Queen of the South 2 v 2 Airdrie United, 24 April 2010
PICTURE THE SCENE. March 1919. A crowd, ready to live again after the trauma of war squeeze into dusty old Dumfries Town Hall. A meeting has been called that could bring some relief to those who were injured in service, and rare pleasure for those who lost family men at the Somme and in every other hateful quagmire. This time, they have gathered not to hear about an emergency loan scheme or a relief fund, but football. Members of the Arrol-Johnston car factory work team and the boot boys of the Fifth Kircubrightshire Rifles have come together to propose a new club. It would mean business, a serious outfit above the friendlies-only malarkey of pre-war football in Dumfries, one to put the town in the League and on the sporting map. Their success could just give hope to the returning war weary and those weary for war’s non-returnees; something to believe in again, something to rally around. If not, that club would at least provide Palmerston fields for their children to dream on. At the end, they have a vote. Their new club shall be called Queen of the South.
The name Queen of the South had been plucked from an address given to charm the town in 1857. Poet David Dunbar was standing in the general election and coined the term to describe his prospective Dumfries constituency. From the start, ‘The Doonhamers’ played at Palmerston Park, the Rifles’ drill field. They entered the Western League and highlighted their credentials for a place in the national version by supplementing fixtures with profile-raising challenge matches. A scouting network was established to bring players south and soon snared a rough black diamond from the coalfields of Lanarkshire.
Early in 1921, Alex James’ old school pal Hughie Gallacher left Bellshill for Dumfries. Gallacher scored four times on his debut, a friendly against St Cuthbert Wanderers, and all the Queens goals in a 5–2 destruction of Dumbarton soon after. The Dumfries and Galloway Courier and Herald gave him special mention:
From the first kick until the last, he showed exceptional dash and had the unusual record of scoring the whole five goals. He was continuously the source of great danger and showed no mercy with his rocket shooting.
Goals followed against selection sides from Glasgow Railway and Queen’s Park. By the season’s end, Gallacher had netted 19 times in nine games. It was clear the 18-year-old was destined for big things, but Queens hoped he would bloom at Palmerston before that. That summer, Gallacher was struck down with double pneumonia. Among those visiting him with grapes and copies of Take a Break in his Dumfries hospital bed were directors from Airdrieonians. Impressed by Gallacher’s performance and overhead kick in a reserve match against their side, they came bearing a contract for him to sign. Free from contractual obligations to Queen of the South, Gallacher summoned the strength to place his signature on the dotted line. In a letter quoted in Iain McCartney’s Queen of the South: the history, the board of his former club attempted to secure compensation for the exit of their prize find:
It was with great surprise that the above club learned that you had signed on Hughie Gallacher while he was lying in the Infirmary. However, the Deed is done, and you have certainly made a big gain, while we have sustained a great loss. In fact it is a bigger loss to us than perhaps you realise. It is the old story, a struggling, provincial club, a good player, the investment lost. Mr Chapman, it is very hard on us especially when the player has cost us a lot of money, at least a lot to a club like us, to lose without so much as ‘by your leave’. Mr Chapman, surely the above club are entitled to some recompense after what they have done for this player.
Despite Airdrie’s promise to hand the Doonhamers ‘a donation in respect of this player’ once they had seen ‘the strength of his abilities’, no recompense was ever received. Seven years later, Gallacher was tearing the ‘Wembley Wizards’ asunder with his old schoolmate James.
Two years after his exit, Queens were admitted to the new, short-lived Division Three. In their second season, 1924/25, the club gained promotion by virtue of goal average and settled well in Division Two. In 1933, they entered the last game of the season with a chance to complete their rise. Victory over champions Hibernian at Easter Road, and a dropping of points by Dunfermline, would mean Division One. As kick-off drew near for the game in Edinburgh, it became clear that centre-forward Jenkins was stuck on a broken-down train and would not be playing. Unruffled, the away side scored after four minutes through Tommy McCall, the left-winger’s 32nd strike of the season, and soon doubled their lead. It was a result they held until the final whistle, though their fate would not become clear until the following Saturday, the date of Dunfermline’s final fixture at King’s Park. That day, Doonhamers amassed outside town newspaper offices to gather word of events in Stirling. Dumfries came to a tense standstill as supporters and those caught up in the fever stood waiting for news to drift through. Late in the afternoon, a telephone at the Dumfries Standard finally exhaled its shrill call: King’s Park had won by two goals to one. The town exploded.
