So what does it matter? And why does it affect those who have a fleeting relationship with Dumbarton, if they have any?
The response to the fallout from Dumbarton FC’s administration tells us a lot about modern football, the complexities of business and, most importantly, the profound value of a sport to the community.
Those who chip in a few shillings to help Dumbarton survive do so not just because it could happen to their club but because the Sons are part of a wider family. It’s a sentimental but true notion.
Scottish youth football went into a brief but dramatic freeze on Saturday. On the Road was therefore pushed into a rest area and Berwick and then Alloa became no-go areas.
At the end of the motorway, along the road to Loch Lomond, Dumbarton Stadium stood weather-proofed in the shadow of the Rock. There were no home games scheduled for Saturday, but the stadium, quiet and defiant, still represents something. It could be summed up as survival.
The story of Dumbarton and the administration now involves the police, so one is careful when approaching the details, but there is a lot that touches the soul of any fan. There is a slight shudder in Scotland when such spiritual terms are used in relation to football.
Dumbarton Stadium, and the surrounding grounds, have been at the center of much of the controversy over the club’s future.
The club is now fighting for its survival after entering administration last week.
Dumbarton fans have come together and been raising money to help the club.
The round ball game has been vilified or ignored by generations of politicians or arts activists. He has been considered dirty, even violent and antisocial. The game that means so much to so many people in this nation has never been properly celebrated in music or literature.
The great Scottish football novel has the shortest shortlist, along with Robin Jenkins’ The Thistle and the Grail, which usually comes top. But where is the great opera of football? Where are the magnificent oil captures of football scenes and personalities?
This reflection may provoke malicious smiles and even ridicule among some, but there is surely a chasm between how the game captures a significant portion of the population and its representation in society at large.
All this contributes to a harsh and dangerous attitude towards football. It can be clearly seen in the attitudes of the political classes.
Football is summoned to Holyrood or Parliament like a headteacher summoning a troublesome pupil. Let’s have a summit on the attacks in a match between Celtic and Rangers. Let’s not let those oiks have a drink at a game. Let us all engage in performative, lazy, and ultimately useless rhetoric. Let your jaw drop at the difference in attitude towards watching a football match compared to an international rugby match.
The truth, however, remains elusive for many in positions of power. Those big clubs contribute enormously to a city’s economy. How much, for example, will go through the coffers of transport companies, hoteliers, publicans and restaurant owners when 60,000 people gather at Celtic Park on Wednesday?
Paradoxically, the importance of football is revealed at its lowest levels in terms of funding and fan participation. This is where On the Road has its Saturday drink. It is distilled, powerful and the very water of life.
Dumbarton Stadium has been the watering hole of choice on a couple of occasions in recent seasons. One visit, of course, was to celebrate the 150th birthday party in 2022. Club historian Jim McAllister told me the origin story.
In January, Dumbarton hosted Rangers in the cup, but even then there were warning signs.
«On December 21, 1872, some brilliant players from the city went to watch the Queen’s Park match against Vale of Leven at Crosshill, Glasgow. It may have been in the first Hampden, but it may not have been.
‘What we do know is that they were impressed with what they saw and the next day they met and decided to form a football club. The next day they appointed three officials to form the club and on the 28th Dumbarton played its first game.
Within 20 years, Dumbarton won the first Scottish league titles. They shared the first (1891) with the Rangers and took the second (1892) on their own.
“We have something to hold on to,” McAllister says. ‘Only six Scottish clubs have won more than one (first division) title in 130 years of Scottish football. Dumbarton is one of them.
For those who like to take the informal quiz in a pub, the other five are Rangers, Celtic, Hibernian, Hearts and Aberdeen.
The historical importance of the Sons is, therefore, solid. Those of us of a certain age can enhance that with memories of Boghead, the story of Johan Cruyff’s signing and the shocking looks of Roy McCormack, from 1966 to 1976, treating the centre-backs as if they were black bags that must be thrown in the trash with a chilling liveliness.
But another visit to Dumbarton, in Covid times, revealed its true value. The date was also 2022 but it was January 2 and one of those occasions when you could only access a piece of land when you had an identity document, a vaccination certificate, passed a temperature test and then took a double six.
These barriers were overcome with some ease by people like Tom Elliott and Paddy Reilly, who turned up on the floor with the results of their own lateral flow tests. They are men of a certain era. Both had been watching the Sons for decades. It is suspected that an outbreak of bubonic plague would not have given them pause.
There may be dark clouds overhead, but Dumbarton fans will fight for their club.
They were individuals, of course, but representative of a wider current of Scottish football. It is a tribe that gathers in the hundreds at Hurlford, in the dozens at Easterhouse FA or in the tens of thousands in the Premiership.
Football is part of their lives, an integral part of their being. This takes many forms, but is most inspiring when linked to community, now a buzzword but always a powerful force.
This is where clubs, many located in the heart of deprivation, offer message bags, free libraries, hot food services or even prescription delivery. They’re also basically just a place to go.
From Fraserburgh to Gretna, and most places in between, you meet the fan for whom Saturday’s game is the highlight of the week in terms of connecting with others.
One of them was David Dickie of Irvine Meadow, who spoke to me a year ago when he was almost eighty. “You come here, meet friends and have fun,” he said simply.
It is the most succinct statement of the importance of the game in Scotland. That is why the events at Dumbarton matter to those of us who do not support the club but are watching with concern from the sidelines.
Dumbarton’s situation has its own peculiarities in terms of land deals, but most clubs in Scotland are mainly striving for survival. Survival is the word most often heard when officials are asked what their ambitions are for next season.
This is particularly true in the lower reaches of the SPFL, where banishment from the league results in a place in the Lowland League with little prospect of returning to the main stage. It has been the destination of the likes of East Stirlingshire, Albion Rovers, Cowdenbeath, Gretna and Berwick Rangers.
Their enormous jaws are ready to consume other victims. Dumbarton is not there yet, of course. But now they are favorites to play next season in League 2, where the trapdoor causes constant anguish to its participants.
Dumbarton’s supporters are therefore enduring the pain. That’s why so many fans from other clubs support him. We felt just a hint of that pain, accepting that it could be us and knowing that it would matter so much.