As the content coordinator of these pages (I just briefly made myself feel rather important with that technical description) I reserve license to divert subject matter from the usual self obsessed dribblings about running and bowling.
As such, it is Dunfermline Athletic football club that have provided an alternative source of sporting wonderment with which to report on.
It was a privilege to be at East End Park recently for a Saturday night Scottish FA Cup Quarter Final as The Pars battered trophy holders Aberdeen to book a place in the semi-finals at Hampden Park next month.
On the back of a return to some solid league form and having already got past another Premier Division side Hibernian a couple of rounds earlier, there was a genuine optimism among fans that they could do it. Managerless Aberdeen were there for the taking if Dunfermline played as well as they can.
The atmosphere in town beforehand was brilliant and I could really feel the enormity of what was being rated as Dunfermline's biggest match for some seventeen years. The ten minute walk on crowded roads down to the ground was also a rowdy affair. It felt a bit special.
Sure enough, in front of an absolutely bouncing capacity crowd, Neil Lennon's young side delivered. Pars survived an early scare with a crucial block by on-loan goalkeeper Oxborough, but from then on became the dominant force in the match. An instinctive strike from Matty Todd and slightly fortuitous but well worked Olly Thomas goal put the home side 2-0 up at half time and thoroughly good value for it. It could have been more. Many a Par fan were pinching themselves, including me.
Aberdeen as expected came out guns blazing second half, but Dunfermline were resolute and organised, fairly comfortable despite being pinned back. That fifteen minute spell under pressure came to an abrupt end when Chris Kane picked the ball up, held off a challenge and made time to put Olly Thomas through and there was nothing fortunate about his second goal, belted across the sprawling keeper and in off the post. It was their first real surge in to the opposition half since the break and basically sealed the tie. Delirium from the home fans, there was no way back for the visitors. Aberdeen players looked stunned, their fans disillusioned and the away end started to empty quite early. They'd seen enough. It's been a testing time for Dons supporters even prior to this convincing loss to a team one division lower.
Now the business end of this season is suddenly poised with excitement for Dunfermline. A cup Semi-final and continuing this streak of great form that has put them in with a great chance of the promotion play-offs in the league.
THE LENNON FACTOR BRINGS A NEW ERA OF HOPE
It had taken a long time for me to finally tick off the intention of visiting East End Park. For starters, it's an eight hour round trip but last year I finally made it. It was perhaps the most dire first half of football I had ever seen, be it at a match, on television or watching local league kickers on the parks. The standard was poor. They trailed a marginally less poor Greenock Morton at half-time, but The Pars went on the front foot in the second half which was thankfully much better viewing, deservedly equalised, had a player sent off for what looked a perfectly legitimate tackle, yet showed some grit and substitute Chris Kane netted a winner for a crucial three points to stay out of the relegation zone. It was a rare moment of joy for the manager at that time, Michael Tidser, who would be sacked a couple of weeks later and only two months after his appointment.
After falling to a second short tenure of third tier Scottish football in recent times, they bounced straight back from relegation in 2021/22, but the team were struggling back at Championship level and for a second successive season when I felt a bit sorry for Tidser's predecessor James McPake being asked to step aside after about three years in the job. It just felt like he didn't have the support or means to strengthen the team and take them further. Besides, you just couldn't see who they could get in to do any better with the squad they had and the German consortium which owned the the club seemed unfased by the club's perilous plateau of being too good for Division One but hardly good enough to stay in the Championship.
At the turn of the year though, stuff was going on quietly behind the scenes as the owners relieved themselves (and most people associated with the club thankfully) of their ownership and although the initial punt on fairly inexperienced coach Tidser didn't work out, if there was any doubt about the new ownership of Western Americans James Bord and Evan Sofer, the swift appointment of Neil Lennon as manager was an incredibly positive benchmark and I certainly felt someone had come in and seen this grand old club for what it is - and it's potential - after too many years out of the limelight. In addition, legendary Dunfermline player and manager Jim Leishman was appointed chairman. Everything was starting to feel like some sort of strategy was in place.
