Ainslie Park

Spartans 1-2 Peterhead

18th November 2023

Spartans, or The Spartans, or The Spartans Football Club or (worst of all) The Spartan Football Club, or whatever these folks are calling themselves this week, are the latest addition to the rapidly expanding list of clubs who have played in The Scottish League.

Formed originally way back in 1951, players were initially only chosen from individuals smart enough to have graduated from Edinburgh University, but these lofty ideals were soon relaxed.  The club spent the first sixty-odd years of it's existence competing in the East of Scotland League, winning the championship on nine occasions.  In 2013, Spartans were invited to become founder members of the newly-formed Lowland League - this fifth tier of Scottish football intended to (eventually) act as a springboard to League membership.  Albeit through a wilfully convoluted play-off process, designed to favour any incumbent league member who happened to get embroiled in it.

Spartans actually won that inaugural Lowland League championship, but the SPFL blazers had decided to delay introduction of any play-offs until the end of the following season.  The club had to wait until 2018 to get their first stab at a play-off for a Scottish League Two spot, but the fell to Highland League champions Cove Rangers.  The COVID interregnum, allied to the promotion of a pair of very strong former Junior Football sides, hardly aided Spartan's cause over the next few seasons.  But the tail end of season 2022/23 saw the Edinburgh club once again in the play-off mix as Lowland League champions.

Better luck this time as first Brechin City, then Albion Rovers were seen off, to earn the club promotion to the Scottish League Two.

You can enter Ainslie Park via a road, but there is also this wee lane, which (sorta)
reminded me of the entrance to the club's former ground City Park (of more anon). 

The football ground forms part of the Ainslie Park Leisure Centre complex.

As of the time of my visit, a fairly decent fist of things Spartans were making in their new environment.  Sitting in fourth spot, with just two league defeats from twelve, they were hosting table-topping Peterhead this afternoon.  

And a fairly decent match ensued I am pleased to relate.  We saw three goals of varying degrees of spectacularosity (is that a word?), although I rather doubt if the respective goalkeepers who conceded would look back on their attempts not to concede with much pride.

Slightly against the run of play (a free-kick hitting the home crossbar aside), Peterhead took the lead in the 28th minute through Scott ROSS whose (cliche alert) towering header from a corner found the net.  Home 'keeper Blair Carswell appeared to get a firm hand to the ball, but failed to keep it out.

Spartans' equaliser fifteen minutes after the break came when Peterhead keeper Stuart McKenzie misjudged the flight of an innocuous looking free-kick from Cameron RUSSELL; the former allowing the ball to float in at the far post.  Now, this cross/shot was travelling a fair lick I acknowledge, but McKenzie did have a looooong time to watch it's flight and get his feet into position to deal with it.  I felt so anyway.

Both sides began throwing a bit of caution to the wind, as the match entered it's final phase - clearly neither lot satisfied to settle for a draw.  But it was Peterhead's substitute Hamish RITCHIE who scored what proved to be the winner in the 85th minute.  There was a delightful piece of interplay with Aaron Reid to set up the shooting opportunity, but again, the ball from a tight angle just seemed to go through Carswell.

Spartans kitchen-sinked it a bit thereafter, and really should have equalised in stoppage time when Sam Newman headed over when scoring really did look a far simpler thing to do.
 

The main stand at Ainslie Park.

Inside the smaller stand....

....or The Creche, as it is (probably not) known.

I am open to correction here, but I believe I found the seat with
the worst sightlines in British league football

Spartans' current home is Ainslie Park in Edinburgh's Pilton area.  It is a neat little ground, perfectly adequate for the club's current needs - the venue successfully hosted Dundee United earlier in the season.  There is one largish stand along one touchline, which looked around three-quarters full this afternoon.  Whilst in a corner on the opposite side there is a small seated structure, to which more unstable pre-pubescents of the Spartans' support gravitate.

The remainder of the ground is hard-standing, with a grass banking behind the far goal.  And there were a bunch of awfy nice folk in the refreshments hut.

Ainslie Park itself can actually be found pretty much directly across the road from the site of City Park, which had been Spartans' home from 1976-2009, before the site was (rather inevitably) redeveloped for housing.  There is, of course, no trace of the large wooden stand which stood at the ground, but there are clues around of the old place.  The most obvious of which is the large sign which proclaims the residential development as "City Park", with the main road into the place called "City Park Way".

There was a length of wooden fencing which separated the old ground from Pilton Drive and, I cannot of course be sure, but it looks for all the world that a short length of it has been retained.  There are two lengths of the rather more substantial stone wall which ran behind the old stand, still standing.

And, most intriguingly, there are remnants of the main entrance to the ground - down a narrow lane off Ferry Road.  The lane itself has now been impressively reclaimed by nature, but is clearly recognisable for all that.  On the stone pillar to the right of the entrance once was sited a wee sign proclaiming "City Park".  But this is no longer there - hopefully in some club's museum archive locally, rather than having been hoiked off the wall by a local yokel.

The retained City Park wooden fencing?

The old City Park playing surface lies somewhere under this lot.

This wall would have run the whole length of the Eastern side of the ground.

This was the main entrance to the ground back in the day.

This is some very grainy video footage (pre-digital) of City Park.  It gives a glimpse of the long-gone stand, and also shows the Ferry Road entry to the ground.