in the name of God am I doing here? We could be at home, eating fish and chips and watching someone get murdered in Taggart. I turned to my dad and said, 'Come on, let's go home, this is stupid.' He didn't go along with the idea, not being one for that kind of random act of spontaneity. And so I snuggled down into my boots, cursing and muttering and trying to convince myself that I would never come back, and we stayed to watch the second half.
The game finished Meadowbank 6 Raith Rovers 0. A glorious half of innumerable chances at both ends, made all the more glorious by the fact that we took six of ours and they didn't take any. That is why football, if maybe not quite so much as test match cricket, is a great sporting metaphor for life. Long stretches of tedium, and then suddenly something just comes shooting unexpectedly out of nowhere and grabs you by the knackers.
Maybe one day Meadowbank Thistle will be back, but perhaps none of us would really want it to be a new club, with young players and a whole new strip sponsored by that year's Indian restaurant. It would really have to be like Michael Palin's Barnstoneworth United. The same old guys out on the field, as they were last week, with the manager standing on the sidelines in his duffle coat. A cold bleak day in Edinburgh, a muddy park, a hundred supporters surrounded by a couple of thousand opposition fans, with our guys making all the noise as we put the more celebrated opposition to the sword.