Lennon has a managerial CV that enormously over-qualifies him for this humble post at a struggling, if nevertheless sizeable club. What a coup this could be.
Lenny hadn't fully committed at this point. I don't think it was going to be feasible for him to stay on if the club were relegated again, but despite having no time to fully address the team's long term issues such as lack of fitness, confidence and attacking edge, his presence alone helped them pick up a few results that they may not have done otherwise. The Pars survived with a game to spare and Lenny had seen enough to make Dunfermline Athletic his project baby. We had to wait a month or two before the news was official, but the sense of relief and excitement was in equal measure once his long term appointment was confirmed.
Dunfermline Athletic wasn't rebuilt in a day and it's been an understandably inconsistent sort of season until recently with what is a very young squad. There have been flashes of brilliance and results that were simply unattainable in past seasons, mixed in with some frustratingly poor ones when least expected. But overall, the picture has been far, far brighter. The fitness of the team this season has been the stand-out difference for me. The team are sharper, they are stronger on the ball and just lately have started scoring goals at a rate not seen by an Athletic team for years and years. There is now a great chance of making the promotion play-offs with a team that seems to be improving quickly just now and there's also that Scottish Cup Semi-final on the horizon at Hampden Park against bitter rivals Falkirk. It's a fantastic turnaround. Just a year ago the picture was woeful with little hope of change for the better. In stark contrast, the manager's magic is starting to make it's way to the surface already.
The new owners appear to be refreshingly intelligent and conscientious about how to take over a football club. Willing to invest, but not recklessly flashing the cash around for a quick fix. Lennon says they want to grow the club "organically", and I love that. So does the manager I think. He's landed at the right club at just the right time, for both parties. This season, however it pans out, is just the beginning of great things to come I believe.
Neil Lennon has now frequented all three football clubs that have tugged my footballing heart strings over more than forty years. Internet investigation doesn't connect anybody else in the game with both Manchester City, Bolton Wanderers and Dunfermline Athletic.
He came through the youth ranks as a player at Maine Road (I was Man City obsessed in my younger years) City were overloaded with home bred talent at the time in the mid to late eighties, the likes of England Under 21's Paul Lake, Steve Redmond, Andy Hinchcliffe, Ian Brightwell, David White... there wasn't room for everyone. Although only making one senior appearance before joining Dario Grady's famous school of promising youngsters at Crewe, Neil nevertheless made it in to my Man City Subbuteo team! I liked him and was really disappointed he didn't stay and become a first team regular. Nevertheless he went on to enjoy a very good playing career and represented Northern Ireland forty times at international level. A fierce competitor who wasn't everyone's cup of tea - unless he was on your side of course. Neil has enjoyed a pretty damn good managerial journey so far too, and he's still only 54 when it feels he's been coaching for ions.
After repeating the exact feat of five Scottish League titles and four Scottish Cup victories as manager of Celtic that he also achieved as a player there, he had a successful period at Hibernian before ending up at Bolton and I thought that could really trigger good times ahead again for the Wanderers. Bolton were my dad's team who obviously remain close despite losing the love a bit when they moved their ground out of town at the turn of the century. Lennon at Bolton should have been as harmonious as basil and tomato, but it proved to be bad timing as the false economy enjoyed under the successful era of Sam Allardyce and subsequent years of mismanagement in the boardroom had started to squeeze the club unto the verge of collapse. But what I remember of that time was Lenny's extraordinary resilience and fight for the club in trying to carry on regardless, with a depleted squad and no means to improve it, heading towards a drop to the third tier as both himself and the playing staff weren't always getting paid. Only when the job became completely impossible did he part company. It showed an old fashioned loyalty which is rare in football of recent decades and I expect his commitment to Dunfermline to be just as noble.
I don't know Neil personally - obviously! - much as I'd like to meet him for a natter, but I think his work ethic is and always has been something to admire.
