HI! I’m a Liviholic.
But it wasn’t always that way, let me tell you a story.
The second divorce in my life happened, officially, on the 14th of December 2009 at the Almondvale Stadium.
The first happened a few years earlier and the lessons learned paved the way for the next one. The initial divorce was, of course, of the human kind. After years trudging on through a marriage that was long dead one day you wake up and realise something has to change. You may meet someone else who saves you and shows you all you could have or you may simply decide that being alone is a much happier experience than staying together. For both parties.
As a child, born in raised in Livingston, I was a bit unusual in that I somehow decided at the age of six or seven that the team for me was Partick Thistle. I am pretty sure it was just the colours that appealed to me rather than any high and mighty moral stance over the ugly sisters, I mean the Old Firm. Back then, you see, there really were only two teams in town. It proved to be an interesting, if frightfully unrewarding choice and ever since I have found it far too easy to be the outsider.
In the late 80’s Livingston even had its own Partick Thistle supporters club and I joined this gaggle of misfits in a half-empty mini bus heading west, I also created Scotland’s funniest fanzine (true!) and wrote articles for fanzines down South about the team I followed and about Scottish Football.
I moved away from Livingston in 1991 and started a little tour of Britain and always supported whatever the local team was. Scarborough, Barnet, Watford and finally Stockport County before returning back in Livingston in 2009. Through all this time in exile I thought that being a Jags fan was a very big part of who I was and I would fly up for various matches. However each visit back seemed to mean less and less and the friendly vibrant place Firhill used to be was becoming quite tepid and sterile: regardless of what division they were in, how they were playing and who the manager was. I felt more and more alone. I kidded myself on I was semi-excited about moving back so I could go to Firhill as often as I liked. However, like the divorce, I knew deep down that for years Partick Thistle just didn’t matter to me anymore. We had both changed and moved on and, like the marriage, I realised that there was just nothing left and I could think of nothing worse than worshipping in the same church I used to when I was a boy. My Jesus, the great Johnnie Lambie, was long gone from the dugout and thinking back now I am sure that it was he, and his sparkling banter I loved and when he left it all just died inside. So that was that, it was over and I wasn’t sad.
I had never ever considered that you could re-marry and the boredom of the Old Firm had just about extinguished my candle for Scottish Football too. I decided to just follow Watford from afar; I was a season ticket holder there for a few years and had some great times, an F.A. Cup semi final and a great day at the Millennium Stadium when we beat Leeds United 3-0 to win promotion to the Premier League, and some right good hammerings too; at Stamford Bridge and White Hart Lane to name but two.
I only remember one chap who actually changed his football team (from Rangers to Dundee) and the last I heard he had changed back within 6 months. So when I came to the Almondvale Stadium two weeks after moving back, just for something to do really, it just felt like going to see what the local team was like, what the stadium looked like and, crucially, how dangerous the pies were. I had no idea that I would leave the stadium of dreams in love, skipping up the road, heart pounding and lips dry.
What I witnessed that night was a display of total football unlike anything I had ever seen in my life. After four postponements a 7-1 demolition of Clyde. You could argue that it was Clyde’s utter ineptitude rather than Livi’s flair and ability that created that crazy score line but all 690 of us who were lucky/daft enough to be there that freezing, foggy night all know we saw something magical. Something impossible to describe. That night the divorce was absolute and I had a new love.
And it is love. Real love. True love. Love that makes you realise that the love you thought you had before wasn’t really love, it was just convenience and habit. The kind of love that makes you want to write it all down and sing it out loud. Love that’s real. Love that’s alive. Love is Football. Love is Livi! Livi is life!
