24 posts tagged “dumbarton f.c.”
Manager Jim Chapman has been busy in the transfer market. Gordon Lennon went from Albion Rovers to Partick Thistle in the summer. He was unable to capture a first team place and was loaned to Stenhousemuir. Good to see Dumbarton signing a player of this calibre and lets hope its the first of many. Lennon reminds me of someone................
Good luck to Dumbarton today as for the second year in a row we face Premier opposition (St. Mirren) on their own ground in the fourth round. The Sons have so far, despite their otherwise dire season, dismissed both Forfar Athletic and Berwick Rangers from the competition. Although third bottom of the SPL, the Saints have a couple of games in hand over the team above them (Kilmarnock) and have not been doing too badly. In their last home game they defeated Hibernian 2-1. I'm not going to make the game today so I have consoled myself by having a look at times past.
The Sons have appeared in five Scottish Cup Finals but have won the trophy only once (in 1883!) and all their final appearances were before 1900! They were the Dundee United of the nineteenth century it would seem. One can only dream of a time when three of the biggest clubs in Scotland were situated within three miles of Dumbarton but this was most definitely the case. Renton, a village next to Dumbarton were at one time World Football Club Champions and many of the Renton players and officials were involved in the founding of Celtic.The team the Sons defeated to win the cup in 1883 were Vale of Leven (from Alexandria). The result was 2-1 after a replay the first game having been drawn 2-2 in front of 15,000 fans at Hampden."Rover" in the Lennox Herald had commented that some of the Sons players had been below par in the first game due to having "drunk too much whisky" (the timing of the said imbibing was unspecified) This fascinating passage about the victory celebrations comes from the club history by Jim McAllister (paraphrased slightly)
" Back in the town of Dumbarton some 2,000 people had collected near the Post Office with many others milling around Dumbarton Cross. Rumours were spreading but not believed. Then a public telegram with the final result was read out in the High Street. The level of excitement was high and hats were thrown in the air and loud cheering resounded throughout the burgh. A huge number of people welcomed the team back at Dumbarton station at 9:30 pm as brass bands formed a parade and played "See the conquering hero comes". The team then were taken to a heroes' reception at the Elephant hotel."
I imagine if the Sons win today these scenes may well be repeated!
Footnote: The celebrations were somewhat marred on the Monday following the victory when some of the Dumbarton team and their friends were returning from Loch Lomond in two wagonettes. As they passed through the Vale, emboldened it would seem from excessive refreshment, they made plain to the locals how proud they were of their victory on the Saturday. The Valeites took exception to this effrontery and unseemly affray followed including the pouring of two pails of slaughterhouse blood over the wagonettes!
The Vale - Providing a warm welcome for visitors since 1883!
Sons new manager Jim Chapman takes charge of the team for the first time today in the game against his former managerial charges, Albion Rovers. Jim played for the club briefly in the early 90's before injury cut his playing career short. His no-nonsense playing style has followed him in to management and he had a serious difference of opinion with his former employers which resulted in his dismissal.
I'm stuck in the middle of an irony because Rovers director Pat Rolink is my guest at the game today. When I told Pat that Chappie was to be our new boss he was typically magnanamous and said that he hoped it would work out for Jim and Dumbarton.
I hear that Jim turned down a coaching role at Inverness Caley Thistle to be his own man as full-time boss at Dumbarton. Here's hoping it works out for him.As we sit one off the bottom of the whole Scottish League, the only way is up!!
Good Luck Jim!
Sons pulled a performance out of the hat to defeat East Stirlingshire 3-1 last night. Several sub-thoughts arise from that. I hope on the basis of one result that the board don't consider caretaker manager Jim Clark for the job. Clark it was who shifted last night's game from Boxing Day. Result? The Sons stadium witnessed its lowest ever crowd (303). Even with the club in such dire straits as they are, on Boxing Day there'd have been at least another couple of hundred on the gate. Many supporters who live in other parts of the land and abroad have their only chance of seeing the team when they're home at Christmas. Clark had a right go on the club website and in the press at supporters who didn't like the switch. It's a case of up yours to the supporters who have been turning up week after week to waatch the dire rubbish being served up. It is quite beyond me how Fergus Tiernan was playing SPL football with Aberdeen until relatively recently. He has been rank rotten for us.
