Saturday 16th March 2024 ko 20:00

East of Scotland League- Premier Division

SAUCHIE JUNIORS 3 (D Smith 7 30p 44)

Kavanagh sent off 39 (violent conduct)

HILL OF BEATH HAWTHORN 2 (Watt 46 Tosh 83)

Att 447

Entry £10

Programme £2

We left the Perth area with mixed feelings. On one hand we’d visited 3 lovely clubs and taken advantage of the weather holding while we were visiting grounds with little or no cover, on the other the rain was hammering down putting the evening’s game at Sauchie in doubt, and by extension at Whitburn on Sunday morning.

Worse we had an hour or so to think about it but at least we had the advantage knowing that if a pitch inspection at Beechwood Park was failed, we’d know quickly, the club were in contact with us at GroundhopUK. It was genuinely a case of no news being good news, so by the time we parked up and walked to the turnstiles I was reasonably confident!

I was aware that in all honesty we weren’t going to the the place at its best. Sauchie is adjacent to Alloa, and don’t treat the two are contiguous, but the area sits with the Ochill Hills as a backdrop but darkness and a deluge meant we’d see none of it which was a shame. That said, there was plenty to see….

Other than being mainstays of the East Region Junior scene for many years, Sauchie Juniors are most famous for nurturing the youth careers of the Hansen brothers. John went on to play his entire professional career at Partick Thistle while Alan after starting at Partick went on to play 434 times for Liverpool, winning amongst others 8 English Championships, and 3 European cups. Arguably he was as successful as a pundit, despite his epithet, “You can’t win anything with kids!”

It was clear that the pitch was always going to be marginal. When Craig had collected Sauchie’s programmes on Friday morning the pitch was waterlogged, but was told that it does drain extremely well. Perhaps the referee knew this, and perhaps he also understood what the match meant. Either way, we were fortunate to get the game played and the stand, evocative of the edifice at Linlithgow Rose, was packed- I was fortunate to get a seat.

I’d make two observations on the game. Firstly, the Saturday evening game does tend to be the most high profile game of the day. The fact that not every club has floodlights in the EoSL does mean we tend to see bigger games at this time, and this one was certainly no different. I’d imagine groundhoppers made up roughly 50% of the crowd here, often on these events it’s a lot more!

Secondly, games on difficult pitches do seem to produce classics. Examples would be Pencader on the Ceredigion Hop or St Dennis on the Peninsula League’s event. Here two clubs and a set of matchday officials wanted to both play and entertain and for that I’m sure we are all grateful. It was the cliche of a game of two halves, always committed if not violent at times. Smith collected a quite superb hat trick, we saw Kavanagh sent off, which looked like a case of mistaken indentity (water in the linesman’s eyes?) and in the end Hill of Beath were a little unfortunate to not have earned a point.

I loved it, and so did plenty of others. I hope the pitch wasn’t ruined in the process.