Friday 27th September, 2019 at 10:22am
Scottish Second Division
17th October 1998
Inverness Caledonian Thistle 3 Partick Thistle 2
This was billed as the battle of the Thistles, I guess. How did the Glasgow version get on, which is what we are mainly interested in? Well, not very well, as you can see from the score-line above. This was the home side’s first season in this league and at the end of it they finished a massive 29 points above us, which it isn’t nice to have to report. Our fortunes at the time were at a very low ebb, in fact we narrowly escaped relegation to Division Three. (Perish the thought!)
Prior to this trip we had undertaken many visits to the Highlands for pre-season friendly matches, but this was now for real, and our opponents started off as if they really meant business and would you believe it, scored after two minutes through Paul Sheerin, well remembered for his time at Aberdeen. Worse was to follow. In 28 minutes we were 2-0 down thanks to a goal by Scott McLean. That was not to our liking but two years later we would be cheering Trigger on to score in eight, yes eight, consecutive matches FOR Thistle. We thought we were in with a chance when Paul McDonald pulled one back for the Jags on the stroke of half-time.
This proved, however, to be a false dawn, as the aforementioned Scott McLean struck again after 73 minutes. We kept battling away and scored a second goal with three minutes to play through none other than Alan Archibald but it was too little, too late.
The full Thistle team was as follows:- Stevie Ross, David Kennedy, Des McKeown, Kevin Gaughan, Alan Archibald, Graham Connell, Tom Callaghan, Tommy Bryce, Alan Morgan, Robert Dunn, Paul McDonald.
Two well-known figures in the Inverness line-up were Charlie Christie and Duncan Shearer. The latter is well-known to us from his playing days at Aberdeen, while the latter is often spoken of as the father of current Celtic star, Ryan.
The accompanying programme for the chosen match carries an interesting feature titled – Results between the sides i.e. Inverness and Thistle and makes the following points- Until this season the clubs had never met in any competition. Before the merger (i.e. of Inverness Caledonian and Inverness Thistle) Caledonian met Partick Thistle twice in the Scottish Cup. In season 1912/13 the Firhill side won a Second Round match 4-1, and in season 1927-28 in a First Round tie they thrashed the Blues 9-1. No, I was not there, but I’ll take the writer’s word for it!
P.S. In the 4-1 match referred to above, one of the Thistle goals was scored by Alec Raisbeck, who gave his name to the famous Raisbeck banner which adorned the supporters’ charabanc.
Robert R.
