Fullarton Park

Vale of Clyde 4-0 Kilbirnie Ladeside

8th November 2025

Way back in 1988, when I was helping to run Bathgate Thistle Football Club, we were drawn against Vale of Clyde in the fourth round of the Scottish Junior Cup.  When, in the weeks leading up to the match, the club had a match postponed, a bunch of us committee folks crammed into a car and drove through to the east end of Glasgow to watch our forthcoming opponents - on some sort of half-arsed spying mission.

Vale of Clyde were playing a league match against Kilsyth Rangers (I am pretty sure it was).  I can recall being impressed by the size of the crowd - a good few hundred, if memory serves, but shocked by the state of the playing surface.

I know it had been raining heavily, but the pitch just appeared to consist of an oval of grass in the middle, with all four corners of the playing surface, and most of the two penalty boxes, little more than what looked like mud-soaked ash.  In the incessant drizzle, it just seemed a particularly brutal place to play football.  

I have no recollection who won.

My primitive programme from the 1988 cup tie.

I visited once more in the intervening years - a whistle-stop 30 minute drop in when I was collecting footage for my Caledonia Dreaming video series, but I have no recollection of that match at all.  The clip may be found on YouTube below:

Vale of Clyde 3-2 Cumbernauld United (30/11/96)
  
Today's encounter saw both sides sitting mid table in the First Division (or second tier) of the West of Scotland League.  Indeed each had identical records of P10, W3, D2, L5, so a close match could reasonably have been expected.

Unfortunately for the visitors, they were pretty much blown away by a devastating first-half virtuoso display by Tyler WRIGHT.  The Vale left winger gave the Kilbirnie full back a torrid afternoon; he scoring his side's second goal and setting up a tap-in for a teammate.  The lad also picked up his own second and his side's fourth early in the second half. 

 The leafy approach to Fullarton Park along Easterhill Street.

There is a neat little scrolling LED light sign outside the ground.

Fullarton Park - Vale of Clyde FC

 Ah didnae win.

Inside The Tin Pail Cabin.

"A pie and a coffee, please."

 

   

 In the trees, behind one goal there appeared to be some
sort of drum graveyard.

Vale's Tyler Wright (in blue)

Late on, Vale of Clyde enjoyed a flurry of corner kicks.
All of which came to naught.

Always good advice, I feel.

In (aptly) injury time, a Kilbirnie player took a sore whack to the head.

Time up.