Footnote: It seems as if foirmer manager Gerry McCabe is to take the club to a tribunal for unfair dismal rubbish served up under his stewardship dismissal. As Clark and Hillcoat were his assistants I hope this doesn't mean that because of financial and contractual implications they get the job. We'd be as well giving McCabe the job back as that.
I haven't written much about the Sons recently. That is mainly because I just can't be arsed, so poor are they. It is clear that the caretaker management team are not a long term proposition. I am old enough to remember the Sons being a pretty decent top league side but now we sit one off the very bottom of the SFL.
Our best showing in the last ten years was when Brian Fairley and his assistant Allan McGonigal took the club to within one point of promotion to division one. They left the following season for who knows what reason but the strong rumour is that the guy who was "Director of Football" at the time signed a player (Eddie Annand) without the management team's knowledge.
After a brief spell in charge of Forfar, Fairley chucked it and McGonigal took over at Sauchie Juniors. He did pretty well there and attracted the notice of top junior side Camelon. Now in charge at Camelon with former Son Martin Mooney as his assistant, they have won eight games on the bounce. They're well ahead of Scottish Cup sensations Linlithgow Rose in the league and they've beaten them recently.
I hear Allan has appplied for the Sons job but that he doesn't have the required coaching badges. I still think he's a good option and I also think that there are ways round the coaching badge thing. He's in the Dave Baikie/Allan Maitland mould and if we don't take a chance on him another senior club will very soon.
In the foyer of the quaintly named Strathclyde Homes Stadium in Dumbarton, there hangs a framed typewritten letter. It is dated 1972 and is from a supporter of the club to the secretary at that time John Hosie. It congratulates Dumbarton on their return to the top division after a gap of 50 years and the writer recalls his childhood supporting The Sons and on occasion being "lifted over" the turnstile (a common practice in times past so that kids didn't have to pay). The letter was from one of the best known and prolific writers of the twentieth century, A.J.Cronin. Born about three miles from where I sit, here is Cronin's story. (Thanks to Wikipedia)
Archibald Joseph Cronin (July 19, 1896–January 6, 1981) was a Scottish novelist, dramatist, and non-fiction writer who was one of the most renowned storytellers of the twentieth century. His best-known works are The Citadel and The Keys of the Kingdom, both of which were made into Oscar-nominated films. The Dr. Finlay character originated in Cronin's 1935 novella, Country Doctor, which led to further stories that were collected in Adventures of a Black Bag. These provided the basis for the long-running BBC television and radio series entitled Dr. Finlay's Casebook.
Born in Cardross, Dunbartonshire (now in Argyll and Bute) and raised in Yorkhill, Glasgow, Cronin was the only child of a Protestant mother, Jessie Montgomerie Cronin, and a Catholic father, Patrick Cronin, and would later write of young men from similarly mixed backgrounds. Cronin was a precocious student at Dumbarton Academy and won many writing competitions. Due to his exceptional abilities, he was awarded a scholarship to study medicine at the University of Glasgow. It was there that he met his future wife, Agnes Mary Gibson, who was also a medical student, and a Protestant. Cronin graduated with highest honours in 1919, being awarded an M.B. and a Ch.B.. He went on to earn additional degrees, including a Diploma in Public Health (1923) and his MRCP (1924). In 1925, he was awarded an M.D. from the University of Glasgow for his dissertation, entitled "The History of Aneurysm."
