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Tommy Hutchison 

Tommy, who played for Alloa, from 1965 to 1968, has just had a book published. It will be of interest to Alloa fans, young and old, as he talks in detail about life at the Rec in that era. Below is a extract from one of the Alloa chapters. Here he talks about his early days at the club.

“Recreation Park also had a significant slope from one goal to the other. I really enjoyed playing on the main stand side of the ground as this meant I was playing downhill. One other feature of the ground was the brewery on the opposite side to the bus station. When beer was being brewed, there was an overpowering yeasty smell in the air, not the best atmosphere for playing football!
I didn’t know whether I would be a regular in the first team straight away or not but the bad luck of other players meant that the manager, Archie MacPherson, had limited options in terms of team selection. In my second game, a 2-1 win against Queen of the South, a lad called John ‘Bud’ Flanagan also suffered a broken leg. This was a life-changing injury for John in more ways than one as he had just been told before the game that Rangers were going to bid for him and take him to Ibrox. His injury put an end to their interest.

In the third game, we played at home to Forfar Athletic, and the curse struck again when Jim Bailie, one of our best players, also went down with a serious injury, torn knee ligaments, that ended his season. With Flanagan, St John and Bailie all being out, my chances of staying in the team had increased due to their misfortune. In fact, due to the injury situation, there were games in my initial run in the team when the manager was forced to play five 18-year-olds in the forward positions. It did no harm, however, as we went on a fantastic run and won seven of my first nine games for the club.”

Excerpt From
Hutch, Hard Work and Belief
Tommy Hutchison and Kevin Shannon
This material may be protected by copyright.

If you would like to read more of the book, signed by Hutch himself, at a discounted price (£18 +P and P as opposed to £25 in bookshops/Amazon) please click on the link below

Hutch' order form

Edited by Mr Magic
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You could maybe say the last couple of weeks has demonstrated where the line is for us this season.

Still very much in the play-off hunt, though. Games against the bottom three coming up now, so hopefully we can crack on and improve our position.

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Yeah pretty much . we have better players than our form suggests IMO , maybe BR will work out how to use them best eventually or maybe not  .

11 hours ago, BFTD said:

You could maybe say the last couple of weeks has demonstrated where the line is for us this season.

 

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Before last night we were the form team in the league.

As much of a nightmare as last nights first half performance was, overall I think theres a lot of encouraging signs and we're pretty much where I expected us to be in the league.

In particular, goals and good performances are being shared amongst the squad as a whole. Connor Sammon has double figures, but we arent over reliant on him to find the net- whereas last season we were pretty knackered when Euan Henderson was off form or injured.

We still struggle when Scougall isnt playing but thats understandable.

In terms of the managers approach, you can look at it 2 ways- I dont particularly like Cawley at right back or O'Donnell left back- but no-one can accuse him of not having a plan B. Sometimes his approach works, other times we have an off day. But last night the issue was players not doing simple things correctly rather than the overall approach to the game- and Falkirk actually playing really well, probably the best Ive seen a team against us all season.

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2nd half was definitely an improvement on the 1st (wouldn’t have taken much to be fair!) but I felt it was a bit like the Dunfermline game in that Falkirk took their foot off the gas. 
 

Was happy to see us go to a 442 but with the way Falkirk opened pinging balls to their fullbacks I felt BR should have switch to a flat back 5, even if it was just for 10-15 minutes or so to nullify Falkirk a bit. 
 

That would be all I would put on the manager, the rest is on the players - tough to say anyone really turned up at all last night and our passing was a shambles in that 1st half. 
 

Only positives I really took where that it was good to have Sammon scoring again, and that it didn’t end up being more than 3!!!

 

A win on Saturday would most likely have us up to 4th, and we have to really be targeting at least 7 points from the next 3, but that team is capable of winning all 3 of them - that would put us in a decent position if it were to happen. 

