Paisley or Paris - You Do The Maths...

29th Aug 2007: St Mirren 0, East Fife 1 (CIS Insurance League Cup)

Mr and Mrs Commander wouldn't profess to be masters in mathematics but it took about ten seconds to do the sums. Paris it was.... And so, I had to rely on Michael to keep me up to date. Well, that was the theory anyway...

Fuck knows how much my next bill from 02's gonna be - all night long Mikey did the honours. But so too did a bhig fhat fhenian and a dob fae ma work. A didnae realise that so many folk were listening to me six weeks ago when I said I'd be following the Fife this season. But, give them their due, there was no way I wasn't gonna know about the Candy Stripes' exploits tonight. And fortunately, Mrs Commander was already reekin' on all that lovely Sancerre so, provided the waiter kept it coming, she couldn't give a shit about how many half-wits were keeping me up to speed with what was happenin' at Love Street.

So, for the record, St Mirren did hee-haw throughout the game with East Fife looking more like the SPL team than Third Division hackers. Just past the hour mark (remember, that's like the back of ten in Paris - I was as pissed as ma missus by then) Craig O'Reilly scored the only goal of the game - an absolute screamer from twenty yards. I was talkin' tae somebody in the boozer three days after the game who told me he'd seen the goal 'on TV' but the only coverage I know about is via AFTN so further thanks to Michael and I hope you've got it copyrighted! You can see it by clicking here.

And that left us about half an hour to hold out. Or rather, give the Buddies a lesson in fitba. It's always tense when there's only one goal in it (and two bottles of wine in you) but the truth is that the Fife were in complete control and never looked like they'd face any trouble. The whistle finally sounded, the Saints trudged off and, already, I was looking forward to buying Wednesday's Le Figaro with it's back page headline, 'Ondes de Choc Par l'Europe'. The Candy Stripes happily headed home - the worst part about the whole evening being that we'd have to wait until next Monday to find out who we were beating in the third round.

Bring on the big boys! Or Rangers!