The Thistle Archive

Re Fattie Foulkes, reminds me of this excerpt from the Willie Paul story Willie only missed his first League game of the season on the 10th December 1898 – and it was for good reason. Although playing in a struggling Thistle team, his abilities were still obviously being recognised and, with his 3-season-stint as a full Scottish internationalist now almost a decade behind him, it must have been extremely gratifying for Willie, and for the club, when he was once again called up to the Glasgow team to face Sheffield down at Bramall Lane. Unfortunately, Willie came off second best in a clash with the renowned Fattie Foulkes (William Foulke, GK, weight varied at this time from 20st to 24st) and, whilst Willie was off the field receiving treatment for his injury, Sheffield sealed the winner in a 2-1 victory. Willie’s injury saw him miss out the following week’s League game vs. Third Lanark. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UkVZZnrC4E ▪ The scene of the crime: Bramall Lane. The assailant: Fattie Foulkes @ 2:05 Oor Willie was considerably taller than your average Victorian footballer but, as you can see, William Foulke was not your average Victorian footballer. He wasn’t going to be lightly charged into the net, that’s for sure! It’s worth noting that Willie (who played in 16 out of the 18 League games) would probably have registered a 100% League appearance record this season had it not been for the Glasgow call-up – in those days that was great going for a man pushing 33. p.s. Can't seem to get the video to embed, but click on it to see some priceless footage of the esteemed custodian in action!

I know. That was a very deliberate "!" in the article. Must be the sheer number of games against them that's doing it, quite sure they'd fall down on a "pens-per-game" query. A Pie & Bov poster astutely observed that the 19th century conversion rate was exceedingly low. Will probably amend the article to make that very point. It's all to do with the rules / layout change in the close-season of 1902 as explained in the partickle. There's a very clear difference in the stats and I think there's enough numbers to say it's no co-incidence... 1891-1902: success rate: 40.5% (15/37) 1902-date: success rate: 71.9% (528/734)

Our latest Partickle is published this evening, although some WAT readers with a long memory might remember the gist of it from several years back. Charting the drama of Thistle's penalty-kick awards, our story takes it all the way back to the start in 1891. Who was first? Did you know Thistle's first goal at Firhill was a penalty? Who are Thistle's penalty Kings? It's been an emotional rollercoaster ride! By the way, it's Jered Stirling's birthday today. Co-incidence? I think not... Penalty Thistle, Yes! → In support of this piece, we have a brand-new list page, intended as a complete and definitive list of Every penalty (taken) →

112 years ago today Thistle played their first-ever match at Firhill, the stadium of dreams, the palace of the gallus. It's the place we've called home since 1909, but there's a lot more to the old ground than just Partick Thistle. Which Olympic champion ran at Firhill? Which Jag was born closest to the ground? Heard about the time we burned the pitch? Firhill's stories are as weird and wonderful as the club itself; join us for a 30-minute celebration of The Life And Times Of Firhill Park → Supporting the piece, we have 14 new list pages → breaking down all the (mainly non PTFC) Firhill activity from 1909 to date. Our ambitious Firhill diary → goes for the full megalist approach. Happy birthday Firhill!

As the anniversary of the first-ever game at Firhill approaches, we'll be celebrating the life & times of the ground we love so much - Firhill. The stadium of dreams, the palace of the gallus, is the place we've called home since 1909, but there's more to the old ground than just Partick Thistle, as many of our new lists will reveal! Today, we look at Firhill's popularity with the SJFA for their yearly showpiece... Scottish Junior Cup Finals at Firhill →

Thanks to Tam, a great boost for the 1992-93 → match videos, and thanks to A.N. Other we've now got a complete set of the competitive games for season 2012-13 → Since all 6,500+ match hubs were introduced recently, we've been busy linking in the games in key sections so that your click-around exploration experience is that bit more convenient. As you hopefully know by now, clicking on the match result is the standard link to the hubs. We recently enabled this in the Thistle managers section (e.g. Davie McParland →) and the opposition managers section (e.g. Jock Stein →), and it's now rolled out to the H2H section too. Revamping the H2H section to link-in the match hubs database was an immense undertaking, but the deed is done. Whilst that was the main aim, the section has also been completely restyled with quite a few new touches. As you can see from the random example below(!), all the main head-to-heads have 6 tabs of bang up-to-date info to keep you informed. Check out the scorers charts within which now follow our standard squad stats design, meaning that the top dog gets his photie in there too! Fully revamped PTFC Head-to-Heads →

Well, history records that the score was correct! 50 years ago to this very day, at Firhill, Thistle fans began an unforgettable journey that would shake history and confound the Grandstand presenter; our brand new 'Partickle' commemorates the events which unfolded. A big thank you to all the members of the forum who contributed their anecdotes at the end - very much appreciated. Hope you all enjoy the story of Thistle's unforgettable Autumn of '71... The Day The Other Cup Came Up To Maryhill →

Thanks Tam, have a look at our 1992-93 list; it'd be good to get any of the missing ones. Think we have all those games in the pipeline anyway, but if you already have them digitized they'd do for now, even if they have no sound. http://www.thethistlearchive.net/1992-93 Can you upload to YouTube or such-like? Either that or send them via a Dropbox link?

Inspired by all the developments at TTA lately, Jags fan Alex McNeill got busy uploading loads more match vids from 1993-94, the end result being that we now have 42 of the 44 League games covered for the season. Ding dang do, as I'm sure we can all agree. Well done that man! Season 1993-94 →

How good is it to see Jack's 6,500+ potted reports in full effect? One of the most phenomenal efforts of any Thistle historian ever. Also, I'd kind of forgotten about all of Stuart's scrapbook entries donated over a year ago. Seeing them come to life now is finding hunners of pound coins under the couch! You put in some great shifts for us in Ancestry Donnie, appreciate all your bits n bobs. And how good was it to see Niall (Camallain) back in action for the Queen of the South game? Our usual YouTube videos get about 2 views, he just strolls in and gets over 1,000 views. Making us look popular. But that's what it's all about; oor Archive, your Archive, a'body's Archive!

