Winter of '63

Twaddle was an enigma...sometimes looking a class above First Division level but at other times - and often in the same game - a lackadaisacal waster. A transfer fee of £60,000 in retrospect looks a good fee...but his late equaliser against Livingston in the cup replay which led to a game against Rangers and then a televised replay was worth a great deal more to the club than £60,000.

My first game of the season and it was ok...maybe the novelty factor distracted a bit from the poor standard of play. A draw was a fair result - Raith improved a bit in the second half but they certainly didn't look any better than us. My spirits sank when the team was read out - Archibald and Rowson are decent committed professionals but from what I knew about the rest, I wasn't exactly inspired...and they played as expected. Erskine might have some threat running at defenders but he and Donnelly as a strike force hardly frightens any opposition. Of the players I hadn't seen before, Fox looked a competent keeper but Boyle was woeful. At least Buchanan was lively when he came on. The Raith defender deliberately pulled Rowson back after being dispossessed - that should always be a red card, far more so than a fractionally mistimed challenge. Nothing much else to say about the game other than that I'd be more likely to go back to see some of the supposedly promising youngsters getting some first-team experience rather than watch a mixture of past-their-best old pros and guys who are barely good enough to be full-time professionals set up in a defensive formation against opposition of the same calibre.

John Flanagan is the other.

We lost 2-1 Rangers at Firhill at New Year '78 in a top of the table clash - their winner was "scored" by Gordon Smith...though the TV replay clearly showed the ball hadn't crossed the line. Unusually, Rangers benefitted from a refereeing decision there. I think the following season, we were again near the top of the League in November, but both years our form shaded in the latter part of the season - similar to '62/63. I was too young to know what a League was in '62/63 - my dad took me to my first game at Firhill that season - so I don't if there was a genuine feeling that we could win the League that year but I don't think that any Thistle fan really believed we were realistic title contenders under Bertie...though we had a very good team. Although John Lambie's record is head and shoulders above any other manager at Firhill over the last 30 years, in my view David McParland was better by a considerable distance. In 1970, the club was relegated for the first time in its history; within eighteen months, playing exciting attacking football we had won the Second Division in style, beaten Rangers & Celtic, won a major trophy with the most sensational result in Scottish Football History and the 5-1 League Cup Quarter Final win against St Johnstone and the 8-3 victory against Motherwell were as good as it will ever get at Firhill. Bertie Auld's side also won the First Division impressively at the first attempt...whereas in 1999/2000, Lambie's side could only finish fifth in the Second Division - that's worse than Dick Campbell As has been said, Lambie's main fault was his failure to bring through young talent - under McParland, no less than nine Thistle youngsters were good enough to go on to play for Scotland...under Lambie, the only youngsters who were good enough to play for Thistle were Tom Smith and Isaac English. I rest my case.

I think the very dull answer is that these players don't have separate Wikipedia entries!

I have mixed feelings about The Bertie Years. Although we were not a cavalier attacking side, I never thought we were quite as negative as we were made out to be...we just had a brilliant keeper & some outstanding defenders - Alan Rough,Jackie Campbell,Andy Anderson, Alan Hansen In Bertie's early years, Thistle were a very good side with a combination of home-grown talent (nurtured by David McParland) and some shrewd signings - Doug Somner,Dave McKinnon,John Craig,Colin McAdam. We won the First Division easily, survived comfortably for several seasons in the Premier League(10 teams, 2 relegated)and reached Cup Semi-Finals in successive years. However, latterly Bertie seemed more concerned with promoting himself as a "character" - good players were transferred and replaced by journeymen professionals and the supply of good youngsters dried up. Blackpool Jags has posted about Thistle missing out on a young Frank McDougall and my recollection is that Auld also rejected Frank McAvennie and Peter Weir after trials. All three went on to have great careers while Thistle slid towards mediocrity. Towards the end of his term, Bertie was pretty unpopular - I distinctly remember Opposition Supporters singing "If you hate Bertie Auld, clap your hands" and Thistle fans enthusiastically joining in. Bertie's Legacy? Some good times but for me Auld's time marked the change from Thistle being a genuinely well-liked top-flight club known for entertaining football and producing great young players to a near-anonymous "difficult-to-beat" lower league team, with players who hadn't made the grade with other clubs.

McDonald's position was clearly untenable...he clearly failed to realise that every decision must be given to Celtic...they must have parity with their Bigot Brothers, it's the only thing that matters in Scottish Football.

Reardons (not Rileys) is the snooker club beside Central Station - on Hope St at Argyll St. Q Club at St Georges Cross is the only other snooker club around the City Centre I know of. The Sharma Family who run it are very decent guys and they have sponsored Thistle...it's the place to go

Surely it wouldn't be too difficult to introduce a system for the SFL whereby a proportion of the gate money from away fans is paid to their club. It might encourage fans to travel to away games if they knew their own club would benefit.

