Dundee v PTFC 10th October, 2009

Gary Grant and Steve Paterson joined CK and I on our first trip this season to see Thistle, who had just gone to the top of the table, against the money bags of Dundee, most people's pre-season favourites to return to the SPL.

Steve joined us for the first time on one of these trips because of a family connection - his wife's grandfather used to play for Dundee (and Scotland) - and he had never been to Dens Park.

We stopped off for lunch at the Fisherman's in Broughty Ferry - the only pub in Scotland to have appeared in every edition of the Good Beer Guide since its inception over 30 years ago. It's a great little pub, but we caught them on the hop a bit yesterday - the first few pints poured were a bit warm and cloudy - a product of being the first pourings of the day. It put poor Gary off and he made a point of ordering Pieroni for his second beer of the day:


Here we all are, lined up in the bar just after lunch:



We headed off to the match and parked the car, but the Sat Nav took us to the wrong end of Dens Road, and we faced a longish walk uphill in the relatively warm weather and we were all a bit hot and sweaty by the time we made it in to the Jags end of the ground:

The teams came out in warm sunshine - the Dundee fans were mostly in the opposite end in the Bobby Cox stand:
On previous trips to Dens Park, we sat in the main stand, but it's one of the most curious stands I've ever seen - it doesn't run parallel to the pitch - it's v-shaped, which means that the closer you try to sit to the centre line, the further you are from the pitch:

Anyway, the atmosphere was much better in the Thistle end and we all thoroughly enjoyed the match. Ian McCall's team, in particular, play a very attractive brand of passing football and I think our guests were very pleasantly surprised by the high quality of the football on show in the First Division - much better than anything we've seen at Pittodrie in recent years. Unfortunately, however, it was Dundee who supplied the punch with two well taken goals, albeit against the run of play.

After the match, we walked down Tannadice St past Dundee's SPL neighbours and another 2 stands named after legends of that club:

(Click on photos to enlarge).

Next trip is on Saturday 31st October down to Easter Road to watch the Dons in the SPL - hope the entertainment is as good as yesterday.