The Slow Match Report: Kelty 1 Peterhead 1
On Valentine’s Day, broken Hearts were mended after old-fashioned romantic Ross Cunningham came off the bench to woo his admirers with a late leveller
Finally, the concrete roof had cracked and it was now easier to believe in spring. “Blue sky at last”, said a pensioner as he bailed from Coral bookmakers’ on Cocklaw Street, although he may have been referring to a change in his gambling fortunes. A man carrying eight cans of Tennent’s, some bacon and a packet of morning rolls walked by grinning, a simple but effective Saturday mapped out ahead of him.
This lifting of the miasma meant that from the top of Kelty, other local villages and towns — vanished and mythical for weeks on end like so many Atlantises with Costcutters — could now be seen below. They lingered among fields and hills in camouflage shades, a sleepy valley which once rumbled from beneath and spat coal into the world.
Central Fife’s diamonds were not always black. Some gleamed. From up here, down to the west is Townhill, fount of Billy Liddell the Liverpool titan. Cast eyes inwards to Hill o’ Beath and see Slim Jim Baxter dribbling between the bings. With his range, he might just have found the head of Alex Venters, prince of Cowdenbeath then Ibrox. Glancing two miles east, Lochgelly’s ghosts could play a bit too, and they fled south to spread the good word with their feet: ‘Smiler’ Wilson, a league winner with Newcastle United; Bob McKinlay, who played more times for Nottingham Forest than anyone else has; Ian Porterfield, who walloped in at Wembley to win the FA Cup for Sunderland. All of them and so many more, ascending from the black to illuminate the green.
How Kelty Hearts could have done with one of their own homespun marvels, the great Raith Rovers marksman Willie Penman, now. Averaging less than a goal per game this season, they began the day chained to the foot of League One, their foremost chance of survival the continuing traumas of Hamilton Academical. It was Valentine’s Day and lonely Hearts had a microwave meal for one in the freezer and an old DVD of When Harry Met Sally primed.
Still, love of a football club is rigid and so a few hundred villagers trudged to New Central Park, a perky ground of maroon trimmings and cheery huts. They were joined by 70 or so guests who had travelled the 150 miles from Peterhead. This season, their team has neither threatened the top reaches of the division nor been irked by its trapdoor; it’s been a shoulder shrug of a campaign. At least their shirt pattern peppered character upon this bland impasse, mirroring as it did that of a mid-1990s Argos shower curtain.
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In the minutes before the teams ambled onto the plastic, AC/DC’s Thunderstruck fumed from the Tannoy. Its ferocity seemed to box at cold ears, an aural bullying. “Thank Christ for that!” hollered a Peterhead voice when finally the record capitulated. As if trying to run from its echoes, Kelty began the game sharply. Their endeavours pillaged a corner. Arran Pettifer, effervescent early on, jogged over keenly to take it, a Labrador with a new stick. His kick, though, curved through the air and out of play again at the far side of the goal. It was like watching someone walking into a room and forgetting what they were there for.
The game veered between head tennis and slick passing, a bipolar encounter. A gaggle of northern teenagers banged on the hoardings and bawled for the “Blue Toon”. Their team heaved forwards. Cammy Smith tried a shot that was more of a question than an answer. In goal for Kelty, Kyle Gorlay wafted his save in a harmful direction, a traffic cop gone rogue. A man deftly carrying four pies walked in front of me and the next thing I saw was Peterhead’s Craig McGuffie celebrating. 0-1, and weary resignation drifting in cartoon thought bubbles above a hundred and more home heads. All those living a relegation season know their death sentence already; that is half the agony.
Seeking reprisals, Kelty laboured forwards and many a Peterhead man chased in response. The sound it made on New Central Park’s 4G surface was that of a muffled stampede; a dozen horses wearing slippers sent berserk by a storm. Then for a solid 20 minutes nothing happened. The ball seemed suddenly afflicted by a form of agoraphobia that left it unable to leave the middle third of the pitch. Blue Toon centre-half Josh Kerr accomplished a neat backwards header and in the away end it was greeted with the kind of over-inflated glee usually reserved for parents whose toddler has successfully used a potty. Half-time felt like the end of a 23-hour coach trip spent in the company of Louis Walsh.
Once more unto the breach went Kelty, hauling themselves towards goal. Pettifer skedaddled in a temptress of a ball that whizzed across the area like a fat dad on a log flume. No-one read the signals and it bombed into touch. When they did muster goal efforts, their shots were slower than clouds. At the other end, home left-back Brody Paterson volleyed against his own post. “Is he trying to get on You’ve Been Framed, or something?” asked a man near me. “£250. More than he probably gets here.” It was a sobering thought.
The clock’s icy hands shivered onwards and a niggling kind of crabbiness overcame a number of players. Kelty skipper Craig Clay and his midfield counterpart Andy McCarthy tussled, going at each other like frustrated office workers charging at a vending machine to dislodge a hanging packet of Walker’s Max crisps.
With half an hour remaining, Kelty introduced substitute Ross Cunningham. Returned from a spell at Stirling Albion, the forward was welcomed in a manner as rapturous as was possible by 300 people who could no longer feel their hands. On an afternoon of huffing, puffing and meat-slap headers, Cunningham looked like a footballer. It was in his hips, in the whipped manner of his stride and in his measured demeanour, which was that of a paramedic at an emergency. He lifted terrace and turf, as good players can.
Quickly, Kelty hit the bar, albeit the ball moved in a tottering kind of motion that resembled a moth rebounding from a lightbulb. Then, Cunningham’s moment. Tatty play flung the ball towards his chest, 25 yards from goal to the right of the ‘D’. With his second touch he nutmegged Kerr and then, swapping his foot for a fine detail paintbrush, bowed a shot with the outside of his right boot. Curving on a rainbow, the ball greeted the top corner with a Valentine’s kiss, and supporters embraced as if home at last from war.
Sometimes this game of ours produces enchantment from the insipid, drags art from a quagmire. Those grey clouds had resolutely disappeared.