If another club did try to prise him away, this fella hasn't really got much to prove elsewhere and certainly not in Scotland. It looks like he's enjoying bringing this crop of young lads through and finding a few more along the way. It's a new and different project for him to build something from scratch. I might be wrong, but provided he maintains a great relationship with the club's owner, Lennon is going to be in the Dunfermline hot seat for some years to come and who knows what he can achieve.
DAFC AS A BRUSH
Why the bloody hell does a bloke from Lancashire end up supporting a football club in Fife? Fair enough question. Exactly how my interest in The Pars was first mooted is something of an unknown. For some reason I chose them as my "Scottish team" at some point in childhood. I seem to remember being fond of "Dnfmln" or similar - a vowelless abbreviation of Dunfermline on the "Pontoon Table" which was featured in the Express newspaper back in the deepest 1980's (if your selected team scored eleven goals in any four match sequence you were in the money) I can't confirm that's exactly why I chose them as my Scottish team. Maybe I just liked their name, their badge, manager Jim Leishman's curly mop, moustache and buoyant smile in the Panini sticker album, or maybe something else entirely random that I really can't remember. I certainly moidered my dad enough to buy me Dunfermline's away shirt from a classic sports shop of old when on holiday in Inverness during the late eighties. (Still got it, very well worn and it still fits!)
Either way, I've always looked out for them and over the last fifteen years or so gradually invested more and more interest. Dunfermline and to a broader extent, Scottish Football has rekindled some passion as a football fan that I never thought I'd feel again. The Aberdeen match resurrected some nostalgic feelings and was a beautifully emotive experience not felt for decades. All my memories as a football fan hark back to my early twenties, teens and childhood. But this was something tangible and recent with which to savour.
So it was only last year that I finally arranged to travel up to Fife and watch The Pars, mainly thanks to rekindling a friendship with my favourite Scot from High School, Lesley, who long ago returned North for University at Edinburgh, living in the capital for some time before moving across the Firth in Dunfermline nearly twenty years ago. It would also transpire her son Ollie has grown up to become a massive Pars fan that follows them everywhere.
That first visit to East End Park certainly wasn't going to be my last.
Scottish football as a whole has more recently grasped my attention and revived an interest in the professional game that I felt slip away from the mid-1990's, with soulless concrete all-seater stadiums and a long list of other changes and generic trends that I believed ruined the fabric of football as I knew it and I just lost interest. Not in the game itself completely, but certainly in the higher divisions. Scottish League football still has a bit of nostalgic charm about it for me that's long lost south of the border.
Watching a struggling Dunfermline at home to Greenock Morton about a year ago was the first time I clunked through a turnstile for pushing thirty years.
As a lad, visits to Maine Road to watch Manchester City and Burnden Park to watch my dad's beloved Bolton Wanderers were a fairly regular thing. And the occasional away games.
During Dunfermline's last period of reasonable success, which included three domestic cup final appearances and a decent stay in the Premier Division, I wasn't following football much at all. Most likely thoroughly engrossed in the fell running scene around that time, The Pars received little more than my best wishes and glances at the results. My much more concentrated attention since has brought little reward, until now perhaps. A good time to be a Par.
OH, AND BACK TO THE BOWLS...
The new season is nearly here and Winter abstention has freshened my appetite to get rolling again. I've been practicing a couple of weeks or so now on Farington St Paul's or Ley Inn, where I've been fortunate to pick up a few matches with the locals and also a couple of games with my one of three bestest old friends Mr Lee at his home green, Vernons. I'm ready to go.
Tonight it's the Longridge Singles competition which has become the annual opening and closing show to the season for me personally. My record there is decent and I'm turning up at Longridge tonight looking beyond the meek ambition of just getting through a round or two, I'm thinking I could win three from three and make it to Finals Night.
It could all go wrong in the first match of course and that would be disappointing, but I'm just going to concentrate on playing well and importantly, if it's enough to get through that first round then not only maintain the standard, but try and get stronger as the night goes on.