Matchday three of the East of Scotland over 50's league

Report from Paul Berg – Tayport FC Walking Football Co-ordinator.

Sunday November 7th saw our final session of league games at the Regional Sports Centre in Caird Park. We started the day in 4th place, and our aim was not to drop any places, and win all 3 of our games and see where that would take us. The squad was changed from previous sessions, due to holiday, illness and Scotland playing rugby!

Gordon who only joined us on Friday was brought into defence, and Alan, nicknamed Dancer, a very experienced local keeper, took over the gloves as Jimmy our regular keeper was ill. Fergie and Paul D. were back in after injury.

Our first game was against our friends from St. Andrews, who we had played a friendly against earlier in the season with mixed results. We got off to a great start, the team were confident and Dancer made some smart stops early on. Gordon and Andy made a good defensive unit all afternoon, and we soon took an early lead through Colin and went on to win 3-0.

Second up were Saints in the Community, and again we were quick out the blocks, building up a 4-0 lead, before a deflection wrong footed Dancer, and they pulled a goal back, but 2 further goals made it 6-1 at the final whistle. 2 more goals for Colin and also John B.

Our final game was against St. James Blues, probably out hardest game of the afternoon in many ways. We began well, had a few shots on goal, but an arguably high shot, the ball cannot go higher than the crossbar, found it’s way into the net, and we trailed for the first time. Colin got us back on level terms, but with time running out, St. James scored a good goal, and again we trailed. Not to be beaten, Colin again levelled the scores, and with seconds remaining, Andy, team captain, having already had a screamer of a shot skim the post, let fly with a fantastic shot that was in the back of the net before their keeper could move. That was the winner in our 3-2 victory.

3 wins out of 3, 12 goals scored, 3 conceded, a great afternoon but unfortunately due to other results we remained in 4th place.

What a tremendous league performance we achieved, for our first ever competitive series and after a shaky start to our league programme, winning 1 out of 3 games played, we finished up winning 5 and drawing 1 from the remaining 7, that’s 16 points from a possible 21. We missed 3rd place by just 2 points. Our goal scorers were: Colin Hardie 10, Andy Blackburn 5, Bruce Peebles 4, John Boyle 3, Bert Valentine 2 and Paul Davidson 1. John unluckily had another goal disallowed.

Our next venture is on Sunday December 5th, when 16 teams will play at Raith Rovers home ground, to contest their Christmas Cup. Exact details have not been received yet, but it will be 4 groups of 4, with the top 2 teams in each group progressing.

Photo above shows us in action against St. James Blues, with Fergus Mann passing to Colin for our first goal.

Anyone, male or female, interested in coming along on a Friday morning to training, can email me at :

Tfcwalkingfootball@gmail.com or I’m at Tayport FC’s home games selling the clubs programmes, so just come up for a chat.

Paul.