The team excelled in Division One, finishing fourth in their first season and only once in the next 25 years tasting football in the lower league. Pride in the relatively new team grew; within their first two decades of life, they had become mainstays in Division One. One man who personified Dumfries’ love of Queen of the South was Billy ‘Basher’ Houliston. Houliston was born close to Palmerston though never played football seriously until joining the RAF where he played for military teams across Scotland. His exploits as a barnstorming inside-forward courted the attentions of Queens. In a trial game against Celtic, Houliston scored and in doing so acquired a full-time contract. Swashbuckling, ready to shove goalkeepers of all sizes into the net and possessing deft goalscoring prowess, he rapidly won the affections of the Palmerston congregation. His reputation spread: Houliston spurned a move to Celtic to remain in his home town, and became the first – and last – Queen of the South man to play for Scotland while at the club. Upfield from Morton’s Cowan in goal, ‘Basher’ was centre-forward during the 1949 win at Wembley. ‘If Houliston appeared over-robust at times,’ said the Daily Mail of his performance that day, ‘it must be remembered that football is a man’s game. His manliness had the desired unsettling effect on the defence.’ He must have done something right: at the final whistle, England fans booed him from the pitch.
Billy Houliston (left) with Rangers’ George Young. Yikes.
Houliston’s career ended abruptly. After suffering an ankle injury on a playing tour of the USA, he struggled to recapture the physical fitness so central to his game. 1952 saw his release from Palmerston on a free transfer, though he soon returned as director, and then chairman. In less than half a century, it had become that kind of club.
Throughout Houliston’s playing time and after it, Queen of the South continued to prosper on the field. 1950 saw a run to the Scottish Cup semi-final, largely inspired by Roy ‘The Clown Prince’ Henderson, a goalkeeper voted in 2004 as Queens’ greatest ever player. By then, it was the town’s club: despite an urban population of 26,000, 26,552 attended a game with Hearts in the early 1950s. They were rewarded in 1953/54 when their side spent much of the season on top of Division One. At the end of 1953, the Dumfries Standard offered a salutary half-term report:
Palmerston fans will not readily forget the year 1953 which has just ended. Away back in the early part of the year relegation worries were hovering around the Terregles Street ground. Palmerston has been hit by a wave of enthusiasm which has hardly been surpassed and the prospect of the league championship flag flying over the ground has now become more than a dream.
The momentum could not be sustained, however, and the team eventually finished in 10th position. It wasn’t until 1965, the year after becoming another club to lose their Main Stand in a fire (this time caused by a defunct kettle), that Queen of the South exited Division One for the final time. It is only in the last few years that things have begun to look up again; 2003’s Challenge Cup win, an appearance in the 2008 Scottish Cup Final and consistent league form means that they are again showering pleasure upon the town, just as those soldiers and car-makers would have wanted.
* * *
On the bus from Lockerbie, a security guard on his way to work tutted at the teenagers swilling gothic label energy drinks from their obligatory position on the back seat. Either the noise they were creating was annoying him, or he was an impassioned supporter of Red Bull. I looked out of the vibrating window and followed a landscape matching that of Postman Pat’s Greendale valley. This was an alluring part of the world, and one with the added curiosity of being on the precipice of England. Travelling these rolling lowlands in the 16th century, Bishop Leslie noted in his journal, ‘The inhabitants because of hot wars with the Englishmen are always in readiness and are all horsemen.’ For the early English traveller, there was an exotic otherness about this area. It was far different from its neighbour, and yet not quite the same as Scotland either. After an 1814 visit, in A Voyage Around Great Britain, travel commentator Richard Ayton wrote of the village women he had seen walking into Dumfries to attend church:
They were mostly very gaily attired, but all had their shoes and stockings off, which they carried wrapped up in their handkerchiefs, and would not put on until the moment before their entrance into the town... for these hardy damsels consider shoes and stockings as things of mere ornament. Here you may see a lady with a white gown, a silk shawl or spencer, and a straw bonnet with artificial flowers in it, nay, with gloves on too, and all this finery terminated by a huge pair of bare begrimed legs and feet, which look as if they could scarcely belong to her. The legs and feet, from exposure to wet, and cold, and the sun, become red and puffy, resembling in surface and colour the great over-grown radish.