Cronin served as a Royal Navy surgeon during World War I, like the medical hero of his novel Shannon's Way. After the war, he trained in various hospitals before taking up his first practice in Tredegar, a mining town in South Wales. In 1924, he was appointed Medical Inspector of Mines for Great Britain. He drew on his experiences researching the occupational hazards of the mining industry for his later novels The Citadel, set in Wales, and The Stars Look Down, set in Northumberland. He subsequently moved to London and had a thriving practice on Harley Street. While on holiday in the Scottish Highlands, Cronin wrote his lengthy first novel, Hatter's Castle, in the brief span of three months. It was quickly accepted by Gollancz, the first and only publishing house to which the manuscript had been submitted. The novel was a great success, launching his career as a prolific author, and he never returned to practicing medicine.
Many of Cronin's books were bestsellers which were translated into numerous languages. His strengths included his narrative skill and his powers of acute observation and graphic description. Although noted for its deep social conscience, his work is filled with colorful characters and witty dialogue. Some of his stories draw on his medical career, dramatically mixing realism, romance, and social criticism. In addition to stressing the need for tolerance, Cronin's works examine moral conflicts between the individual and society as his idealistic heroes pursue justice for the common man. The Citadel incited the establishment of the National Health Service in the United Kingdom by exposing the inequity and incompetence of medical practice at the time. Not only were the author's pioneering ideas instrumental in the creation of the NHS, but the popularity of his novels played a substantial role in the Labour Party's landslide 1945 victory.[1]
In the late 1930s Cronin moved to the United States with his wife and three sons, living in Greenwich, Connecticut before eventually settling in New Canaan. He also had homes on the French Riviera and in Bermuda, and he summered in Blue Hill, Maine. From an early age, he was an avid golfer, and he loved fishing as well. Ultimately, he returned to Europe, residing in Lucerne and Montreux, Switzerland for the last twenty-five years of his life and continuing to write into his eighties. He died on January 6, 1981, in Montreux.
Maybe you didn't notice but Dumbarton (or 'managerless Dumbarton' as the press have taken to calling
It turns out John Brown for whatever reason is not going to take the job at Dumbarton. I remember Derek Whiteford being appointed with, I think Jim Fleeting as assistant in the 80's and Whiteford then leaving to boss Airdrie after a few days without having taken charge of a competitive game. This eclipses that because John Brown it would appear was Sons boss for roughly 20 hours!
Edit: I've just checked the timeline and it is officially 14 hours and fifteen minutes!
The club statement is HERE
Former Hamilton, Dundee and Rangers defender (and at one time midfielder) John "Bomber" Brown. This is quite a gamble for John, taking over a club which is sitting third bottom of the Scottish League. However he was boss of the Rangers youth side when they played their games at Strathclyde Homes Stadium and he will be familiar with the set-up. I'm sure he will realise that Dumbarton should be at a higher level.
I have been "through the wall" at SHS while he was giving a half time talk to his Rangers charges. Let me tell you his attitude as a manager was the same uncompromising determined one he had as a player.
Of course it's a gamble for Sons too because despite his experience in the game John has never been a club manager.
I wish him the very best of luck in his new job.
It came as a surprise to no one when the Dumbarton F.C. board took the decision yesterday to end Gerry McCabes' tenure as manager. Gerry was probably one of the best players ever in this country not to have played for a top club. It is inexplicable that he didn't play at a higher level. In management he was best known as Bobby Williamson's assistant at Kilmarnock, Hibs and Plymouth Argyll. I feel he was a bit unfortunate last season. Sons were going pretty well and were there or thereabouts until March when a fixture logjam caught up with them. I think it was this that scuppered any chance of promotion. This season has been mediocre and the team has had little apparent confidence. I have said already that I just don't think he ever got to grips with managing a smaller club.
In my dealings with him I always found Gerry to be civil and helpful although he did apparently challenge a friend of mine to a 'square go' at the match at Elgin a few weeks ago! Good luck to him for the future.
So now the post is to be advertised. Sons moved to their new stradium in late 2000 and since then the managerial hot seat has had five occupants. It is the proverbial merry-go-round/revolving door. You'd think no-one will be interested in such a position with a club which languishes third bottom of the pile in Scotland. The paradox is of course that there will be plenty of interest. I just hope the next guy is for the long term.
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