Fielding in the Deep

As elite cricket hurtles its way towards a soulless cashfest of English Premier League proportions, there are still to be found reminders that cricket, at its best, is about far more than professional sport and corporate backing. One such reassurance is found in Jake Perry’s excellent new book “The Secret Game – Tales of Scottish

Finding the Words

It is not unusual, when a cricket fanatic is asked to explain his devotion to the game, that he or she becomes stuck for words. For many, their attachment to the summer game is so visceral, so much a part of who they are, that they can no more explain it than they could explain

A rich seam, a community team.

Nestled between the primary school and main street, and overlooking parkland and modern bungalows, “New Central Park”, as its name suggests, is in the middle of the Fife town of Kelty. It’s the home of Kelty Hearts, currently top of the Lowland League, and we’re here today because two of our lads in the Hibernian

Kindness of Strangers

My football DNA is pretty clear – it is Hibernian green through and through. However, it gets a little frayed around the edges when you examine my history. My family started supporting Hibs when they arrived in Edinburgh from Ireland in the mid 1890s, my uncle played for them in the late 20s, and he

A rude awakening

There was a time when bad news which occurred overnight was not transmitted by your radio alarm, or your first bleary glance at Twitter on an iPhone. When I was a child, thank God, there were only a few incidents of my being woken by bad news, and none of them involved the family or

Fit for Life

  Through Hibernian’s Community links with Lothian Health Board, and various other GameChanger initiatives, the idea of being “fit for life” has become a prominent part of the Club’s progressive development over the past couple of years. Whilst health checks for spectators are now a common event at Easter Rd Stadium, through the partnership with

Capturing a moment

How to review a film like “Time for Heroes” – Hibernian FC’s DVD celebrating their 2016 Scottish Cup victory? Certainly not in a detached manner for this writer, whose family connections with the club go back to 1895. But then, football clubs, and the love they attract, are founded on passion, partisanship, and a gloriously

NÍ NEART GO CUR LE CHÉILE – there is no strength without Unity

I read two pieces on Gaelic football this week – one by Darragh Ó Sé in the Irish Times; the other by Cahair O’Kane in the Irish News. The basis of the Kerry man’s column was that Dublin were successful, and deserved to be, not because of a superior sense of entitlement as the biggest

As strong as gentle

Sam Martinez arrived in Scotland in 1945 – having been born in British Honduras (which is now Belize) He hoped to contribute to the war effort by getting a job as a tree feller. This proved more difficult than he had thought and he spent a long time jobless. He would fill in his time

The Groundsman’s Story

I’m sitting on a chair on a sloping area; it’s a grassy mound now – at one time it was terraced tarmac. Behind me is the scorebox, still the same outward shape, but electrified since my time. There were two things you had to remember here in the 1960s when you had ambitions of being