When David met Goliath
We have friends coming to visit us for the first time this weekend. Hannie Rouweler and Joris Iven are international poets and artists from Goor in Holland. I e-mailed them to ask them to imagine their little home town of Goor (pronounced yes, as if you did not know…..Hoor.) was in the lower Dutch footie league and this year had an amazing run in the Cup. Now they faced the mighty AJAX in the final. Just how would the Goor streets look on Sunday? Well, I suggested, just like Dumfries will be when you arrive. In her instant reply a tear was in her eye. Not only could Hannie imagine the situation, her late father played for Goor and lived for the year of a good cup run.
The omens were good. Queens beat Aberdeen to reach the final and Aberdeen beat Rangers to ensure Celtic won the Championship. Rangers were thought to be a jaded, tired team, mesmerised by the loss of two recent titles. No wonder the Queens were held in esteem for their amazing achievement. But they said that when they reached the semi-final! To reach the final, the second Dumfries & Galloway Cup finalist in successive years – a moment''s silence now for Gretna FC gone into liquidization – is indeed a remarkable co-incidence. Oh and the vague bible reference to Queens? Matthew Chapter 12 at verse 42 “On Judgement day the Queen of Sheba will stand up and accuse the people of the day…. The linesmen?...the Ref?....hang on. I think we are claiming too much to equate The Queen of Sheba with the Queen of the South.
Queen of the South was formed in 1919 out of the Dumfries Kings Own Scottish Borderers and Arrol-Johnston motor car club. In 1945 Billy Houston joined the team at outside right and scored one of the four goals to beat Celtic that season. Oh yes, David has defeated Goliath before. Incidentally Billy was chosen to play for Scotland against the Auld Enemy (England)and beat them 3-1 that year. Billy’s performance attracted much interest. He left in 1952 to go to Rangers, well actually, Berwick Rangers.
Fast forward to the Scottish Cup Final 2008. After all, there is not too much to celebrate over the discarded seasons. Dumfries-sur-Nith has been decked in blue and white streamers for weeks now and over the last four days they have been arriving from the States and the Antipodes to reclaim their lowland heritage. The bank holiday expatriates have made Dumfries their resort and Hampden their day out. They want to be there on the great day. It dawns. 16,000 tickets sold for the game. Crivens, that’s almost half the town going to Hampden Park, Glasgow!
Queens retain their blue strip while Rangers don, I mean sport, an insipid white rig-out with purple bruised sleeve lets. It’s first blood to the Queens. But within five minutes of the starting whistle, the Queens are more bruised and blooded as they go two men down and off for treatment. To talk about a game of two halves I can be forgiven on this occasion. Boyd punctured parity on 33 minutes and Beasley wobbled the ball weakly into the net to give a Rangers 2 Queen of the South 0 half time score.
In the second half, we threw caution to the wind. Eight minutes later we were drawing 2-2 after Tosh scored, knowing little of the final contact with the ball but he celebrated manfully. Thomson’s header almost burst the Rangers net and left the Ibrox side decidedly off-balance. But that exertion to equalise was as much as Queens could afford and the inevitable final goal came from the head of Boyd. A good match nevertheless was acknowledged by all fair minded supporters.
Strangely Ibrox will have no open bus celebration with the Cup, as their support is universal. But Queens will. An afternoon around the streets of Dumfries in sunshine, the Doonhamers toon, will be held to great acclaim. The town proudly recognised their fine achievements this season.
I collected Hannie and Joris from Prestwick Airport. They asked about the score. “We lost 3-2” I said. “Ah” said Joris, “A bridge too far.”
Miller Caldwell
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