Today I'm going back just three years to 2019 and the first of a trilogy of games for me north of the border. The featured programme today comes from the SPFL (Scottish Professional Football League) Premiership fixture between St Mirren (the Buddies or the Saints) and Hamilton Academical (the Accies).
But let's pay a short visit to pedants corner shall we? First of all, the top flight in Scotland is actually called "the Premiership". However that's not the case in England. In England we have the Premier League. It did used to be called the Premiership until 2007 but has been the Premier League ever since and it's amazing how many people get this wrong. In England, the term "Premiership" refers to top flight egg-chasing (Rugby Union). Got it now? Secondly, Hamilton's football club are called Hamilton Academical and never Academicals. Academical originated as the school team of Hamilton Academy and there's only one of those so there's no need to make their name plural okay? I'm pretty sure now that the next time I see some of you you'll be asking me about my trip to Scotland to see Hamilton Academicals in the Scottish Premier League. Don't wind me up!
I have an ambition to visit the full set of Scottish League grounds. There are actually only 41 in total (Firhill is currently home to both Partick Thistle and Queen's Park) but I've only managed to visit 18 so far for a match (plus Hampden Park which is no longer a League ground since former owner Queen's Park are now sharing Firhill until their Lesser Hampden home has completed it's overhaul). I tend not to do football trips up to Scotland unless I can tick off two or more grounds in view of the cost and distances involved. I was thinking I could easily do three per season and have them all done in eight years but issues such as the global pandemic have put a spanner into those particular works. Perhaps I need a fortnight's holiday up there sometime next season to really get my teeth into my missing grounds.
The featured game, a relegation six pointer and the penultimate game of the season for both teams, was played on a Monday night with the two sides embroiled in a fight to avoid the Premiership's relegation Play-Offs. The highlights video accompanying my blog is worth a look with the audible gasps of the club's co-commentator before he goes bonkers as the St Mirren goals go in. There's also a charming cameo of a little boy giving a two fingered salute to all things Hamilton. Wonderful! The crowd of 6,421 had to wait until fifteen minutes to go before the game's first goal which was scored by youth team product and programme cover star Kyle McAllister. The result wasn't yet safe however and Buddies fans had to wait until the final minute of added time before they could relax following their second goal which came from Kyle Magennis.
Incidentally, if you look carefully at that programme cover you may notice that there's a paisley pattern in the background shown in red and grey. Why? St Mirren play their football in Paisley, that's why!
Had Hamilton won the match they would have been safe but St Mirren's win brought them to within a single point of Hamilton going into the last game of the season the following Saturday. In the end, both sides won their final matches, St Mirren 3-2 at Dundee whilst Hamilton secured the three points that they needed to finish safe with their 2-0 home win against St Johnstone. As a result, St Mirren found themselves in the dreaded Play-Offs and had to wait for eliminators between Ayr United and Inverness Caledonian Thistle and then Thistle and Dundee United before they knew who their Play-Off Final opponents would be. Over the two legged Final, St Mirren ended up drawing 1-1 after extra time with United with the game going to a penalty shootout. The Buddies won the shootout 2-0 to retain their place in the Scottish Premiership for another year.
CRB Match No. 2309
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