Smokies get in your eyes

ARBROATH in January.

The Jebel Ali golf resort and spa where the Rangers squad resided while in Dubai on their mid-winter break juts out into the surf, a feature it almost shares with the rather less luxurious Gayfield Park. Although Shrewsbury’s Gay Meadow is closer to water, Arbroath’s home hangs nearer to the sea than any other league ground in Britain. You will have heard the stories of flying cod, and waves frothing over the sea wall towards the far corner flag, just as you will have heard the laments about a dying fish industry which has placed intolerable pressure on a community once said to be held together by the very nets which trawled the North Sea.

The town, then, is in the process of reinventing itself, and is looking outwards rather than inwards, away from those smokie obsessions which might as well have featured in the 1320 declaration of Arbroath so indoctrinated have they become: "From here on no article about the town shall be allowed to conclude without mention of the haddock delicacy for which Arbroath is famed. Oh, and by the way, we are declaring our independence from King Edward too."

Mike Caird, one of nine committee members at the football club, says it is "hard to find an angle" about the football club without recourse to fish, the sea, and, of course, that record scoreline. "There is no sex, no drugs and no rock ‘n’ roll," he continues. "We are all just too nice." He has a point. The low gearings which seem to direct the working rhythms of the town have been disrupted somewhat this week, however. Gayfield has been going like the fairgrounds which occupy the land behind the Seaforth Terrace End each summer, ahead of Rangers’ first visit to the town in a decade.

John Christison, the First Division club’s president, yesterday clambered up on to one of the temporary television camera platforms raised high into the Angus sky, erected to provide a seagull’s eye view of tonight’s game. "I could even see the smoke from the stack at the cement works at Dunbar," he says, having recovered from the exertion if not the exhilaration.

Tonight the club’s horizons stretch still further, with Sky having opted to show the game live. Viewers all around Britain will be invited to sample the Gayfield experience, although one wonders at just how virtual this reality can be. Unless the armchair fan has opened all the windows in the house, has purchased a wind-blowing machine, and has invited a family of seagulls to wheel around the living room lamp shade providing sound effects, one could not truly say they had experienced dear old Gayfield at all.

To understand and appreciate Arbroath it is necessary to wrap up well, and head there. You must look into Tutties Neuk (a bar antiquated in all the best ways). You must also linger awhile in the innovative C.A.F.E. Project, housed in the building once occupied by the Arbroath FC supporters’ club and which provides succour for the town’s disaffected youth, who congregate there each evening. A fish supper from the Golden Haddock on the high street is recommended, while next door lies the equally-splendid Sugar and Spice. In the window of this old-style sweet shop a glass "Scottish Cup" has been placed, packed full of maroon and white boiled sweets. "Come in for Lichties’ Lick to sook at the match," a sign implores, and, well, it would be rude not to.

The benefits of playing this match at Gayfield are abundantly clear. There was of course talk about moving the tie away from Arbroath, to St Johnstone’s McDiarmid Park, and, even more distressingly, back to lumpen old Ibrox itself. The cynics believe Arbroath would have shifted the match were they able - the SFA will only allow a switch of venues if a ground is declared unsafe - though the truth lies far from there.

The Arbroath committee took the decision to stay as a thank you to local firms such as Sugar and Spice, who sponsor Greg Henslee, and Grace Patterson, the shop providing the flowers in the ballroom of the Seaforth hotel, where 220 corporate hospitality customers will be dined pre-match. On the evidence presented it is not difficult to conclude that Arbroath have made completely the right move in deciding not to sell their soul, but to cherish it and keep it in a setting such as this.

"Ever since the draw was made I have seen more Arbroath scarves in here," says Mark McWalter, who helps run the C.A.F.E Project in town, and who himself once played for Arbroath. A local lad, he lined up against Aberdeen in a Scottish Cup tie in the mid-Eighties when aged only 17, and when they were the team to beat. Aberdeen won a game as narrowly contested as 1-0 sounds. The Pittodrie side featured one Alex McLeish, who will today warn his multi-million pound team of the elemental dangers that may be presented.

"It was blowing a gale that day," remembers McWalter, who now manages Arbroath Vics. "It was perfect for us. Arbroath will be praying for a windy, gusting night. A calm night and they’ll get terrorised."

The prologue to this match has not been all sweetness and light. For one thing, Gayfield’s heavily-reduced capacity has caused a head-ache, with the last batch of 70 tickets having gone on sale at 9am on Wednesday. By 9.20 they were gone. Those who casually wandered in after that brandishing their vouchers, collected at last week’s game v Falkirk, left disappointed.

Then yesterday Arbroath made the front page of the Sun, though one imagines the article won’t be framed and displayed in the plush Gayfield board room, along with local hero Bill Brown’s Scotland international cap and the painting of Edward "Ned" Doig, the only player to have been capped when with Arbroath. Beneath the headline "Kippered", the "tight-fisted" Arbroath board are said to have ring-fenced only 2,000 out of the expected 100,000 jackpot for the players.

"A bit of the gloss has been taken off," admits Christison, while manager John Brownlie also expresses disappointment. "Somebody has jumped the gun," he says. "It is obviously a player, because the figures that have come out were only discussed with them. I’m not disputing the figures, but the bottom line has not yet been decided."

Such concerns will be forgotten as soon as Brownlie reads out his team at lunchtime today. As for Rangers, who will hope to record the kind of contest-killing start posted on their last visit to Angus, with Billy Dodds scoring in the opening minute against Forfar last season, the sign which requests people not to park in front of the Gayfield main stand says it all: Gonnae no do that.