When the stars played against The Grapes
Kippen FC v Dulka Pumpherston, 21.08.1994
Kippen FC had the pleasure of hosting a section of Scotland International stars on 21st of August 1994 when they hosted the legendary charity team Dulka Pumpherston. Dukla Pumpherston is a charity football team based in Scotland, and it was captained by Scottish football pundit Chick Young.
The name was based on the fictional team “Dukla Pumpherston Sawmill and Tannery” created by Tony Roper in 1980s comedy programme Naked Radio; the name is a comic juxtaposition of the sophisticated European-sounding name of Czech team Dukla Prague with that of tiny Scottish village Pumpherston. Roper himself has also played for the team. We believe that there were two such games but the programme we have in the archive relates to the game in summer of 1994. The contact came from Mr Watt at The Cross Keys who knew Jimmy Bone.
The players have been described as a motley crew of former professional players and television personalities who tour the country – indeed the world – enjoying themselves while raising cash for worthy causes. They have been described as “a drinking team with a football problem”. The ad hoc roster (or that of similarly informal opposing charity teams) has, at various times, included football broadcaster. It was great that the two co founders made it to Kippen to play along side an amazing array of talent who had accumulated over 100 Scotland caps between them and played in several World Cups and of course we had a Lisbon Lion too!
Like most things with Dukla the team selection was pretty fluid but the original line up was beyond impressive.
Alan Rough
Ally Hunter
John Brownlie
Andy Ritchie
Alex MacDonald
Chic Young
Tony Higgins
Tony Roper
Tommy Gemmill
Gordon Smith
Danny McGrain
Jackie McNamara
Stuart Rafferty
Dave Mackinnon
John Blackley
John McCormack
Facing the stars that day Kippen had a slight less impressive squad to pick from.
John Lamb, Kenny Thomson, Raymond Ainslie, Davie Brown, Sandy Edminston, Craig Faller, Willie Mills, Alan Thomson, Scott Burnett, Peter Mitchell, Derek Reid, Davie Montgomery Alan Ainslie Jimmy Denovan and apparently according to the official programme “some good players too”.
The story of the match is like something akin to watching the Harlem Globetrotters where Kippen raced to a two goal lead after 20 minutes. The Dukla captain the most imperious of full backs, Danny McGrain, gathered his troops around him after the second goal had been scored. Nobody knows what he said but what we do know is that the Grapes team had prodded a sleeping giant from its slumber and the consequences that followed were a good old pumping. The Dulka team started to turn on the style and scored 9 goals without reply. Some of the strongest memories of the day surrounds the mercurial Morton star Andy Ritchie who told the crowd in advance that he would perform 3 nutmegs on his marker during the match. Amazingly when he shouted the warning he was going to do it his poor marker still couldn’t stop him.
Andy was a master of the dead ball and scored many superb free kicks ( see many of them on Your Tube) and when he lined up to take a free kick against the tiring Kippen team they feared the worst as he was bound to steer the Dukla team to double figures. However what he didn’t expect was a youngster Willie Mills in goal, who produced what was called a career best moment to dive down low and tip the spectacular free kick around the post. Several of the international stars give the boy a pat on the back for that.
More memories of the game will be added here once we collect them AND look out for us seeing Dukla At Kippen in the again – maybe to celebrate the 30th Anniversary.
