Those Were The Days #2: Recounted by Methilman

East Fife have been the only team I ever thought of supporting and I suspect if they ever did go to the wall my only visit to football would be to watch Scotland. I grew up two hundred yards from Bayview so have been supporting them since I was clever enough to sneak in at the school end but not clever enough to understand what I was doing there.

Unfortunately I am not blessed with the encyclopedic knowledge or photographic memory of some contributors to AFTN so my memories tend to be of characters and events rather than scores and scorers. I am sure that time has even diminished the accuracy of these memories and corrections will flood in. Because of this cerebral weakness the following are probably not even in chronological order but they are some of the bits of East Fife that are forever locked somewhere inside what seems to be a brain in need of an MOT.

George ‘Geordie’ Dewar with the match ball after scoring an East Fife record of 6 goals in one game against Alloa.

The first line-up I can remember through having been there, rather than reading it, was Allan, Stirrat, Morrison etc. The highlight there was that Bert Allan was my teacher at Aberhill Primary, so at that age it meant having a hero on tap.

Not much later this association with the stars moved on to another plain when I discovered that George Dewar lived twenty doors away and my dad spoke to his dad.

Slightly further on the partnership of Dick Donnelly and Jake Young could generate admiration and despair several times in the same game.

Picture the scene – when passbacks were allowed – where Jake breaks up an attack with a tackle that would have felled an elephant. From behind he hears a scream of “ma baw Jake”. He pivots and slides the ball back to Dick with the speed of an Exocet missile and the accuracy of a Beagle Mars probe. Before you can say “Sinagoca’s pies” the ball is in the net and Jake and Dick are almost at blows.

From that same period was George Yardley, goalkeeper one day center forward the next. He must have been the role model they used for Roy of the Rovers. This is where memory goes walkabout but I seem to remember he represented Scotland at some level and there was a connection with Australia? He seemed to always have a tan and, as it was before sunbeds, he was brown rather than orange but that is maybe how I wanted him to look rather than how he did look. Heroes can’t look like Casper the friendly ghost.

Jumping a few years to Arnold Dwarika, I was in his company once with a few friends and a couple of strangers we happened to sit beside. On finding out who he was, one of the strangers started to mouth about Arnold’s international career with Trinidad and playing to the audience mockingly asked him what was the biggest crowd he had ever played in front of. Arnold came back with the put down to end all put downs “110000 at a tournament in Saudi Arabia”. Brilliant!

There is a lot more locked away somewhere in this head but it may need a RAF search and rescue team to find it.

I’ll have a lie down and who knows what else may be plucked to safety.

If anyone wants to discuss any of this at the next home game don’t bother because I will have forgotten I wrote it. I will spend the rest of this week building up my brain power reserves so that I can rationalize why I went for a pie at 3.45 when there is more chance of Methil CID finding Lord Lucan.