Catching myself risking arrest by paying a little too much attention to the feet of the female passengers around me, I fixed a glare outside once again as we motored through the outskirts of Dumfries. It was a town made wealthy by the textile industry and the handiness of its central artery, the River Nith. Here too had been, until as late as the last century, a clog-making industry, with one of Queen of the South’s early directors, John Grierson, a doyen of the trade. The presence of Arrol-Johnston was also significant; with echoes of Cowdenbeath’s Chicago, for a time Dumfries enjoyed the soubriquet ‘a little Detroit by the Nith’. The bus choked uphill by the railway station and paused at traffic lights outside the Waverley Bar, which advertised its ‘Barrie View’. Accustomed now to the east coast use of ‘barrie’ for ‘good’, at first I thought ‘it can’t be that good, there’s a tree in the way.’ It was, I cleverly realised when googling Dumfries a few months later, a reference to JM Barrie. As a child, the author had lived here and taken inspiration for Peter Pan from his games in the overgrown gardens of Moat Brae House (so basically a lazy Dumfries gardener is to blame for the unsettling sight of Robin Williams wearing shorts in Hook).
The bus curved around Lovers Walk where I fretted about missing apostrophes. I clambered off opposite Dumfries Academy, Barrie’s old school, and thought of an alumnus who lived a life as far away from Neverland as was possible. From 1909, Jane Haining walked the corridors of the Academy, a well-liked and intelligent girl. After leaving school, she moved to Paisley and worked as a thread maker. On hearing about Church of Scotland Jewish Missions, Haining declared ‘I have found my life’s work.’ She quickly volunteered and was sent in 1932 to work at Budapest Scottish Mission, a home for 400 children of mainly Jewish extraction. There, she became a mother figure to countless dispossessed young people and became deeply embroiled in each of their plights. On a trip home to Scotland at the outbreak of World War Two, Haining was offered the chance to work more safely in her home country. Her response – ‘If these children need me in days of sunshine, how much more do they need me in days of darkness’ – said everything. When Nazi Germany invaded Hungary, the Mission sheltered members of the local Jewish population. In April 1944, the SS came for Haining. She was hit with a volley of charges from listening to the BBC to espionage. Three months later, Jane Haining was taken to Auschwitz. She was the only Scot to die in the gas chambers there.
Stirring, and wondering why hers was a name so relatively unknown, I turned down Queensberry Street. It was neglected and yet appealing, largely because of Paling’s Department store, one of so few old family shops left where I imagine all male staff wear brown coats and have a pencil behind their ear, and all females a measuring tape around their necks. Signs pointed out the different ways to Burns House, the Burns Monument and the Burns Centre, but I was never much of a Krypton Factor fan, so I ignored them and chose my own route.
I spotted the Venue nightclub, hosted in an opulent old building that had once been home to ‘Norges Hus’. While the Nazis had still to reach Budapest in 1940, they had reached and occupied Norway. In June of that year, 300 Norwegian soldiers who had fled their country and regrouped in Scotland descended upon Dumfries. They were made welcome from the start, with the formation in 1941 of the Scottish Norwegian Society. In Norge Hus, Doonhamers and their new foreign friends mixed to enjoy concerts, lectures and language classes. Many of the incomers married local women. This image of a hospitable, amiable place concurs with the verdict of the Statistical Account of Scotland for 1791:
The character of the inhabitants, is allowed to be, in general, very respectable. They are charitable and benevolent, hospitable to strangers, and mix frequently among themselves in domestic intercourse. In their disposition and manners they are sociable and polite; and the town, together with the neighbourhood a few miles around it, furnishes a society, amongst whom a person of moderate fortune may spend his days, with as much satisfaction and enjoyment, as, perhaps, in any part of these kingdoms.
