who-do-we-think-2

The second and final part of Sandy’s photos. Some are obvious, a few legends, a missing tache, some complete unknowns, kipper ties, and  three might be from Dundee.

The comments are open at the end of the article, or comment on the link on Facebook.

Here’s part 1.

arthur-graham davie-robb joey-harper willie-miller-aberdeen

who-do-we-think-they-are

Sandy sent in some photos from a few years ago. Some of them are obvious, particularly at the beginning, but neither Sandy or I know who a few of them are. We have some guesses, but pretty sure there are a few out there who will know exactly who everyone else is, and maybe have some stories they want to share.

The comments are open at the end of the article, or comment on the link on Facebook.

Part Two to follow.

bobby-clark

chic-afc-2

chic-afc

willie-young-2

willie-young

drew-jarvie

afc7

afc-1

afc-2 afc-3 afc-4 afc-5 afc-6 afc-8 afc-9

afc-a afc-bafc-team

Some contradicting opinions about stuff, some not so serious, one is exceptionally delicate though.

I really want to see player x, get a game in midfield. Why haven’t we had a chance to see that?

Really. Really?! Fucking really. So the fact we know the current manager knows what he is doing, and we are pretty damned lucky to have kept hold of him so long, and despite the fact (this bit will blow your mind) the players play football almost every day, and the people who work in football and are good at their job, are watching and analysing and scientifically measuring (the GPS on their backs) their performance, energy levels, hunger, commitment and form, you, you, yes you, want to see such and such player played in a certain position, so you can make the decision as to whether that player is good enough. Really?

So welcome to the Dandy Dons podcast, with me Iain from the Dandy Dons. So Iain, we drew 1-1, what did you think should have been done?

Thanks for having me on Iain, I think we should trust in the manager because that’s his fucking job.

And we’ll be back same time next week, for exactly the same podcast.

Coming soon, The Dandy Dons podcast. No not really.

I’m hearing reports of…

Oh for fucks sake. Stop it. We’ve ALL got Twitter. And if someone was risking their entire career feeding you information direct from Pittodrie they’d be a grade A fucking idiot, and McInnes would have them by the throat within the hour. Stop it.

Aberdeen FC fan pages, posting official Aberdeen FC content, as if it were their own.

They can post exactly the same content via the Share button. This will allow the club to measure the full reach of their own content AND it will send clicks back to the club’s official pages, which in turn sends people to their shop and their ticket office, and possibly gets them signed up to Red TV, or any of the other services the club offers.

So when you see the official Match Day advert appear on half a dozen pages within 15 minutes of each other (none of which have been shared, but posted as if original content), ask yourselves why those pages didn’t just share the content instead.

Criticising Aberdeen players

When the transfer window is closed, when we have no better players, when even a fucking idiot knows if you get on people’s backs, make them feel unwelcome, make them scared of making a mistake, they will in turn become a far worse player, here’s an idea, get off the player’s back and try some positive re-enforcement. I can remember the first time I spotted the exceptionally nasty element in the Pittodrie crowd (all clubs have them) Willie Falconer was a sub, warming up in front of the Merkland Stand, he did a short sprint towards the exit at the Main Stand, some arsehole shouts ‘Keep on runnin’ Falconer’ a cheer from the arsehole element in the crowd. Falconer was nineteen years old. Went on to play for Celtic and Middlesbrough. But no, the pig ignorant element in our support wanted to destroy someone.

Death, serious illness and rounds of applause

I don’t care if you take offence with the above as they really don’t matter. But this is different, this is delicate, no offence is intended. As with everyone, I am very sorry when anyone dies, or faces serious illness or any hardship. I’ve personally lost important people in my life in the last few years, let’s face it if you haven’t, we all know it’s coming at some point. It is going on around people all the time. Bereavement, suffering from a serious illness, taking care of someone with a serious illness. Life can be awful sometimes.

But then there’s football, and the minute’s applause or silence. My concern is with those who are in the middle of hell, and here they are at the football to get away from it for a very short time, and here’s another reminder. Plus there is the random nature of who is getting the honour. I know this is delicate, but we are getting to the point where we need several rounds of applause during a game sometimes. And still there will be people left out, lost and alone.

I’ve also a problem with the minute’s silence and black armbands when a player has died. Graham Leggat is a prime example. There was a fantastic banner, lots of information about him, black armbands… why didn’t we do this when he was alive? (without the armbands obviously). Celebrate the man, and let him see it. Which I know isn’t an Aberdeen, or even a football problem, it’s a human being problem. We need to let people see how important they were/are.  Why do people have to die before we celebrate them…

Yeah I probably need the football to start.

