Today I'm going back three years to 2018 and Aberdeen's home game in the Scottish Premiership against St Johnstone played at Pittodrie in front of 13,304 spectators.
I may have mentioned that I'm a bit of a Groundhopper and this trip to Aberdeen enabled me to tick off Aberdeen's famous old Pittodrie home before they up sticks and relocate to some soulless identikit stadium located on the edge of town. In fact the future of Pittodrie is uncertain. Plans to move out of the current stadium are on hold but I suspect that it's just a matter of time before this famous old ground bites the dust. Travel from Warwick to Aberdeen would be a monumental drive (it's over 450 miles!) so I decided to take one of those low cost flights from Birmingham Airport and a little over an hour after take off I was catching the airport shuttle bus into the heart of Aberdeen. Aberdeen is known as the Granite City and pretty well all the major buildings in the heart of the city are built with the grey granite stone. It doesn't make for warm colours or vibrancy but if you want permanence then Aberdeen's your city! Oh and there's that old song too: "The Northern Lights of Old Aberdeen", a traditional Scottish song written by Mary Webb for a home sick Aberdonian girl who she worked with. Never mentioned by old Aberdonians is the fact that Mary Webb was born in Leamington Spa and had never been to Aberdeen! I didn't see the Northern Lights on my visit either!
I spent a happy morning visiting the maritime museum, the content of which was roughly split 50/50 between the fishing and offshore oil industries. Fishing has pretty well died as far as Aberdeen is concerned but the offshore oil business generates major income for the city which is one of the most prosperous in Britain, at least while oil prices are high. The museum is well worth a visit if you've got a couple of hours to kill on a cold Aberdeen afternoon. Pittodrie is an easy walk from the city centre and I rocked up (granite reference see?) in plenty of time for their match against St Johnstone. Trivia buffs might like to know that St Johnstone are the only senior club in either England or Scotland to have the letter J in their name. Oh and you probably need to know that St Johnstone is in Perth: in the Middle Ages, Perth was colloquially known as 'St John's Toun' because the church at the centre of the parish was dedicated to St John the Baptist. The Lamb of God, the symbol associated with John the Baptist, is a part of the St Johnstone club badge but quite what the two-headed eagle (also on the badge) has to do with St John is a mystery to me at least.
In common with many of the matches that I choose to attend in Scotland, the featured game wasn't particularly riveting. Both sides had a good should for a penalty kick in a goalless first 45 minutes. Then in the 71st minute, Saints captain and former Don Joe Shaughnessy rose highest at a corner to head home. Three minutes later St Johnstone had their second courtesy of a fine chip over the keeper from the edge of the penalty area by Blair Alston. Derek McInnes, the Aberdeen manager said that his side looked tired after recent exertions against the Old Firm. However they managed to recover their energy for the remainder of the season and finished fourth in the Scottish Premiership thereby qualifying for the following season's Europa League. St Johnstone missed the cut in the league and played the final part of their season against the other five bottom six sides (Aberdeen played their final fixtures against the rest of the top six) and overall finished in seventh place with one more point than Hearts who finished in sixth place above them!
CRB Match No. 2277
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