Alex Massie Alex Massie

A Great New Year’s Day at Easter Road*

The always excellent fitba blog More than Mind Games has a great story about football in the fog here, but it’s not as good as this one, that became the basis for a Radio Scotland play five or six years ago:

IT IS not, on the face of it, a perfect scenario for radio. A football match so shrouded in fog that the commentator can’t see the game. Players who can’t see as far as their bootlaces. Conditions so bad that many are not aware that the action is over for 10 minutes after the final whistle. But throw in the Second World War, a need to keep the Nazis misinformed and the Edinburgh derby, and you have the perfect recipe for a rip-roaring play. The work in question, Playing A Blinder, is based on the New Year’s Day match in 1940 between Hibs and Hearts, and will be aired, appropriately enough, on New Year’s Day on Radio 4.

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