It rained hard, almost spitefully, as if the gods had it in for us. Palmerston Park last Wednesday night was no place for anyone, except perhaps those with a demented fixation for football. Hot tea seared between teeth, while cold pies sagged wet thr
ough tissues. Awful.
Hop aboard the Brechin bandwagon, someone had suggested. Brechin, whose tearaway lead at the top of the Second Division had those in the First bracing themselves for next season. Brechin, whose last 10 games had permitted just one defeat. Yet the self-same Brechin were about to be well and truly gubbed, as they say in football.
The script was to go most decidedly wrong. But the idea needed investigating. Glebe Park had spawned another troupe of fixers: engineers, cleaners, marketing men; students (two of them, one doing accountancy, the other business studies); and most of all, a father and son partnership, a rich symbiosis, one in the dug-out, the other wearing the No. 9 shirt. This was a side that had to be seen.
All it required was a telephone call.
"Hello, can I speak to John Ritchie, manager of Brechin City?"
"This is John."
"Would it be possible to join the team for their trip to Dumfries for the Queen of the South match?"
"Certainly, we'll pick you up. Look out for the Bean's coach."
"Ah, what was that, sorry?"
"The Bean's coach. You know, what you eat. It's the firm, Bean's of Brechin."
"Right ..."
The Bean's coach it was. Pick-up points half-way down the M74. This was its umpteenth stop, following those at Dundee, Fife, Edinburgh and assorted roundabouts in between. A gradual assembly of talent. This time four figures: the players Candlish, Hill and Sexy (Paul Sexton to those who don't know him so intimately), plus a bedraggled journalist.
It was, appropriately, a coach full of goodness. Footballing goodness.
The top of the Second Division table confirmed as much. Up at the back, cards were dealt, jokes were fired, and everyone individually was held up for ridicule. Meanwhile at the front, a manager, sombre and pensive.
John Ritchie is a man of steely determination. He can also reel off the manager's stock-in-trade phrases without so much as a scratch at a sideburn: his team "took nothing for granted"; there's "no room here for complacency"; success has been down to the players, "and all credit to them"; nor has the board been obdurate, "and all credit to them, too".
He's also bought wisely, which accounted for his team's supremacy. Apart from changing almost completely the personnel he inherited three years ago, two names in particular have been astute acquisitions: his son Paul, bought from Dundee for £12,000; and of course Sexy, fleet of foot and wonderful in name, whose football odyssey hitherto had landed him at Stenhousemuir.
"But we're a no-gimmicks team," says Ritchie snr. "Last season we were in a strong position round about this time, but then fell away and eventually missed promotion. We've learned from that. No gimmicks, no complacency."
Palmerston's floodlights finally loomed through the drizzle, A frisson of excitement shot through Bean's coach. Cards were shuffled away. Conversation became dulled. Sexy was up and getting his coat on hurriedly. It was another big night for Brechin's players. Paid a basic £30 a week, it would be double that if both points were won.
Into the dressing-room, and an impassioned, discursive team talk. Ritchie, wearing the long-established mantle of a manager hollering at his players, once again confirmed the similarities between his role and a preacher's: a general introduction, a slight warming to the theme, a sudden outpouring of emotion, and finally fists banging everywhere. We need this, we need that, we need the other! Short, sharp jabs before an attentive audience. Ralgex hung in the air like smog.
But it was to be a disaster. After three minutes, Queens were awarded a penalty. "A bloody disgrace," shouted Cardo Gallaccio, Brechin's aged vice-chairman. Dave Lawrie, Brechin's business-studying goalkeeper, was adjudged to have brought down a forward. "But he had the ball clean in his hands," Cardo continued to lament. And he was right. It was a perverse decision. A bloody disgrace.
Cardo's face is almost concave, like that of a boxer who has taken too much punishment. His Italian lineage gives him an aura of mystique. Having survived in Scotland on ice cream parlours and restaurants, his billiard hall in Brechin is populated by the local 'gunslingers'.
"A den of iniquity," one local describes it. But there is nothing iniquitous in this man. He is a good man, a great man. Only this night, as he looked on, his 77-year-old face was grizzled with pain.
Brechin were never to come back. At half-time, Ritchie nearly blew the roof off. "I warned you about the conditions, so what's all this fancy football," he roared. "You play this, you play that, then you get it up the field. The last third. Woomph!" That final bit lost us, but the volume was frightening. Players looked on askance. I cowered in the corner of the dressing-room.
Queens went on to score two more. Yet how different it might have been. Just before the interval, Sexy went on a brilliant run, rounding three players before setting up Lees. He dithered. "God, he's wanting it gift-wrapped!" The voice might have been Cardo, but it was probably someone else. We all felt flat, heads sunk in hands.
Defeat, and irony as well. Both Sexy and Ritchie jnr, arguably Brechin's two best players, were to depart the scene before the referee's final whistle. Substitutions were essential on such a heavy night as this, but their being called inside summed up the visitors' predicament. Brechin's fuse was extinguished.
Back on the motorway, recriminations were mild. It's behind us now, claimed the manager. Saturday is another day. It's how we react that counts. The league leadership was intact. The First Division still beckoned. All yet to play for.
The M74 was dark and ghostly. The rain, still incessant, seemed unwilling to let up in its misery. Again, four of us piled out, dumped at midnight and hurdling the central reservation. Where were our cars? What a night, what a trip...