I'm more concerned about the reference to plans - surely no business plans to go into administration...unless the plan was part of an asset-stripping scheme. I would have been more re-assured if he had said that there was no imminent threat of administration.

Always liked Bobby Houston as a player...and was disappointed when he was swapped for Ian Jardine A regular in a very good Thistle side that reached cup semi-finals in successive seasons seems worthy of this honour. The game against Rangers was undoubtedly the best 0-0 draw I've seen...a great match. I was around the half way line on the terracing at Hampden and a long way from the incident when Bobby's header was chalked off for offside but I remember saying to my pal at the time that I thought he'd ran past the defender. I think there was a TV dispute at the time and the game was not televised so there is no evidence on film of us being cheated.

It used to be a local joke about a player shooting from Rutherglen and scoring in Glasgow In '67 Clyde finished third in the top league. The ruling at the time was that only one team from a city could enter the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup - Rangers finished second and although Clyde tried to argue they were from Rutherglen, they never made it into Europe...or at least not yet

I've never heard before about this disgraceful action by Thistle - I am so appalled I too hope we go bust. Actually, the last few weeks of paranoia has reminded me of why I dislike Celtic Football Club and the attitudes of so many of their supporters...and that's from someone who has reservations about compulsory Poppy wearing.

Add Donald Park to that list...and Rough in goals, the Hansens, Jackie Campbell and Andy Anderson in defence, that really was a good squad. Doug Somner was an outstanding striker - physically powerful but with skill and a good finisher, only a lack of pace stopped him being absolutely top class. I was appalled when he was inexplicably transferred to St Mirren where he finished top scorer in the Premier League if I remember rightly. The transfer fee was supposedly spent on ground improvements at Firhill - it paid for the segregation fence in the Shed I always thought that marked the turning point from Thistle being a genuine Top League Club.

Just on the far reaches of my memory but I'd reckon this is from about '67. Top Row - Jackie Campbell, George Muir, No idea about the Keeper,Billy Cunningham, Donnie MacKinnon, Tommy Gibb. Front Row - Johnnie Flannagan, Lord David McParland, Arthur Duncan, Andy Roxburgh, A N Other.

I'm not inclined to defend the SFL - though even less to sympathise with Dundee facing relegation - but was this penalty not based on a point for each of the 25 games remaining for the rest of the season? If that's the case and Thistle do go into administration, let's hope it's just before the last game of the season

I've heard Craigan on Radio 5 and Talksport recently...he was also a regular on Radio Scotland's Open All Mikes when he was out injured for a lengthy spell 18 months or so ago. He has always been impressively articulate & intelligent...apart from one occasion when he was reporting from Firhill and Thistle scored a last minute winner - he went absolutely mental. Definitely a Jags fan

They went into administration in 2003 - debt of £23m. No footballing penalty whatsoever imposed by the SPL...same with Livingstone & Motherwell at around the same time. Thistle got relegated...but we were the best run club in Scotland then and have never looked back since

Comfortable victory...never in doubt.

And fittingly for those of us old enough to remember the 1960's hit, Barry Maguire completed Celtic's Eve of Destruction.

That's a perceptive & balanced analysis - you should post more often.

The superior & condescending attitude of the Simon Donnelly Fan Club is becoming a bit irksome - if you don't recognise that he is a soccer visionary you clearly know nothing about football & don't really deserve to be a Thistle fan. My therefore totally uninformed opinion based on the five games I saw last year - and every other performance I've seen in the previous three seasons - is that while he occasionally has some neat touches, overall, he's pretty ineffective. This may be because his level of skills is just not suited to the First Division. He is regularly outmuscled but I would expect a player of his pedigree to have the ability to find space, to outwit lumbering defenders, to make incisive passes and not to sclaff shots at goal. Maybe he does this in the games I'm not at. He may have excellent abilities as a coach but the fact that he has failed to persuade/encourage/cajole his team-mates to stop launching high balls in his general direction is not an encouraging sign. It may be that Donnelly is one of Thistle's better players...but to me that's a sure sign that we need better players.

Agree entirely

Don't ever lose your passion for the Jags, Uberteeb - the bad news is I've been hoping since about 1982 that they'll get better...

The season before Colin McAdam was sold to Rangers, we transferred Jim Melrose & Doug Somner for reported fees of £220,000 & £100,000 respectively. So that was nearly half a million in transfer fees within 12 months. That was in the era of Miller Reid as Chairman...nothing whatsoever to do with Brown McMaster. The question of what happened to the money remains a good one. Or more pertinently, why do Thistle seem perennially to be more cash-stapped than other similar clubs?