Crouched to the elements like North Sea trawlermen hauling in nets, they tottered down Firhill Road. Some held umbrellas and at any moment it seemed the wind might propel them into the air, a flock of Mary Poppinses in yellow and red. The big coats were out, the gloves were on. The sky was the colour of a washhouse sponge, the floodlights had been beaming since lunchtime and roof tiles clanked in the bluster.
Still, though, the programme seller stood defiant. Still people queued for lotto tickets and still street corner vendors jangled change in money belts, their flags flapping lustily behind them, a Maryhill version of the Last Night of the Proms. While all across the city sensible non-believers cowered indoors and argued about the central heating, football’s unflinching heart beat on. The match is where supporters have to be and such weather is merely a reason to tighten the scarf knot.
When the match starts on a grotty afternoon such as this, there is a slight smugness to those who shelter beneath stadium roofs. For once, supporters are not jealous of footballers. Here, all 22 of them were sodden not long after the opening whistle. A further terrace hallmark of dismal matchdays manifested too — fans boasting of even worse fixtures survived, of Pittodrie snowstorms and Cappielow drownings. A man behind me swore blind he’d once had to swim to the pie hatch at Montrose. Then a dozen or so Thistle fans aged no more than 10 raised their scarves and rather sweetly sang that someone or other should “stick their fucking” something or other “up their arse”. School assemblies have obviously come a long away from rounds of Kum Ba Yah and Oil in My Lamp.
Down on the thick turf, Thistle plunged forwards from the start. Stenhousemuir, in black shirts with orange arms that brought to mind a troupe of scuttling Dyno-Rod engineers, seemed shocked by their opponents’ vigour. After seven minutes, from his own half Jags centre-half Daniel O’Reilly thrust a curving ball towards their goal. Stenny’s Leyton Grant turned and watched it bounce as if admiring a squirrel in the back garden and Tony Watt butted in. The attacker — low socks surely absorbing water like high-end kitchen roll — pushed the ball onwards. It then sprung off the retreating Grant and greeted the feet of Euan Henderson who jabbed home. A soggy brand of delight bubbled across the ground; elation is difficult when your trousers are damp. Across from me, a man of pensionable age thrust a clenched fist upwards and slapped his other hand on his bicep, Esperanto for “Get it up ye!” It was not the smattering of Stenhousemuir followers in the main stand he gesticulated towards, but the clouds.
Every few minutes, the rain seemed to increase in density as if God was testing a new control unit. Soon, it swarmed into a fizz and watching was like staring at the static on an old television (the nights used to fly by in our house…). The ball began to misbehave, trailing behind players like a stubborn toddler. The wind grew angrily, awoken from sleep. Twice in a minute it stole the ball from Thistle feet, a ghostly pickpocket. Perhaps that same poltergeist made them miss chance upon chance until finally, with 25 minutes gone, Seb Drozd jived clunkily into the box and crossed for Henderson to volley high into the cage. Two-nil and “We are top of the league” a hymn joined by all denominations.
Thistle’s domination was absolute. Up front, Watt, Henderson and Drozd cantered through the raindrops with ease as if they were wearing different shoes to everyone else. Team-mate Ethan Ingram, the right-back, also adapted well, embarking on a superb and surprising solo run with the sudden assurance of a school sports day dad discovering aptitude for the egg and spoon race. Stenhousemuir were not a team; they were matter, form, sludgy entities. Finally, they won a corner but piloted it straight out of play. “You’re shite and you know you are” sang the primary school ultras. Then forward Euan O’Reilly slipped and handled the ball while lying in a puddle, a deep-sea diver grasping for pearls. “Can you hear the Stenny sing?” sang the kids, “No, no/Can you hear the Stenny sing, I can’t hear a fucking thing…” An incongruous waft of weed floated across the John Lambie Stand, threatening to nullify Storm Boelo before it could truly prosper. It had nothing to do with them, I should say.
Half-time lurched near to the relief of all, not least the ballboys who sat around the pitch with their heads bowed, so many cathedral gargoyles in tracksuits. In the corner, a young woman in catering uniform heaved a huge box of pies through the storm. Outside Preston North End’s Deepdale is a fountain statue of Tom Finney conjuring magic in the rain. Firhill now had its own deity worthy of a plinth.
The only half-time entertainment was a dance performance from the rain, now smothering the floodlights and hovering like smog around an industrial chimney. When the game restarted, the ball’s movement was further constricted. It rolled friskily in fits and starts, a toy with low batteries. Thistle coped and, somehow, prospered. With 56 drenched minutes elapsed, the ball slopped its way into the penalty area and towards Drozd. He organised his body into a shooting shape but instead slipped calamitously, a Home Alone burglar on ice. Amazingly, the forward let the ball pass beneath him, stood and pushed it to Henderson who speared in for 3-0 and his hat-trick. Rarely has a goal possessed such deft comic timing. On this evidence, Drozd could control the ball on a log flume.
Improbably, the sky began to weep even more profusely. All over the pitch, bath tubs appeared. What had been at the start a match became an endurance battle and a slog, with slapstick never far away. When play could be chiselled, three or four men would suddenly lose their footing and flop to the soaked ground like auditioning clowns. Kicking cleanly was impossible, dribbling sarcastic. The ball could only be nudged, urged, persuaded to move. It was a tetchy sloth. When Stenhousemuir defenders — for the Jags continued to dominate even in the game’s marshland era — tried to clear, it remained still as if dead. Each running step spattered water into the air. Slide tackles — intentional or not — caused tidal waves and their executors slithered into another postcode. In quieter moments, the players’ sploshing feet could be heard. It sounded like the kind of thing they don’t let you see at a zoo.
Then, eerily, the rain stopped. A bitter wind massed and spat a flurry of autumn leaves into the ground, nature’s ticker tape reminding us that we had skipped a season and arrived directly into winter. On swirled the leaves as the variety act continued bumbling on the stricken pitch. In some main stand broom cupboard a groundsman sobbed. Outdoors, players and fans and everyone else willed the referee to stifle the match. All of us felt like we were being held in a detention for something we hadn’t done.
Finally, the whistle blew and minutes later in the artificial heat of the traffic jam, Thistle men and women — and their potty-mouthed boys and girls — dreamed of promotion in sunnier times.
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