Regular Norwegian soldiers were joined by the high command. One army major, Myrseth, became vice-chairman of the Scottish Norwegian Society. An article in The Gallovidian Annual of 1949, quoted in Giancarlo Rinaldi’s Great Dumfries Stories, gave account of a speech five years previously in which Major Myrseth warmly acknowledged his adopted home:
For most of the Norwegians, Dumfries had been their temporary capital city. Many in other parts of the country had said to him when going on leave: ‘But we must go to Dumfries because, Major, it is our capital city.’ Dumfries would remain their capital in memory for many years, because they could never forget the friends they had found in the Queen of the South in the difficult beginnings of their exile. Everywhere they were met with open arms, and everything was done to give them a home from home.
It was a deep, mutual devotion signified now by the yearly laying of wreaths in Dumfries to Norwegians who lost their life in the war on fascism.
On the High Street, old architecture spoke of better times; pound shops and vacant outlets of a difficult present. Vennels snaked out between most like tributaries, with pubs tucked away down a good few. Beyond a fair consisting of one ride and a market stall with bleach and batteries, the rusty red sandstone buildings of old glowed in the bright sunshine. At the street’s centre, the chunky Midsteeple clocktower projected commandingly as a former prison should. Outside the ‘Smoothie Sensation’ health drink shop built into its walls, a customer coughed uncontrollably while her boyfriend looked on smugly from behind his bottle of Irn-Bru. I sat on the benches by the eye-catching red and gold fountain and sniffed for people whiffing of onions; only the day before, I’d read this quote by the visiting 17th century English author Richard Frank:
In the midst of the town is the market place and in the centre of that stands their tollbooth, round which the rabble sit that nauseate the very air with their tainted breath, so perfumed with onions, that to an Englishman it is almost infectious.
From here I could see Boots, once home to the King’s Arms Hotel. It was there in 1829 that William Hare, on a solo tour following the hanging of his partner Burke, lodged on his way to exile in Ireland having turned King’s Evidence. When news of his presence broke, an angry mob (what other type is there?) stormed the building in an effort to kill him. Hare was, for some reason, allowed visitors, one of whom, a female, almost succeeded in strangling him, possibly with her massive radishy feet. He was taken to a jail cell for safe keeping and then smuggled out of a back window early the next morning and sent on his way.
I walked along Shakespeare Street for a gander at the Theatre Royal, which was part art deco, part Greek fishmarket. The Royal is Scotland’s oldest working theatre, and one much loved by JM Barrie who remarked that it was ‘so tiny that you smile to it as to a child when you go in.’ Wincing unromantically at the thought of my knees bashing on the wood of the seat in front, I proceeded to English Street for the sole reason that it had once been home to the County Toilet Club, featuring ‘haircutting, shaving and shampooing saloons’. Though the Arbroath Superloo of its day, there was now no sign of this Victorian institution.
Heading down Friars’ Vennel, a narrow lane disappointingly lacking in weighty robes or amusing bowl cuts, I arrived at Whitesands, Dumfries’ perfect promenade over the unruly, fizzing River Nith. As a young sailor, John Paul Jones often launched from here, his local harbour. Jones later became frustrated with his inability to smash the class barrier and climb the navy ranks. Instead, in 1775 he joined the American Navy, apparently becoming the first man to raise the Stars and Stripes on a ship. Today beside the banks he departed to join the American Revolution and change the history of the world, caravan owners sat in their cars eating packed lunches and steaming up windscreens with their flasks. Towards the indecently bewitching Devorgilla Bridge, a man stood literally pointing things out to his blind friend.
Devorgilla Bridge. I really should get my fringe cut.
I crossed the bridge’s many arches to Maxwelltown, until 1929 entirely and fiercely independent from Dumfries. When the merger was forced through, Maxwelltown residents strung up a banner carrying the word ‘ICHABOD’ (Hebrew for ‘O, for the departed glory’.) It had once been Dumfries’ uglier, petty thieving brother. In Picture of Scotland, Robert Chambers wrote that:
Maxwelltown seems to be the great standing joke of its proud neighbours the Dumfriessians. Some idea may be formed of its character from a saying of Sir John Fielding, the great London magistrate; that whenever a delinquent got over the bridge of Dumfries into Maxwelltown, he was lost to all search or pursuit.