It's a monumental day for The Thistle Archive, as we're now very proud to put all 147 seasons of Partick Thistle match history at your fingertips. Although there is much still to be done, every single game is profiled to varying extents. As you explore, you will notice that we have around 800 matches covered with video highlights, with many more yet to be digitally transferred from old VHS and DVD formats. In total, our Archive now has 13,183 active web pages for the Thistle community to reference and enjoy, so please help to spread the word wherever you can.

It is, but arguably most impressive of all is Kenny Campbell with a 37% ratio after 100 games with a top-flight team. Both internationalists too.

Brand new to the Archive this morning is a neat 5 column table focused on the goalies. Sort by name, debut, most clean-sheets, most appearances or best clean-sheet ratio... The goalies' appearances & clean-sheets → Also in the pipeline, the individual goalie profiles are set to be bolstered with the addition of every clean-sheet and every penalty faced e.g. Andy Murdoch →

What were the Thistle happenings on your birthday? Today, we're very pleased to introduce an exciting new aspect to our On This Day home page feature. Updating at midnight daily, the section of the home page will now include births and deaths of all the players and managers, day-by-day. With 1,200 birth dates and 300 death dates now in our extensive database, there's certainly enough to create an interesting daily display. Happy birthday to George Adams (71) today! http://www.thethistlearchive.net/

Inspired by Tommy & Kyle Turner, our new illustrated list page highlights Thistle's fathers & sons from down through the years... Fathers & sons →

Thanks Jagger! 8,599 live pages now, it's marching on. As a result of our recent plea for page upload volunteers, we were inundated with an enquiry as to what the job entails, so here's a wee video to show what it's about, essentially just a copy and paste exercise. If anyone's up for sparing a few hours now and again, please do get in touch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2sSRw8ADEw

Following on from the publication of our Thistle managers section in May, the Thistle Archive is now very pleased to present the companion section - the Opposition Managers, with almost 700 new pages having been created. We examine every opposition manager/caretaker that Thistle have faced from 1903-04 onwards, with results summaries, every game managed and an overall comparison table. For added interest, a matrix of Thistle managers at the time is included within each of the match lists. Attentive users will note that every match hub (accessed via the result as usual) is hyperlinked. This is a statement of intent; we are now committed in the very near future to uploading at least a stub page for every single match in the club's history. At the time of writing, the links for matches between 1924-25 to 2012-13 remain unpopulated, so bear with us and we'll get to them during this close season. The Opposition Managers →

Come join us! Since we launched The Thistle Archive in September, 2020, we've increased the number of live pages from 6,834 to 7,869. Now, we have another 6,000 in the pipeline, and extra hands to upload them are needed. We're hoping to sign-up a gang of volunteers to help push our Thistle history site forwards to the next level. More details here →

Although Shields may well have played in the next game against Paphos, the teamline remaining frustratingly unknown at the moment. This was the entry into the Fusilier's journal in the summer of 2005: It has been a tough year for the Battalion football team due to the operational commitments on the island and in Iraq. This has met us with inconsistent team selection leading to mixed results within the league. The pre–season kicked off well with morale really quite high at the prospect of playing against Partick Thistle FC at Happy Valley. We played well for the first 20 minutes or so then they found their scoring boots and thrashed us 18 – 0 but a great evening was had by all involved.

Several new player profile photos have been found lately, anyone curious can see the news section on the home page for links. Behind the scenes, we're up to 88.2% fulfillment in terms of having each team-sheets slot filled with a player's picture. Will look good when we finally get around to uploading all the match hubs. With the departure of Joe Cardle today, a new page has been added, highlighting all 133 Jagsmen who've scored in their farewell appearance; The scoring finale club →

We don't always mention it, but we constantly work at reducing questions in our various tasklists. For example, outstanding answers to our question Where or when was he born? have been reduced from around 700 to just under 500 since we launched the site, the biggest majority of that reduction taking place in the last few months, thanks to the outstanding work of Archivists Jack Little, our new recruit, Donnie MacIsaac, and William Sheridan. Some of those improvements are highlighted in our news section today. In the last couple of years, we've actually spent hundreds of hours and hundreds of pounds improving identities for hundreds of players. Some outstanding detective work from the Thistle Archive team this year, e.g. Archie McKenzie (282 appearances, 1905-1915). We were very pleased to locate all of the Proudfoot brothers, three of whom were born in the family's main place of origin, Dunfermline, e.g. William Proudfoot (151 appearances, 1887-1894). Robert Gray (222 appearances, 1897-1907) was a good one to get as such common names can be notoriously tricky and lots of supporting evidence is required to get to the truth. Adam Forsyth (111 appearances, 1947-1951) was a big Highland laddie who was a real hero, choosing to score his only goal in a 3-2 Cup final win over Celtic at Hampden! Some remain a work-in-progress; it's always a bit tricky when they go wandering like Fred McDiarmid (37 appearances, 1897-1899), who ended up in Belfast. We're always open to correct mis-information inherited, such was the case for our ace WWII marksman, Willie Newall (146 appearances, 1939-1945). Locating our second manager was like trying to find a needle in a haystack, but we got there in the end, with a bit of luck and perseverance; Donald Turner (825 managed, 1929-1947). So, just a taster of what we've been up to, results throughout the site. As ever, we'll take any help we can get with our "Most Wanted" list!

The great news from this is that we've managed to nail down the clean sweep of place & date of birth & death for all five of the brothers. Result!