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Best and worse goalies


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Seen some pretty good and spectacularly bad keepers at Starks over the last 40 years.

Jamie MacDonald now, Scott Thompson 1994-97 and of course the witch (David McGurn) were the best in the last 25 years but Murray McDermott (1970-81) was my 1st goalkeeping idol and he still is. RIP Murray.

Obviously seen a few howlers too!

Andy McNeil in 2010/11 was abject in the extreme. 2017 saw Conman Brennan and Palmit Penkska vie for the honour but for me Colin Scott in between the sticks in season 1996/97 when we were relegated under Iain Munro stands out for all the wrong reasons. I'm sure I remember him actually throwing the ball in the net at Rugby park, so special....... not!

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In my time going, McGurn is comfortably the best we've had. Some of the best moments from the McGlynn v1.0 era involved him. His legendary triple save against Ayr. The one handed swipe away at East End which 30 seconds later ended up in a Rovers goal. One of my favourites is a bit less remembered. In our 08/09 title winning season we played East Fife at home and the ball broke in the box. McGurn proceeded to nutmeg Bobby Linn with a save - genuinely never seen anything like it before or since. Linn was offside, but it was still absolutely incredible.

Honourable mentions for both Jamie MacDonald (who could easily still do a job in the top flight) and Kevin Cuthbert.

There's a good few candidates for worst. Rudy Pounosaamy and Ally Brown are in a league of their own. Brown stands out more as I started going to games more frequently in that period. He was one of a multitude of players who were brought in as fodder in the reclaim the rovers phase for that season.

Aside from the Anelka/Dalziel era, I did see a mention for Graeme Smith earlier and I'd probably agree he's up there. He had a catalogue of errors which turned wins to draws when we lost out on the title. We only signed him because Barry Smith decided to play a full strength team against Brora in the Diddy Cup only to see Aaron Lennox do his ACL.

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The benefit of age allows me to list Alan Rough as the very best I've seen for Thistle. With honourable mentions for Nicky Walker and Tomas Cerny. 

Worst? I'm trying to remember what season it was mid 80s that we played about 8 different keepers. 86/87 or maybe 87/88. Some that played that season were pretty horrible but limiting it to keepers that played at least a handful of games it's hard to look past Colin Stewart, with dishonourable mention for Jim Stewart, and Stevie Ross. 

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On 23/11/2021 at 14:42, palmy_cammy said:

I'm surprised no-one has mentioned Ross Stewart yet, he was laughably bad.  It genuinely felt like anything on target was a goal when we had the misfortune of that clown.  I know we were shafted a bit by Rangers recalling McCrorie then loaning him to Livi but we effectively lost Livi's first choice 'keeper and replaced him with their third choice.  Another Johnston masterstroke.

Zander Clark and the aforementioned McCrorie stand out a mile for me as far as good goalies are concerned.  Jamie MacDonald was good and has gone on to have a successful career but didn't have the presence of the other too.  Clark looks to me the most likely to step up for Scotland once Craig Gordon calls it a day, and McCrorie should be knocking on the door as well assuming he doesn't damage his career too much on the Ibrox bench.

Ludovic Roy deserves a special mention in the "what could have been category".  He only played a handful of games before picking up an injury but if he'd kept up the standard of those games for a prolonged period he would have been one of our best ever.

The worst part was that McCrorie turned out to be utterly shite too, one of the worse keepers I've seen at Livi in a long while. We'd been blessed in recent years with Sarkic, Kelly, Alexander, Stryjek. McCrorie by comparison was very very poor.

I feel like his showings with us stuck him a lot further from a Scotland call up. For me Kelly should be ahead of him and Clark, Clark ahead of McCrorie however.

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14 hours ago, John MacLean said:

The benefit of age allows me to list Alan Rough as the very best I've seen for Thistle. With honourable mentions for Nicky Walker and Tomas Cerny. 

Worst? I'm trying to remember what season it was mid 80s that we played about 8 different keepers. 86/87 or maybe 87/88. Some that played that season were pretty horrible but limiting it to keepers that played at least a handful of games it's hard to look past Colin Stewart, with dishonourable mention for Jim Stewart, and Stevie Ross. 

Wee Stevie Ross was of course the goalie in Tommy Bryce’s famous “Worst Thistle Team In History” , in 98-99. Absolute comedy team. Going further back, for me the worst Thistle  goalie ever was Nelson Still, who should have changed his first name to “Stood”.

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Looking at Craig Nelson's first couple of seasons. Had one game in 90/91 a three each draw with Brechin City early in the season. Seemed to disappear but I think he was farmed out to Cork Vity.

came back for the last 11 games of the following 44 game season finishing with a shut out in eight of those 11 games with us gaining promotion on goal difference. All at the tender age of 19/20.

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Murray McDermott played for Meadowbank in 1986-87 and the start of 87-88 when Jim McQueen was injured. He actually went on to play in the UEFA Cup for Hearts, away to St Patrick's Athletic.

We always seemed to have good goalies- Fireman Jim had the fine habit of saving penalties, Steve Ellison was good, the third choice was one Rab Douglas (known as Bobby in those days) and towards the end there was the Trinidadian Horace Stoute (who was the Franchise's first keeper).

The worst was probably Alan Carswell if only because we lost 3-1 at home to Alloa when he played his one game on loan. He was not bad for parent club Newtongrange Star though so maybe I'm being harsh 

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Jim McQueen has a faultless record as a Pars keeper. 2 games played 0 goals conceded after we brought him in on a short term deal in 1994 when Westie picked up an injury and new keeper Jim Will (another candidate for worst Pars keeper) had fucked his ankle in a pre-season friendly v Bolton.

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Whereas Zoran Lemajic should be in with a shout of worst goalie for never having kept a clean sheet in 20 appearances or so. An utterly useless flapmaster. 
Was it as many as 20? I thought it was something like 9, then he got injured and Westie kept the jersey again.
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20 minutes ago, GordieBoy80 said:
1 hour ago, Stellaboz said:
Whereas Zoran Lemajic should be in with a shout of worst goalie for never having kept a clean sheet in 20 appearances or so. An utterly useless flapmaster. 

Was it as many as 20? I thought it was something like 9, then he got injured and Westie kept the jersey again.

Probably not. Possibly exaggerated in my mind but he was fucking hopeless. Mind when we signed him and he'd played for Sporting and a few other clubs in Portugal. Offfft foreign signing here we go! Utter mince. 

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23 hours ago, Stellaboz said:

Probably not. Possibly exaggerated in my mind but he was fucking hopeless. Mind when we signed him and he'd played for Sporting and a few other clubs in Portugal. Offfft foreign signing here we go! Utter mince. 

You almost dislike him more than Scott Y Thomson.

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