tinto

Thank you all for posting such a good selection of photo's. For me they bring back so many great memories. I give a few which I hope will not bore you too much. Springfield Park; The day we went there to see Strathclyde v Benburb it absolutely chucked it down and most of a very sparse crowd were huddled around the block at the top end of the ground. The pitch was black ash. It was a spacious ground and Strathies in their time had a reasonable support.Bad day for the Bens followers at the time as the Strathies won 2-0. When I passed it a few weeks back I noticed it was being re-developed with boardings around it. Moore Park: Always a great atmosphere when the Ants and the Bens played. The Bens followers were down the Edmonston Drive side. The Ants the other side and behind the goal they were shooting in trying to put the Bens goalie off. Usually they succeeded as I cannot remember the Bens ever winning there !. When I was knee high to a grasshopper we had a scrap with some Ants kids. The Ants officials came rushing round and moved us up to the corner of the ground near the railway to carry on with the scrap. When we finished we looked round and everyone had gone home. The Ants won the match but we won the scrap I think. The 50 pitches: Lived near the 50 pitches. On the 6 adult pitches to the right of the picture they positioned the goals directly behind one another. Hence every season a couple of goalies got knocked out when the bladder ball hit them on the back of the head from the pitch behind. The only water was a small fountain on the way back to the changing rooms where the players would queue up to try and clean up the gravel out of their arms and legs. Sir Alex Ferguson said that a memory he had of the 50 pitches was when they got back to the changing rooms after an evening match. It was so dark that he finished up going home with someone else's underpants on. That tiny little block on the bottom right of the picture was the changing rooms. Tinto