kilmarnock fc – Plain Or Pan

To enjoy the feast, you must first experience the famine.

That’s me misquoting Chick Young, BBC Sport Scotland’s football reporter, a man much-maligned but one who seemingly has a soft spot for the wee teams and community clubs who win little in the way of silverware and league titles, but who continually go to-to-toe with the commercial nous of the big two Glasgow clubs.

In something of a role reversal, it was my team Kilmarnock who were considered the big team, the big scalp, this season. Relegated a year ago in front of 500 socially-distanced supporters, we’ve huffed and puffed in a Championship where we were expected to take the game to our under-funded and under-supported opponents each week and sweep them aside in a display of breathless, free-flowing, attacking football. I’d say each Saturday, but, being the big team, many of our games were televised on the Friday night; games in which we regularly self-imploded by contriving to lose an early goal and then frustratingly fail to break down the opposition. Twenty minutes away to our bitter rivals Ayr aside, where we were three up before anyone’s pie had gone cold, breathless, free-flowing, attacking football was rather thin on the ground.

And yet, we found ourselves top of the league and by Friday night we would wrap up the title if we could only beat Arbroath, the tiny part-time team who had continually out-fought, out-thought, out-played and out-pointed every other team in the league.

Managed by the ‘charismatic’ and ever-quotable old-school manager Dick Campbell, Arbroath were everyone’s second-favourite team. Just as Scotland go head-to-head with Ukraine soon in a match that no-one outside of Scotland wants to see Scotland win, Killie found themselves in the position of being the panto villains, the party spoilers, the most-hated team in the country. If you weren’t wearing blue and white stripes, you were wishing and hoping that wee Arbroath could pull off the (not really a) shock required. In our three previous encounters, Kilmarnock had failed to score a single goal and had they scored one more than us on Friday night, they’d have leapfrogged us into first place with one game remaining. Everyone; the BBC commentators, Rangers fans, neutrals, all wanted an Arbroath fairytale win.

Arbroath did their bit, aided by a poor referee who saw nothing wrong in a bad tackle on the edge of the Arbroath box, and, as the Kilmarnock players remonstrated, an Arbroath player ran the length of the pitch, squared the ball sideways and a cool tap in saw the perfect conclusion to their counter-attacking breakaway. Killie 0 – 1 Arbroath.

The game was turgid, Killie dragged into playing long-ball football and frustrated by a team who slowed the game down at every opportunity, wasted time and employed every level of shithousery known in the name of anti-football football. Effective, though. Outside of East Ayrshire, the country celebrated and dreamed. By half time, the fairytale was within touching distance, but a fired-up Killie would sweep aside any notions of upset in a fly-past and one-sided second half. We left it late. Very late.

Wee Burke came off the bench. Off-form since being injured early in the season, this was rumoured to be the veteran’s last game. If so, he kept his best performance for a night when 10,000 home fans would be chanting his name in delight at the drive, determination and dribbling skills he had in his last twenty minutes locker. He sent over dangerous corner after dangerous corner and, after Shaw had seen his powerful downwards header sclaffed off the line,Taylor followed it up and slammed it into the roof of the net. The 80th minute equaliser was met with an explosion of noise heard as far away as deepest, southest Ayrshire. One goal wasn’t enough to win the league though. Continual Killie pressure prevailed. The Arbroath goalie was playing the game of his life, clearly injured yet turning shots round the post, over the bar, like Dino Zoff in his prime. Real Roy of the Rovers stuff. We battered and battered his goal. A winner would surely come.

It did. Late in the 89th minute, a beautifully-weighted long ball down the right saw Lafferty cooly control and pass it in one sweeping movement. Shaw, our number 9 controlled on the edge of the box and, as the clock turned to 90 minutes, laid it off for the on-rushing Alston, an attacking midfielder who for most of the season has come in for an unfair amount of stick. Alston shifted the ball smartly from left foot to right and, without breaking stride, stroked it home. Bottom right corner, the keeper static. Alston’s top was off and windmilling wildly above his head before the ball had even nestled properly in the net. The entire team, the subs behind the goal, even Hemming our goalie, displaying a Bolt-like sprinting ability to run the length of our hated plastic pitch, piled on Alston the hero. Watching back on the telly, I spotted a former pupil, a ball boy for the night, right in the middle of the celebrations. Scenes, as they say. A real, scripted, Hollywood ending, even if, for most of the country, the wrong team won in the end. Grim fairytale avoided.

Killie last won the league in 1965. Since then, they’ve been relegated to the lowest league, worked their way back up through the ’80s – never winning a title, always going up as runners-up – and, until last season, had spent 28 years in the top flight. It’s not often then that Killie fans see their team win a league. Any league. It’s great to be back where we belong.

Otis Clay – The Only Way Is Up

Many (most?) folk assume that The Only Way Is Up was written for Yazz. Not true. Matt Black and Jonathan More – Coldcut to you and I – had a microscopic knowledge of rare and under-appreciated soul and recognised the potential in Otis Clay’s 1980 little-known original. Adding snatches of samples and a busy, train-like rhythm to a glossy, hi-nrg house production, they sat back in their swivly producers’ chairs and watched as it rattled and thumped its way to the top of the charts.

The original bears all the hallmarks of classic soul; chicken scratch guitar, sweeping disco strings and stabbing brass. If you didn’t know better, you could be be convinced it’s a street-smart cover of a ubiquitous ’80s pop classic, when in fact Clay’s version is the original. You knew that already though.

