I don't know what it is about fitba but I'm drawn to it like a magnet. I don't see my (Scottish) family enough and I shouldn't be going from them to be away to a game today but how can I turn down a chance to stand under the rusting roof of the Portland Drive terrace and watch Queens taking on Annan? It's a local derby. I can't not do this. If I'm away in Scotland (which is quite often) I always have to find a game. Last time I was in Glasgow, it was the off season, so I walked 6 miles round to peer through a fence at a derelict stadium in lieu of a game. There's something semi mystical about it all to me. It's familiar, yet strange. If I'm in say, Doncaster or Birmingham, I don't have that same pull - I don't think 'I should catch a game' - but up here, I can't resist.
Dumfries and Galloway is the most understated of places. It's beautiful but in a way that doesn't shout about itself. In the depths of winter there's almost no colour. Everything is earthen. Red stone, turned brown with rain, bare earth dark and sodden, the faded, pale sunlight starved only just green of late December grass. Even the beize of the pool table in the pub seems more beige-grey than you might reasonably expect.
Out here, it's the dark sky park. In summer, the heavens seems massive, the infinite universe unfolding in clear night, unhindered by the glare of street lamps in this sparsely populated corner of the world. In winter, in weather like this, that same sky hangs like an oppressive blanket, days glowering grey, nights pitch dark, the world seems not so much infinite, but to barely stretch beyond the glow of the light from a window. The floodlight are resolutely and gorgeously old school, a comfort at the best of times, but when they snap on, a few moment before kick off on a dull day like this, where there might as well be no such thing as a sun or a moon, their luminescence renders the 4g surface a vibrant green and there's a real sense of magic.
Annan's tiny but tightly packed group of fans are at the far end of the new stand. The rest of Palmerston is slowly filling. The local ultras (average age 11.5) are revelling in a really gratuitously hapless shooting drill. Last time I was here, I noted the drummer has a little bit of work to do on his timing and I think that still applies but the kids don't care as kick off approaches with a resounding chorus of "Annan get battered" underscored by what I'll decide is a bravely free jazz approach to keeping time. Scottish League 1 supported by an Avant Garde rhythm section. Lets go!
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Queens start brightly. An extended head tennis match goes their way and the big target man Dickensson scoops over. The lively Adam Brooks then almost breaks away from a flick on by the big man. Roles are reversed as Brooks shows spellbinding skill on the right touchline after a nice pass from ex Annan man Lussient sets him away he swings a great cross over that Dickensson does everything but bundle home. The home side are crisp and focussed and Annan can't get control of the ball at all.
When the goal comes, it's well deserved and the quality is a delight to behold. The diminutive Brooks controls, slips inside his man then keeps going, shaping the perfect angle for a perfect curling shot that curls away from the orange-clad Annan keeper's desperately arching dive and then back inside the post. What a strike! A solitary blue flare burns in the goal mouth and a Queens steward has to go and find a litter picker to remove it. No pyro. No party. The singed patch on the pitch remains throughout the rest of the game as a reminder that, even as the quality degenerates to a point where there's almost no football at all, that moment shone brightly, a firework of a goal.
The rest of the half is a touch more even. Annan hit the bar and grab a few corners but Brooks and Dickensson continue to combine well and Queens could be further ahead had they taken the chances that come their way.
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It's been a decent game and Palmerston hums with fairly content chatter. It's a cliche that the Scots are taciturn, but the conversation in the toilets "Good one?" "Aye, fine. You" "Aye, fine" does little to dispel the stereotype.
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If the first half was decent, the second half is anything but. Queens seem content to sit on their lead and Annan don't seem able to do anything about it. Nothing at all happens for ages. I listen as the lads behind me regale each other with score updates, I watch the young couple in front photograph each other and then the pitch. I find it heartwarming that a crush barrier on the Portland Drive terrace is a hot spot for a date and imagine them looking back 60 years from now. The chips smell good. The chips smell really good in fact. I spend a good 3 minutes wondering if I should go up and get some such is the lack of action on the pitch. I decide against it (a decision I regret still, 24 hours later), just as the ref decides not to give Annan a penalty after a very dubious shout even though Annan's no9 goes absolutely apeshit about it and then spends the next 15 minutes looking as if he's on a one man quest to get himself sent off as if that might teach the referee some kind of perverse lesson.
I really like Dickensson. He's a journeyman, he's played everywhere up and down the UK and all over the pitch whilst on that journey - but today he's a focal point for the attack and his intelligent link play draws several appreciative rolling rounds of applause. I like his mix of brawny fight and deceptively good touch and vision and I think he's probably the player I'd look at and say 'he could go higher' - but the fact he's nearly 32 and he's been higher before makes me admire that he's putting the shift in that he is when probably the best outcome he can hope for from the season is to stay afloat in the game. Brooks (an ex Celtic kid) is the other obvious bit of talent, but he struggles to impact the game in the second half, bar a couple of sensational bits of footwork that get him away from his man, but ultimately lead nowhere.
A few changes are made - the big man is withdrawn and Queens start to look more than a little bit sloppy. Annan start to make more headway. Whereas earlier in the half, it felt as if the game was stuck in a bog with neither team going anywhere, it now feels as if Annan have wriggled free. Still, they don't make so much, but some loose Queens touches and some really uninspired forward play that simply presents the ball back to Annan seem to to be inviting them on. At one point, Queens take a goal kick with not one, but two defenders inside the box - a short pass from the keeper and then a run forward, an attempt to play football, then a lump forward and Queens on the back foot as Annan win it again. That was more or less the pattern of the half. Annan get more and more of the ball and only the young full back Macintyre on loan from Hibs really gets the crowd behind him with some crunching tackles and tenacious defending as most of the rest of his colleagues retreat further and further into their shells...
I should mention at this point that Queens are managed by the ex Annan manager and Annan by the ex Queens manager and numerous players on either side have played for both clubs. Before the game, I saw more than one car with mixed blue and white and yellow and black occupants climbing out. It's that sort of entwined place and that kind of relationship only raises the stakes.
Consider the drama then, when Annan finally get the chance to equalise - a penalty awarded for a handball at the back post that seemed fairly clear (though the lads behind me think the Queen's defender is pushed into the ball) - and the taker that steps up is Willie Gibson, Dumfries born, veteran of 3 playing spells and a management stint with Queens and now player manager just up the road.
The Portland Drive crew does it's best to put him off, but he's resolutely calm, I swear he's smiling at this mischief before taking the kick and he sends the keeper left with his eyes and places the ball bottom right with the artful skill of a true piece of shithousery. Annan are ecstatic, Queens fans grimly despairing. It's what their side deserve, not really because Annan did much in particular but because to offer so little ambition in the second half is to just about demand such punishment from the football gods.
Not much else happens. The whistle blows, I walk down to the front and as I make my way towards the exist, amongst the stoics muttering about 'every fucking week' there's a bit of fury from a few - one lad in a sports jacket stops, and gestures to the players trudging over for the obligatory applauding the fans ritual, 'nae, fuck awf, nae, fuck AWWF, away with ye - shite! Again! Every fucking week, just fuck awf' and part of me feels as if rather than the kind of vervant poetic odes to 'passion and glory' that are trotted out to advertise football, this is the true inner monologue of every proper football fan.
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The night has fallen. It's an oily black, a true inky darkness. The rain is falling now, framed in the white head and red tail lights that snake away from the ground. The floodlights shine on. My love for fitba, the unadorned simplicity of it all, standing in stark contrast to the overbearing self aggrandizing hoopla of the elite game south of the border remains absolutely undimmed.
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