Today I'm going back eleven years to 2011 and the early-season Scottish Premier League (SPL) Monday night fixture between Dunfermline Athletic ("the Pars") against St Mirren ("the Buddies") played at East End Park, Dunfermline in front of 5,035 paying punters.
The Pars? Well, as with more than a few club nicknames, there is more than one theory as to how it came about. One favourite is that Dunfermline's black and white vertical striped shirts demonstrated "Par"allel lines. Another concerns the drinking prowess of the old time players who were frequently found to be "Par"alytic. Yet another is that a Parr is a young salmon although quite how this relates to the football club passes me by. My personal favourite belongs to the English workers who came up to the area from the West Country to work in the nearby armaments factories and who founded the Plymouth Argyle (Rosyth) Supporters Club with the abbreviation "PARS" to be found on their flags. Imaginative but unlikely don't you think? As for "The Buddies", I can't find anything at all that explains St Mirren's nickname but it's a nice one nevertheless eh?
The highlights video found on Youtube is a masterpiece. Described as being "full" highlights, it lasts for precisely 42 seconds and includes a plug for the SPL. To a kind of jazzy, upbeat backing track, the highlights seem to consist of a number of players missing opportunities and then holding their head in their hands. To be fair, apart from getting the tick for visiting the stadium, there is little about the featured game that lingers in my memory. It seemed as if every time I visited Scotland to take in a club game at the time, I was treated to a dour bore-fest and this one was no different. The game was the third in my personal trilogy of new Scottish grounds and ended up being the third in a trilogy of draws too with Rangers 1 Hearts 1 on the 23rd of July and Dundee United 1 Kilmarnock 1 on the 24th. Ach Scotland! Don't you just love it?
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