 

 

 

pittodrie-stadium

pittodrie-stadium

With the team playing great and winning regularly, the home crowds haven’t quite reached what most people would have expected. Times are hard for quite a few in the North East and that has to be a factor, but there may be other contributing factors.

Based purely on a couple of people I know, a few long term season ticket holders got ‘broken’ during the Craig Brown years. Not specifically the fault of Brown or the Brown era, it was the cumulative eras of sheer awfulness from late Calderwood to McGhee to Brown. It was also the first time I’ve ever seen crowds down to 5000. Perhaps there are more that just had enough. While Hearts support is very solid, they had years of financial doping with a relatively successful team most of the last decade. While Hibs are proving the Glasgow media myth of Scottish football needing the Old Firm to be bullshit, by showing how a support behaves when it’s top of the league. Any league.

So what possible things could be done to entice supporters along?

I can’t help thinking the club would benefit from having the ticket office and shop on Union Street. Which would be even more important if the club moves to Westhill. Having a presence on Union Street would be good for the club and city. Effectively a giant advertisement in the centre of the city with an enormous amount of people in close proximity. No cash gates has destroyed the impulse element of football, and there are quite a few people that are not happy paying online. A shop on Union Street (please not that fucking awful building in front of Marischal College) would add the possibility of supporters impulse buying in advance. I can’t possibly know but it might be enough to get a thousand on the gate, and presumably double what they sell in merchandise. Location, location, location. At the very least it would pay for itself. If they get a big enough retail space, their relationship with Adidas could make it a combined Afc/Adidas retail outlet and ticket office.

They could also use Angus the Bull far more from within the shop. Angus the Bull is a brilliantly created character. Those mascots just work or they don’t. Sorry kids, spoiler alert, whoever designed him did a sensational job. (Whoever came up with the seagull needs to stop smoking that shit!)

So what else could be done? How do we get 5000 more to every home game?

 

westhill-coke

The ancient town of Westhill have requested stopping Aberdeen FC’s new stadium after artefacts from the original Westhill settlement were found during an archeological dig.

This major discovery has enticed The Time Team hippies and Baldrick out of retirement to continue investigations. The first settlement at Westhill dates all the way back to 1968 and a Coke bottle in this condition could be worth buttons. Such details of the early Westhillians, and their strange occult religion NIMBY are closely guarded as largely people avoid the town at all costs. For obvious reasons.

The NIMBY religion oddly doesn’t allow them to foresee the future whereby if it’s not the football stadium, their view will ultimately be ugly fucking houses, identical to their own.

ladbrokes

ladbrokes

In case you missed it, the Ladbrokes trophy tour arrived in Aberdeen. Every bit as amateur as pretty much all the marketing and presentation concerning Scottish football.

The SPFL have renamed the leagues to have exactly the same names as the English equivalent. There is absolutely no reason historically or from a marketing perspective for this. It just makes the Scottish leagues into an automatic poor quality wannabe copy. They could just as well have called it Scottish La Liga, or Scottish Serie A inviting the same automatic comparisons.

Watching Maribor v Aberdeen a few weeks ago on TV, interesting to note the game had at least twice as many TV cameras covering it as the first tie at Pittodrie, or any league game at Pittodrie. TV companies do not invest in Scottish football making the product appear far poorer than it actually is. Just like the sponsors frankly laughable trophy tour, and the shockingly tacky player of the month, manager of the month trophy the sponsors dish out.

There’s nothing wrong with Scottish football that getting rid of the highly paid rank amateurs in charge wouldn’t fix.

 

 

aberdeen-skyline

aberdeen-skyline

The beautiful Granite City. If only the councillors, planners and developers had an ounce of civic pride between them.

extended-hoody-afc

extended-hoody-afc

You know you want one!

the-northen-light

the-northen-light

The Northern Light fanzine from 1989. Holy shit, it feels like yesterday. I was just an outside contributor, and probably the last regular to join. There was a core group who will be far more informed and knowledgable than me on the fanzine, but this is how I saw it.

There was some incredible talent associated with the fanzine. From Chris Gavin who would later serve on the board of the club, to Ally Ross selling his soul to the devil (Rupert Murdoch) and becoming first The News of the World’s TV reviewer then The Sun’s TV reviewer.  I’m sure he’ll regret the career decisions he made, from his solid gold castle somewhere very warm. There was Gio’s brilliant cartoons, including the cartoon strip Bobby’s Boots.

The writers wrote under pseudonyms so I’ll stick to that. Ferryhill Oracle’s Diary was hysterically funny, a first to be read when that familiar freshly printed smell of fanzine dropped through my letterbox, the sound of Chris’s Volvo gently pulling away. The brilliantly funny Major. Major Marcus A Reno US Cavalry retired, as I remember.  I may have missed some important contributors, it is twenty five years since I saw a copy. A shame they are not online somewhere.

