The Thistle Archive

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!

A lot of pushing and digging going on right now, this census entry from 1891 is a cracker... William, Lawrence, David, John & George Proudfoot. 5 (FIVE) Jags in one household; a dream come true for our crack Genealogy department!

The concept of the "big defender going up for the corner" was not a tactic deployed in the old 2-3-5 era, as it would have been considered reckless. Defenders defended and attackers attacked in those days! In modern times, who could ever forget Frans & O'Donnell winning the day by 2-1 at Dingwall a few years back? I recall big Liam Lindsay was in the running for top scorer in one season, although Doolan hit a streak and put paid to any funny ideas in that department. Two defenders in history scored in 5 consecutive season for the Jags; Kenny Watson and Conrad Balatoni. Special mention for Jered Stirling our all-time highest scoring defender who netted 16 goals in competitive action, although 13 of these came from the spot. Jered has the unique distinction of being the only defender ever to top any of our main end-of-season tally-ups, finishing top League scorer in 1997-98! Incidentally, we've updated our Top Scorer per season page today: http://www.thethistlearchive.net/top-scorers-per-season

Following on from the creation of our new People category in the top navigation bar, we're now very pleased to present to you our sub-category Managers, which houses profile hubs for all 32 men who've officially managed the club, including permanents and caretakers alike. As with our 2,000 player hubs, the manager's hubs are open for any creative development ideas. For now, a mini-bio is included, together with stats summaries, sortable comparison tables, a full list of games managed and a note of their "Thistle honours" wherever appropriate. The entire breadth of the club's history is at your fingertips. It's a great development for the Archive, and we hope you find these pages informative and maybe even entertaining, although that might be pushing it a bit... Managers A-Z →

Here's another wee gem that will get added later: "2020/21 League One Champions Partick Thistle have gained 50% (20/40) of their League points in April! This football club is not quite right."

Can't easily query that, but I can tell you that 20 points is a new club-record haul for any calendar month. It's therefore almost a certainty that 19 points in 19 days is unprecedented. Most League games played in a calendar month: 8 Apr-1920 Apr-1938 Apr-1956 Apr-1963 Apr-1966 Apr-1978 Mar-1986 Mar-1991 Dec-2017 Apr-2021 Most League wins in a calendar month: 6 Sep-1983 (6/6) Mar-2013 (6/6) Apr-2021 (6/8) Most League points in a calendar month: 20 Apr-2021 (20 pts in 8 games) Sep-1983 (18 pts in 6 games) Mar-2013 (18 pts in 6 games) Apr-1956 (17 pts in 8 games) Apr-1971 (17 pts in 7 games) Dec-1932 (16 pts in 6 games) A reminder to any stats fans, some cracking wee gems are produced on a game-by-game basis, and this week's entry is a cracker: http://www.thethistlearchive.net/match-2021-04-29

Three handy new pages published in the last few days... Examining Thistle's century-and-a-half honours haul of 32 gold, 31 silver and 3 bronze... Partick Thistle FC honours list → Jags currently sit on one of the most bizarre sequences in world football, with three double-downs and two double-ups. This new page looks at D-Day for the 10 promotions and 11 relegations so far... Promotions (and relegations) → Our third new "Achievements" page in three days serves as a round-up list of our European adventures, with a sprinkling of narrative. We'll be back there one day... European competitions →

If it's Thistle's tables you're after we've got you covered on the Archive? http://www.thethistlearchive.net/tables

Haha, just seen the Bert Haugh footer, nice work! https://www.redyellow.org/copy-of-about

You could say it's been done via Bobby Houston who made #13 in our Top 25 countdown: Who Put The Ball In The Rangers Net? → There were obviously pros and cons with the motion, and this was reflected in the voting which was touch and go for a while. In the end it was 33 YES and 43 NO. Many thanks to all who voted and commented . We will respect the will of the Thistle people! The NO's have it, the NO's have it.

We're working on creating an honours list for players & managers. Should losing Scottish Cup Semi Finalists qualify for (virtual) bronze medals? Poll closes 22-Apr-2021 23:59

Shortly we'll be introducing 32 pages for each of our managers / co-managers from the entire history of the club. As a prelude to this, our latest 'Partickle' chronicles all of our managerial comings and goings, illustrated and precisely dated in one handy overview. 20 mins read... The Managerial Comings And Goings →

Welcome back friends, to the series that never ends... You Couldn't Make It Up! Even Men With Steel Hearts Love To See A Dog On The Pitch →

Bobby updated! He had 3 junior clubs before Thistle. Managed and played as late as 54 at Whitletts. Unreal. Another great Jaggy Factoid - Neil Scally once played under Bobby at Whitletts! http://www.thethistlearchive.net/bobby-lawrie

For the first time, image galleries have been added to match hubs on the Archive (thanks to Stuart Deans for the cracking new photies from Parkhead) with the Motherwell & Rangers games from '21 being the first to receive this treatment. It would be good to see more of this sort of thing on the Archive, so anyone in a position to get involved with that would be encouraged to do so. 05.03.1921 Motherwell 2 Partick Thistle 2 (Scottish Cup Quarter Final) → 16.04.1921 Partick Thistle 1 Rangers 0 (Scottish Cup Final) →

Noted for future reference.

^ Blair / Lawrie, great factoid!