My team went to the top of the league last night. No mean feat in a league dominated by the two Glasgow giants and their financial clout, the Edinburgh clubs with their large swells of season ticket holders and Old Firm-splitters Aberdeen, for too many times the bridesmaids but never the bride.

The achievement is a culmination in consistency. The record shows that in the calendar year, from January until now, Kilmarnock, a team who plays in a less than half empty stadium every other week, a team with less season ticket holders than most other teams in the league, a team who pays less to their top earners than an average bench warmer at Tranmere Rovers might earn in a week, has somewhat incredulously gathered more points than their competitors and is now the best team in the country. Today we sit at the top of the pile, looking towards a genuine top of the table box office clash at Celtic Park on Saturday.

If you’d suggested this a year ago, you’d have been laughed out the room. By then, our previous manager, Lee McCulloch, had fallen on his wobbly sword with the team rooted to the bottom of the league we’re now winning. Relegation, even at that stage in the season, was looking very likely. The appointment of the ‘correct’ manager was absolutely key to our team’s survival, not only in the top flight but also to our very existence. Enter Steve Clarke. A one season wonder at West Brom, he’d taken them to their highest-ever Premiership position before starting the following season poorly and paying the ultimate price. With family ties to the club (brother Paul was a stalwart in defence at Kilmarnock in the 80s), Clarke was enticed to take over the reins from McCulloch.

The difference between the two managers is there for all to see. The team is currently on a short but impressive run of 4 (or is it 5 now?) clean sheets in a row. Of the starting 11 in these games, 9 of the players played under our previous manager. Clearly, our success is down to Mr Clarke. At the club’s open day last season, I found myself face to face with his predecesor.

“Hi Mr McCulloch. What d’you think – top 6 this year?”

“Whit?!? Hahahaha!” (nudges one of the other coaches standing next to him. “Peter! Get this guy!” (looking back to me) “Tell him what you just asked me…..top 6! TOP 6!!! Hahahahahaha. Aye, right!”

Now. Even if you’re the manager and you think there’s zero chance of achieving the frankly average position of ‘Top 6’, you don’t go around laughing at the suggestion, let alone laughing your season ticket holders out of the room, especially with the season yet to kick off. The opening to a season, when a ball has yet to be kicked in earnest and all possibilities are endless is the best of times for a fan, especially for a supporter of one of the wee clubs. “This might be our year,” and all that. Yet here was the team manager (the team manager!) pissing on those dreams before our first game. McCulloch should’ve been saying, “Top 6? Nah, mate, we’ll be top 3 this season. Just wait and see.” Instead, our season was over before it had begun. Or, it was until the board saw sense, found some loose change down the back of the sofa and sent the diddy packing. I wonder what he’s thinking now.

The last 14 months have been the best of times for Kilmarnock supporters. Even in defeat, we competed. There was a thrilling midweek game against Hibs where we applauded our team off the pitch, despite shipping three goals. This proved to be the turning point in our fortunes. There was an incredible run of games this time last year where we dispensed of The Rangers, Celtic and Dundee in three of the best matches I’ve ever seen. One nil down to Rangers, Boyd scored a quick one-two and turned the final score in our favour. Youssouf Mulumbu, a player who’d shone in Clarke’s West Brom side slotted the winner in the Celtic game and inevitably earned himself a move to the champions in the process. Best of all was the Dundee game, a match we were winning then losing and, thanks to an anti-footballing Dundee team and some shoddy refereeing, found ourselves a man down as well as a goal down. As the game wore on, the character of the ten-man team came to the fore and, backed by a noisy, partisan and aggrieved home support, an equaliser was dug out before a thrilling winner was scored at the death. As the games, weeks and months rolled by, the team kept on winning from unwinnable positions, picked up points in the most difficult of away fixtures and gave us our best season in many a year. It was fantastic.

And it continues to be so. We’re top of the league. The words ‘Leicester City’ have started popping up in relation to our achievements and the potential this brings, whispered at first but now just that wee bit louder. No team out-with the ugly sisters has won the top league in Scotland since Paul Hardcastle’s ni-ni-ni-19 was top of the charts when, in May 1985, Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen reigned supreme. Of course, at least one of the two slighted Glasgow giants went straight out the following season and spent far more than they could afford on players in a vulgar display of money over merit in a bid to wrestle the title back from the daring Dandy Dons, an arrogant and self-entitled manoeuvre which we in Scotland are sick of by now.

Much of Kilmarnock’s fate in the coming months depends on how they survive the January transfer window. A winning team features winning players and it wouldn’t be the first time one of the big boys from just up the M77 has chapped our door waving offensively woeful figures under the noses of impressionable young players and their agents. More worryingly, a winning manager such as Clarke will have made chairmen up and down the country sit up and take notice. Should any of their charges have a wobble and their coathook becomes a bit shooglier than normal, Steve Clarke must be one of the names in the frame. So we’re dreamers, yes, yet we’re also realists. It’s a nail-biting time and it can all change in an instant. The two teams immediately behind us have games in hand and it’s quite possible we’ll have slipped to ‘only 3^rd’ by the close of the weekend, by which time, if you’re only just getting around to reading this article, this blog will read like virtual chip paper.

Here’s Dizzy Dizzy by Can, a track as thrilling, unpredictable and meandering as one of those Greg Stewart runs that leaves baffled defenders toe-tied in his wake.

Can – Dizzy Dizzy