Friday 29th November, 2019 at 8:00am
Scottish First Division
18th August 2012
Dunfermline Athletic 0 Partick Thistle 1
Over the years we have suffered some pretty awful results at East End Park, but the featured match produced something very much more encouraging. The margin of victory was very slender, but we triumphed in the end, thanks to a Stevie Lawless strike after 26 minutes.
The team, resplendent in a mauve strip, lined up as follows:- Scott Fox (clad in orange), Stephen O’Donnell, Stuart Bannigan, Paul Paton, Aaron Muirhead, Alan Archibald, Stevie Lawless, Sean Welsh, Kris Doolan, Hugh Murray, Chris Erskine. On the substitutes’ bench were Ryan Scully, Christie Elliott, James Craigen, Aaron Sinclair and Conrad Balatoni (five in those days, not seven).
Familiar figures in the Dunfermline team were Paul Gallacher, Andy Dowie, Jordan McMillan and Joe Cardle.
Dunfermline, as one would expect piled on the pressure in the second half, but Thistle saw the game out fairly comfortably.
Within the programme there is an article by Dan McLindon, who explains how he moved to St. Johnstone and then to Thistle in a swap deal for Neil Duffy. Dan wrote about how he enjoyed his six seasons at Firhill, playing alongside some great lads like Davie McParland, Jim Fleming, Tommy Gibb, Harold Davis and George Niven, names to conjure with indeed.
The Thistle manager at the time of the highlighted match was Jackie McNamara. Most people with Thistle at heart think he did a pretty great job, but left us at what was perceived as a bad time with promotion in our sights. However, in came Archie, who steadied the ship and enabled us to sail into calmer waters.
The rest is, of course, history.
For the statistically minded, the full league record up to 2012 shows that of 78 matches contested between the Pars and Thistle, Dunfermline winning 33 compared to Thistle 23 with 22 draws, so let’s go about improving those figures. They are a little out of date now but we still have some leeway to make up.
Robert R.