Gordon Reid

But the real talent, in my opinion, was Gordon Reid. I met him maybe a couple of times quite briefly, so I can’t claim to know him, but his illustrations, his cartoons were, and are brilliant. His work was also the fanzine’s look and brand. I whined and bitched to get a front cover (that is my cartoon above), but now I can see it should always have been Gordon’s work. (Belated update) Actually that’s not true. Gio’s work was the perfect foil to Gordon’s. The minimalism and white space, contrasting Gordon’s heavily detailed, tonally dark work perfectly. Gio’s writing was also sharp, to Gordon’s blunt – in a very deliberate way. I saw some of Gio’s work for the first time in decades recently, and had forgotten his and Gordon’s ying and yang style contrast. And Bob Harper’s work is truly amazing. Actually, looking back the talent was the artists. We were carrying those useless fucking writers…

Back to Gordon. What I loved then as I do now with Gordon’s work, was the sureness of his style, and his line, together with a raw darkness to his humour. The instant recognisability of his work. His complete lack of compromise in his subject matter. He’s not angling to work for the P&J or the club. His ability to get his work out, produce all his ideas, that was just phenomenal to me. He was the finished product as an artist, and a great one at that. There really ought to be an exhibition of his work in Aberdeen Art Gallery.

A little bit extra

After writing this article and posting it on Facebook, I found the lack of North East arts’ establishment recognition for Gordon Reid’s work drifting around my head. I realised it is simply because the majority of his work relates to Scottish football, and  Scottish football is working class. And the very large talent vacuum that blows through the North East between Gray’s School of Art, Peacock Visual Arts, Aberdeen Art Gallery and Marischal College, is very much middle class. They wouldn’t know a great artist if they met it in their consommé. I also believe if he were a Glaswegian or Dundonian, his work would be far better recognised, and be worth a considerable amount of money. So if you have one of his drawings, treasure it. These things sometimes happen way too late. That drawing might become your pension.

Spot the dog Aberdeen fc

The first of what will become a regular weekly posting, The best of The Dandy Dons this week on Facebook. www.facebook.com/thedandydons/. And for those signed up to the newsletter, the site itself got a make over this week and is currently particularly Dandy!

In a week that began after the Hearts’ defeat…

Spot the dog Aberdeen fc

come-on-ye-reds

derek-mcinnes

Above, must have been feeling better when able to laugh at those less fortunate than ourselves…

davie-robb-aberdeen

A nostalgic look back at Dons’ legend Davie Robb, thanks to this great interview from a couple of years ago. Particularly if you are not sure why Olivia Newton John and Stevie Nicks are there. www.scotsman.com/sport/football/teams/aberdeen/cult-hero-davie-robb-recalls-a-remarkable-career-1-3341404

birthday-afc

The club had it’s birthday…

willie-miller-press-journal-cartoon

A nostalgic look back at when Willie Miller received his MBE, and the cartoon I drew for The Press and Journal at the time.

star-wars-sevco

And to round the week off, a week that involved the release of Star Wars on DVD and iTunes, a wee dig at Sevco. I got a few comments regarding being ‘obsessed’, but with around 2000 posts on the Facebook page, literally 3 of them relate to Sevco. And all Star Wars related!

spfl-facial-recognition-cameras-pittodrie

With the SPFL looking to bring facial recognition cameras into Scottish football, I put together some meme/cartoons on this site’s Facebook page.

spfl-facial-recognition-camerasspfl-facial-recognition-cameras-2 spfl-facial-recognition-cameras-pittodriespfl-facial-recognition-cameras-4

mark-twain-scottish-journalism

mark-twain-scottish-journalism

Lie number 1: The most powerful driving forces within Scottish football are The Old Firm, The Scottish media, the football governing authorities, club directors, sponsors and TV companies.

The most powerful force within Scottish football is EVERYONE ELSE. The supporters of all the clubs out with The Old Firm who refused to purchase season tickets when the entire Scottish media, the armageddon invoking football authorities, the directors of many of the clubs, TV companies and sponsors all insisted NEWCO had to start in the top division. They were all told NEWCO were going to start at the bottom of the football leagues by supporters simply not purchasing their season tickets. By way of proof, it was not decided which league NEWCO would start in until around two weeks before the season started. The reason for this was brinkmanship. The directors, media, and football authorities were convinced season ticket holders would fold, and purchase their season tickets regardless of where NEWCO started. They didn’t fold. They held off until it was declared Newco were in the bottom league.

Nowhere in the Scottish media will this be acknowledged as a significant event in Scottish football or even in the Sevco/Newco story. Also note how current talk of league reconstruction to benefit The Old Firm is being kept as far away from season ticket renewal time as possible.

