Read It And Weep: Bayview folklore has a new chapter and it’s far from being complete

So many emotions were going through my head with East Fife’s massive win against Aberdeen at Pittodrie in the Third Round of the Scottish League Cup on Tuesday evening.

The main one was, argggggghhhh, I so wish I was there!

I hope that those who were savoured the moment fully. I’ve not been so envious at missing out on a match since the last round!

It’s not easy being an exile when the Fife are playing bad. Following the results in text form online, wondering what went wrong, were we just unlucky or simply outplayed?

It’s even worse when they’re doing great and producing Cup shocks, as they are rarer!

Tuesday’s game was particularly hard as I was stuck in a new building at work which has no internet access yet and I have a PAYG phone with no data plan. Agony!

The first of me having any indication as to the famous victory was a tweet from a mate wondering why I hadn’t been on Twitter crowing about the win. At that point, I couldn’t wait to get home to find out exactly what had happened and was checking within seconds of getting in the door!

As a hardcore fan, the anguish (and the joy) is pretty much the same whether you saw it play out with your own eyes or not. The love and passion never dies.

I’ve watched East Fife since 1984, from when I was allowed to travel through to scary Methil on my own. My first ever live East Fife game was the Scottish Cup replay win against Hibs at Bayview. You could say it’s been pretty much downhill since!

I would probably argue that Tuesday’s win against Aberdeen is in fact an even bigger one than that against Hibs – especially since we were away from home and currently languishing at the bottom of the heap in the Second Division.

There’s been highs, there’s been lows and there’s been even darker than that since my love affair started. Results like the Dunfermline one last month only come along once in a while. To now have two giantkilling feats in consecutive rounds is tremendous and who knows, there may be more to come.

Yesterday’s quarter final draw wasn’t what we had hoped for.

A home tie was the particular hope. I was happy to avoid Celtic, Hibs and Dundee United. I would have loved St Mirren or Ayr. They were my first two choices with Falkirk and Kilmarnock battling it out for choices three and four.

With the Bairns already having put one over on us in the Challenge Cup, I would probably have put Killie in at number 3 and that’s who we’ve got in our first League Cup quarter final in 39 years.

A whole generation, probably two, have never experienced the Fife in a major Cup quarter final. Now we have the chance and the tie is definitely winnable.

A trip to Rugby Park is never top of most fans’ dream ties. They will be hard to beat, but I think we’ve adequately shown in the last two rounds that SPL opposition hold no fear for us.

If we play with the passion and belief that we have in the last two rounds then we can definitely win this tie and then who knows, a Hampden trip and a semi final against the Buddies or Killie’s Ayrshire rivals could be our reward. Another winnable tie.

Obviously we can’t get too far ahead of ourselves.

Killie won’t underestimate us and neither will they be too unhappy at the draw they’ve got. They will be very confident, but so should we. A giantkilling trilogy is firmly in our grasp.

Robbo will have the players fired up and what’s important is that we take as big a travelling support through to Kilmarnock as possible. Never easy for a long midweek trip, but who knows when we will have the opportunity to play at this stage of the competition again, especially with the ridiculous seeding the SFL have put in place.

The players, to a man, deserve all the plaudits they can get for the last two games. They have done the legendary Cup tradition of East Fife proud. They are a credit to the jersey and have already written their names into Bayview folklore.

I truly believe that they will add to their legacy even further come the end of October, but whatever happens, they’ve made us all very proud to be East Fife fans and to call them our black and gold heroes.

It looks highly unlikely that I will be able to make the trip over. If the game was a week later then I could.

I’ll definitely be there for the semi though!

‘Mon the Fife.