Friday 8th September, 2017 at 9:00am
The long journey home from Dingwall can be quite a pleasant experience or else nothing short of pure torture, depending upon the outcome of the match. On this occasions everything in the garden was lovely, as Thistle had given a good performance and thoroughly deserved the three points.
Things were beginning to take shape and although we could finish no better than 5th, some of the building blocks were in place and we won the league by a country mile the following season.
The team in the featured match was as follows: Kevin Budinauckas, Brian Martin, Des McKeown, Danny Lennon, Dave Rogers, Alan Archibald, Russell Huggon, Albert Craig, Robert Dunn, Martin Hardie, Derek McWilliams, Martin Hardie, who could generally be relied upon for a goal or two, opened the scoring after 27 minutes and scored again 17 minutes from the end. Sanwiched between those two strikes came a goal from Derek McWilliams just after half-time, so Thistle were 3-0 up and very much in the driving seat, not too bothered by a consolation goal from Brian Irvine, 8 minutes from full-time.
Football can throw up some strange coincidences. Earlier in the season Kevin Budinauckas was ordered off at the same venue, Victoria Park, and Albert Craig had to take over the goalkeeping duties. Remarkably, in this match Kevin was injured midway through the first-half and had to leave the field for treatment, which fortunately didn’t last long, but who had to replace him? – yes, step forward Albert Craig. Speaking of coincidences – think back to the recent match at Livingston and that awful penalty shoot-out. No doubt a lot of our own fans thought of the Ramsdens Cup Final – same venue, same goal, same miserable outcome – and they say history never repeats itself! Well, now we know differently.
In the current featured match there were one or two familiar names – Ian Maxwell, who of course, had no Thistle connection at that time, was a No 4 for Ross County and also in the home line up were George Shaw and Paul Kinnaird. There was also a Bone amongst the substitutes, no not our Jimmy, but a relation of his by the name of Alex. There is also a feature inside the programme congratulating County Assistant Manager Gordon Chisholm on reaching the ripe old age of 40. Oh dear, I have now given away his age – sorry Gordon.
Two names with whom you may not be so familiar were Russell Huggon and Dave Rogers, on loan from Hibernian and Ayr United respectively.
Well, that’s it for now. All the best
Robert R
