It was hard to envisage Cumnock Juniors’ quaint Townhead Park home ever being transformed into a seething cauldron of tribal hatred on Thursday afternoon as a few local old timers enjoyed a leisurely game of walking football on the artificial surface in the late September sunshine.
There was bonhomie and laughter, not abuse and violence, throughout the good-natured kickabout. So has their infamous rivalry with Auchinleck Talbot exaggerated then? It seemed like it must have been during a flying visit to the sleepy and picturesque town in midweek.
Willie Wilson, one of the pensioners who had showed he hasn’t lost any of his silky ball skills with the passage of time, dismissed the notoriety which the East Ayrshire derby has in the Scottish game and further afield as he waited for a well-earned cup of tea along with his ageing muckers in the community hub following the full-time whistle.
“I used to work down the pits myself over at the Barony and there was always banter between Cumnock and Talbot fans,” he said. “You were desperate to have the bragging rights when you went back in to your work on the Monday morning when they played. But we all worked well together and all got on fine together.
“I’m 78 now and have been coming to the games since I was five, since I could crawl under the corrugated iron fence around the ground. It is one of those fixtures where passions can run high, where anything can happen. It does boil over from time to time. But I would say that by and large everyone behaves themselves now. The days when things got out of hand are in the past.”
So what if the most memorable encounter Willie has been to in a lifetime cheering on “The Nock”?
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“When the police had to come on to restore order on horseback,” he said. “The Talbot fans charged onto the pitch and started throwing bottles at the Cumnock supporters on the terraces. The game had had to be stopped while the police horses sorted it out. There were helicopters flying over the town for a long time after that one and a lot of people got arrested.”
So much for things calming down then! That sounds like, as commentator Archie Macpherson memorably exclaimed as Celtic and Rangers fans rioted at Hampden in 1980, a scene out of Apocalypse Now.
Will police officers and stewards need to be wearing full metal flak jackets when Auchinleck play Cumnock in the Scottish Cup for the first time ever at Beechwood Park on Friday evening?
Their historic clash in the first round of the Scottish Gas-sponsored competition promises to be biblical. The BBC Scotland cameras will broadcast proceedings live and a huge crowd is, with fans allowed to pay at the gate on the night, expected to file through the turnstiles.
This renowned fixture has quite a reputation, purportedly makes the Old Firm game look like a pre-season friendly. So what exactly can armchair viewers and spectators expect to see? Will it be the proverbial powderkeg?
Tommy Sloan, the Talbot manager, is something of a grizzled veteran of the games having been, incredibly and impressively, in situ for the past 22 years. The former Ayr United, Queen of the South, Kilmarnock and Stranraer striker is looking forward to the occasion enormously. Now a forklift truck driver to trade, he is hopeful that it will pass off without the need for outside intervention.
“It will be a big night for both sides,” he said. “It is always a big game when we play. They are that bit more intense than ordinary matches, that bit extra special. They can be tough ties. But this one does have a slightly different feel with it being on television and what have you. The fans will be up for it, that’s for sure. We need to keep calm heads and just concentrate on what happens on the pitch.
“There have been a few tasty derbies over the years. The one that sticks in my mind, for all the wrong reasons, was when the police horses came onto the pitch. I still get asked about that one when I’m at work or whatever to this day. There was a bit of crowd trouble and it made all the papers. But that was a few years ago now. We’re certainly not looking for a repeat of that this time around. We don’t want World War III breaking out.”
Like septuagenarian Cumnock fan Willie, Talbot manager Sloan believes a little bit of the sting has gone out of the ancient rivalry in modern times with the demise of the area’s traditional industry.
“I'm quite sure that has had a bearing on things,” he said. “They were both coal mining villages and they were close to each other, just a mile or two apart. The supporters all worked alongside each other down the same pits and so that made it fairly full on before. That has gone a little. Having said that, it is still pretty intense in my experience.”
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Jamie Conn would concur. The Cumnock forward was born and bred in the town and works there as their community development officer during the day. To say he is steeped in the club, then, is something of an understatement. He is acutely aware just how much a victory on Friday night will mean to the passionate followers who will be bussed in large numbers along the B7083 to Auchinleck.
“It’s been brought up a lot since the draw was made,” he said. “A lot of people have been asking about it. When I have gone to get my haircut or whatever it is all that folk want to speak about. It has been good fun. We have a game against Renfrew away this Saturday so that is all I’ve been focused on. But I am looking forward to it.