Today, the only lost people were the little ones engulfed in the ball pool of the Farmer’s Den Play Centre. Past that and a house with eight conservatories that turned out to be a showroom I could see the limp-wristed floodlights of Palmerston Park.
* * *
Under the smoky red bricks of the Standard Grandstand, home supporters relaxed in the glow of sunshine and having nothing left to play for. Eight months of promotion toil had come to nothing and with the pressure lifted the contentment of failure had begun. A boy heaved the turnstile and his dad urged him to lie about his age to get in more cheaply. Inside, the ground overflowed with authenticity, history and winningly foul language. Palmerston should be nationalised and stamped with a preservation order. Using tactics learnt from cat-owners, football chairmen, directors and governors could then have their noses rubbed on its tidily crumbling terraces to make them feel repulsed every time they think of selling another ground site to a supermarket.
Fans tried to summon the will to make noise as their minds drifted to August and next season, for there is always next season. On a deep terrace I leaned back and breathed in the atmosphere and the smell of stale meat. The main stand looked every inch a Subbuteo extra I’d never been allowed as a child. With grubby windows and standing room only at the front it had a nostalgic, filmic appeal, a metaphor for my Saturdays in the Scottish League. Very soon, I’d have to decide whether to stay forever suspended in this world of grounds with character and towns with Wimpys or return to England and reality. Still, that was for August. Right now, I was gleefully watching Derek Holmes do his best impersonation of Basher Houliston. Framed by shoulders resembling cornflake boxes, his lumbering style disguised some crafty touches. I found Holmes heroically retro and rejoiced when, with half an hour gone, he scored by apparently frightening the ball into the net. Airdrie, clutching the relegation zone in a firm embrace, awoke and equalised soon afterwards. The announcer pressed his microphone into action in preparation for giving the scorer’s name but, perhaps exasperated, merely breathed heavily a few times before giving up. The Airdrie rabble stirred, roaring every tackle and throw – where there’s belief there’s hope. What didn’t help matters was captain Paul Lovering’s decision to remove his under-shirt in the middle of play, getting his head stuck in doing so. Headless and blinded, Lovering continued to pursue Derek Holmes regardless and could still be running through the streets of Dumfries today.
During the break, I sat on the terrace and pretended to read the programme. An angry gambler tore his slip of paper into more pieces than I thought possible and ranted: ‘another fucking season and no win on the 50/50 draw. 50/50 my arsehole.’ ‘Don’t worry Robert,’ said his friend. ‘We’ll get you a scratchcard and a pint after,’ which sounded good to me. All around, teenagers lurked as if idling outside a newsagent. Improbably, Palmerston was the place to be, giving me great hope that small team Scotland will not be breathing its last any time soon.
Airdrie began the second half full of vigour and direction and were soon deservedly 2–1 ahead. Around me, old men yawned into their scarves and rolled their eyes knowingly as if comforted by their team’s ineptitude. Holmes plunged down to earth and on the other side of the hoarding a child fell over from the aftershock. Meanwhile, I was doing my very best to avoid eye contact with Doogie the Doonhamer, a strange contraption of a mascot character who seemed to be following me as I wandered around the stand. It reminded me that only weeks earlier my dad had been eating alone in a hotel’s chain bar when Brewster the Bear had saluted him from across the room, which was one of the loneliest and funniest things I had ever heard.
The view from the afternoon.
Eluding Doogie I settled at the back of the terrace and felt immensely grateful that football sanctuaries still existed and that for all the game infuriated me nothing could ever be as enjoyable as hearing an old woman shout ‘aw ya bastard’ when the ball hit the bar. The towns I’d been to had changed immeasurably over time, their people, especially the ones attending football, less so, and that was pretty comforting.
Here and now, Doonhamers wearily urged their men to a 90th minute leveller. Airdrie’s players slumped on the turf at the whistle. Their fans were stunned, another weekend ruined. Bloody football. Among the flag- and scarf- strewn surfaces of the Billy Houliston Lounge, I watched the scores from elsewhere roll in and then departed for Whitesands, and the bus. I walked back over the Devorgilla, dreaming of artful stadia and obese centre-forwards. My trance was broken only by the sound of the bus driver threatening to put a young passenger ‘in the gutter’ should he continue to make a rumpus. They were a tough lot, the radish-foot women of Dumfries.