Today Morton travel to Falkirk, birthplace of Italian footballer Giovanni Moscardini.
Huh? What?
Yes. Read about it here. Or here.
Or here: Moscardini was born and died in Scotland, but he spent most of his playing career in Italy in the 1920s, and is thus one of the earliest examples of oriundi, football players with dual nationality who represent the country of their ancestors rather than the country of their birth. By virtue of his feats for AS Braga and the Italian national team he qualifies as a notable Falkirkite.
I was going to call him one of the earliest notable Italian Scots, but in light of the Antonine Wall, it would have been a preposterous statement.
Morton and Falkirk have the top two scorers in the First Division: Moroccan Farid El Alagui has seven goals in league play and sixteen altogether for Falkirk; Peter MacDonald has seven league goals and eleven all told for the Ton.
Falkirk are the only club still in contention for the Scottish Cup, Scottish League Cup, and Scottish Challenge Cup. And they have not yet lost a league game at home. But when these two clubs met at Cappielow in September the result was a 3 - 2 victory for Morton. To overtake Falkirk in the table today Morton must win by four goals.
Here's a question. A win is worth three points. In a draw each team earns one point. What happens to the third point? Does it go to heaven, or hell? Does it waft into the upper atmosphere to bond with the ozone? Does it contribute to the trade imbalance? If you were to assign all the unclaimed third points to a phantom team, where would that team be in the standings? Let's call our phantom team Third Lanark, and give it all the unclaimed third points of the First Division. As of today the Thirds would have twenty points and sit fourth behind Dundee, who also have twenty points but with a goal difference of +1. Third Lanark's goal difference is perforce 0, based as it is on twenty tie games.
Yesterday's experimental Friday night game between Motherwell and Hibs was abandoned at the half when the floodlights caught fire. Good crowd though.
Last weekend the fans in Dumfries were calling Peter Weatherson fat.
[Falkirk 1, Morton 0. Falkirk goal by El Alagui. Morton slide to sixth, fifteen points out of first place, and four out of last.]
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