“I’ve played in a few of them now. Both sets of fans like to give each other a bit, but it is just banter if you ask me. Don’t get me wrong, it is a fiery game. But at the end of the 90 minutes everything goes back to normal. I know a good few of the Talbot boys, I have trained and played with them in the past. Nothing over the top has ever happened when I have played them.”
So is it the biggest game of his playing career? “I would say it is the second biggest,” said Conn. Pardon! Are you serious? This is the first time these two ancient adversaries have squared up to each other in the Scottish Cup in the 113 years they have both existed. Surely nothing can come close to it topping it. Apparently, though, it can.
“We beat them down here in the Scottish Junior Cup a couple of years ago, the season when we won it,” he said. “It went to penalties and we came out on top. That is probably my best memory of playing Auchinleck.
“The Scottish Cup is a bonus for us. The television cameras sometimes turn up. You always hope to get as far as possible as you can in it and maybe get a bit of a glamour tie against a big pro club. But when you play in the Scottish Junior Cup you know there is potentially a trophy at the end of it. That is the one that everyone at our level wants to win.”
Auchinleck have, like Real Madrid in the Champions League, proved far more adept at doing that than any other side in the 139 year history of the competition. To date, Talbot have no fewer than 14 wins to their name. Cambuslang Rangers, Petershill, Parkhead and Burnbank Swifts are the next most successful with five apiece. Cumnock have prevailed just three times.
Stephen Swift, the one-time Benburb, Linlithgow Rose, Irvine Meadow, Pollok and Kilwinning Rangers defender who took charge at Townhead Park last year, is under no illusions about how difficult clinching victory over opponents who have very much had the upper hand on them of late will be.
“Auchinleck haven’t just been ahead of Cumnock recently, they’ve set the standard for every West of Scotland Football League side,” he said. “They've been unbelievable in terms of how many times they've had to rebuild and go again. But they’ve done that and have managed to keep the same culture and ethos. That’s what every team is striving to do.
“Tommy Sloan and his assistant Alan McCluckie need to take a massive credit for what they’ve done over the years. I think that Cumnock as a club feel like they are in the shadow of Auchinleck a bit now. It is almost as if we want to be as good as they are. But we will go and do it our way and hopefully we will get there.”
Swift is very conscious of the high expectations there are of him and his men even though Cumnock are massive underdogs. But he readily accepts the demands there are on them to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds and produce an upset.
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He revels in being at a club which remains, at time when many provincial teams across the country are losing supporters to professional Premiership behemoths like Celtic and Rangers and struggling to cover costs and stay afloat, the focal point of the entire community.
“When you go to play the Glasgow clubs these days you do sense that the community spirit that always used to be there in the past, the social aspect of the games, has gone a little,” he said. “But the Ayrshire clubs have managed to retain that. There is still a really good community feel here. Cumnock is a working class town and the football club is at the heart of the community. It is so important to the people.
“You can almost touch the anticipation in the town during the build-up. You can feel how desperate everyone is to win. They definitely put pressure on you to come out on top. Both towns want to get one up on each other. The rivalry is bitter. Games don’t come any bigger for us. The fact we have drawn each other in the senior Scottish Cup for the first time only adds to it.”
Alan Gardiner has been an Auchinleck fan for 60 years and is a current Beechwood Park season ticket holder. He has seen just about everything the fixture has thrown up . He is looking forward to this showdown as much as any he can remember. But he does fear that there will be unrest.
“The reputation the game has is old,” he said. “But it is the young idiots now who cause the problems. The older fans, pensioners like myself, aren’t a problem at all. It is the young ones who just want to cause bother. I have no doubt there will be some nonsense on Friday night. But I don’t think that’s unique to us by any means, that’s the same all over.
“I worked down the pits over at Barony and Mauchline for a couple of years when I was a young man and the rivalry was definitely more severe then. You wanted the bragging rights when you went back into your work didn’t you? People used to say it was more intense than the Old Firm game. But there was never any religious aspect to it. It was always good natured at heart.
“I think the wee Scottish is more important for Talbot fans than the big Scottish. We’ve won it 14 times so it is a big deal for us. The sustained success we’ve had has been amazing. I think it’s down to the club being a family club. It’s not just a football team, it’s a family team. They are great for the town, bring a lot of business in. I must admit I’m definitely looking forward to this one.”