Lie number 2: Scottish football is dying. Scottish football is awful. The skills level of Scottish footballers is not good enough. we are rubbish, everyone else is better.

In fifty years time there will be Scottish football. There will be Aberdeen F.C, there will probably be Pittodrie. In fifty years time, The Scotsman, The Herald, The daily Record, The Scottish Sun will be history. For talentless worthless, waste of space Scottish journalists in a dying industry with rapidly falling readerships, to criticise any other field for lack of talent or ability or application is so brilliantly bullshit it simply re-inforces the fact, these fucking imbeciles don’t even understand the meaning of the word ‘irony’.

What has gone wrong? Is it the schools, is it the universities, is it the newspapers, why oh why does Scotland not produce any journalistic talent anymore? Where are the McIlvanneys and the, eh McIlvanneys of the past?

Lie number 3: Ally McLeod was to blame for the 1978 World Cup fiasco and we should forever feel shame for the disgrace and humiliation

The 1978 World Cup was fanfuckingtastic. There only was one game, and that was against Holland, and for a few minutes the whole country could hear the theme to the Rocky film as Scotland were heading to the most Hollywood of unexpected results. Jonny Repp, it didn’t happen.

Were we too bigged up? Were we over confident, were we wrong to dream? Every fucking competition since, a country thinks they are going to win it, or going to do really well, and fuck me if they don’t come home after three matches. Do they beat themselves up about it forever more? No, they pick themselves up and keep going. And largely don’t give a flying one what people think in other countries, as they are aware no-one gives a fuck as every country in the world is self obsessed.

So why the Scottish media self flagellation? Engerland. The Scottish media often work with the English media. The Scottish media often have England and UK exposure on their career advancement strategy. They are embarrassed within their field, as the equivalent of pricks like Gary Lineker and the soon to be sacked at Valencia deluded fool Gary Neville look down upon Scottish football and sneer at Scottish journalists. So to show how knowing, how superior to, and how much better than Scottish football they are they constantly slag Scottish football, and among others, blame the late great Ally McLeod for the 1978 World Cup.

 

 

 

adam-rooney-aberdeen-fc

adam-rooney-aberdeen-fc

Adam Rooney Aberdeen F.C centre forward and all round main man.

old-firm-lies

old-firm-lies

Here are the top five Old Firm lies. Repeated regularly by the clubs and the succulent lamb Scottish media.

There is no such thing as the Old Firm.

www.dailymail.co.uk/Rangers-want-Premier-League-boss-Mark-Warburton-joins-Celtic-s-Ronny-Deila-backing-Old-Firm-going-south

Why are they here talking of their common aims. Discussing each other as one entity, an entity with a common goal, and an understanding that for business they come as a team. A combined business, going back many, many years. An old firm. The Old Firm.

Celtic and Rangers are a global brand.

Manchester United, Liverpool, Real Madrid, Barcelona, AC Milan, Juventus and a few others are global brands in football. There are supporters in Florida, Beijing, Copenhagen, Melbourne, for whom those clubs are their number one team. There is another even bigger group of people from all over the world, for whom one of these clubs is their second team. A close second.

With a very few exceptions, Rangers and Celtic supporters living in these cities were born in Scotland, or Ireland. That is not a global brand.

Scottish football needs a strong Old Firm.

As ‘you know what’ edges closer to the Scottish Premiership this one is going to be getting repeated again and again. The only Scottish club which has suffered significantly since ‘you know what’ went under is, Celtic. A number of clubs, including Aberdeen, are doing better than they have in decades. If you want to see at what point Scottish football stopped developing talent, just pinpoint the day Graeme Souness became manager of Rangers, and the chequebook came out.

The EPL needs The Old Firm.

The English Premier League is arguably the most successful league in the world. Part of the reason it works is the sheer scale of the country.

Leeds United have been out of the EPL for about a decade. They are a huge team with a proud history. How many times have you heard, ‘the league isn’t quite the same without Leeds United’. Nottingham Forrest have two European Cups. Sheffield Wednesday, Wolves? And there are plenty others. Lots of character clubs large and small, how exactly do they need the Old Firm?

Added to the sheer stupidity of what possible reason would Manchester United, Aston Villa or Bournemouth want to vote in another rival, with potentially deep pockets, and a long journey to travel for away games.

The Old Firm is the biggest derby in the world/best derby in the world

Since ‘you know what’ went under never a day goes by without someone on CNN, or in a Rio de Janeiro cafe or a couple of goat herders trekking the Appalachian  Mountains saying ‘I really miss the Old Firm, it’s just not the same without that game’.

A derby by it’s nature is always the best derby in the world, if your team is in it. And ideally your team is winning. The sheer arrogance of the statement matches only it’s ignorance. Bless the Glasgow media.