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3 hours ago, Kevchenko said:


 

Was happy to see us go to a 442 but with the way Falkirk opened pinging balls to their fullbacks I felt BR should have switch to a flat back 5, even if it was just for 10-15 minutes or so to nullify Falkirk a bit. 

 

I totally get your point- but it was too late by that time anyway- we were already two down. That was certainly where we were getting exposed but I'd argue that we should have been a lot better in cutting the supply line off. We had 6 guys in front of the back 4 chasing shadows for the majority of the first half. For all that Falkirk played well- and they undoubtedly did- it was uncharacteristic of those 6 players. 

Just like the opening goal against Dunfermline the other week at Recs- we looked shell shocked after losing the goal (goals in this example) and it took us a long time to recover and get some element of foothold in the game. And by then we were 3 down and the game was lost.

I don't think it's a huge cause for concern to get alarm bells ringing. It's part time football, I don't expect to hit a high level every single game. Definitely areas to look at though.

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Meant to add- think I might be in the minority but I really like the tangerine away kit, even more so with the sponsor added. I saw a guy wearing it at East End Park on the opening day of the season- you can buy direct from Pendle with no sponsor. If Pendle can add the sponsor I'm definitely buying.

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Was a must win game and they stepped up to that. Peterhead certainly weren’t as poor as I maybe expected and created a couple of half chances at 1-0, but with the chances we squandered (that Church miss!), the offside goal, and a stonewaller of a penalty not given, it could have been a lot more than 2. 
 

Taggs looked keen to get forward right from the start and his excellent goal capped a really strong performance. 
 

Midfield controlled the game and thought the various combinations of front 3 all did pretty well linking up together - think they took a bit of time to settle on what was a zippy surface, but then started to work well together. 
 

Good getting more game time in to Howie’s legs and to see Cammy back as well, and half time pie is up there in consideration for Away Pie of the Season!

 

After taking a couple of months to shape up, League 1 is now looking as tight as most people predicted - this time next week we could be sitting anywhere from 3rd-7th. Next week is every bit as must win as yesterday was. 

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42 minutes ago, Kevchenko said:

After taking a couple of months to shape up, League 1 is now looking as tight as most people predicted - this time next week we could be sitting anywhere from 3rd-7th. Next week is every bit as must win as yesterday was. 

The arse has fallen out of Airdrie's season remarkably fast! That hiding from Edinburgh City seems to have caused a massive hangover.

Very interesting league this year, with a few surprises. If Peterhead & Clyde remain in the bottom two, hopefully the top eight continues to be close.

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The dream was on when Wick and Fraserburgh got home ties but alas not against us. When neither of those came through I was hoping for a historic derby with Sauchie but that wasn't to be either. The Frankenstein XI at Broadwood is not an attractive tie and potentially tricky too. 

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Enjoy the podcast so been following the teams progress. Seen them play Stirling Uni when they lost 4-0. Should be a good game as they like to play football, hopefully we've got enough to get by them.

Seen some people on their twitter want them to move the game to Friday night. They've been getting big crowds for their Friday night games. 

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That's this week's episode of the podcast up - Cup chat, Peterhead review (including some words on Robbo's 200th start) and then looking ahead to the Clyde game on Saturday. (Fair warning, it's a bit of a beefy one)

 

Thanks to @Adolfo Rios for joining us again to help preview Saturday's game.

 

https://waspsnest.buzzsprout.com

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Enjoyed the pod as usual 👍

Hoping Rice will stick with a back four for a while, it seems to be working for us so far. Could see him going back to 3 centre backs when Durnan comes back. Happy to see Church doing well at the moment, he's had a lot of stick but he always gives 100%. 

Hopefully the prospect of getting one over his brother gets Rodden firing again, but think I'd like to see him be an impact sub with Offord getting a start.

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Seen on twitter Offord been called up to Scotland U19 squad for three games so will be away for a few weeks in the middle of the month.

Anyone know if Devine is injured? Saw him in the stand on Saturday.

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