This website collects some reports and images from Airdire's trip to Norway and Sweden in 1925. This pioneering adventure in Scottish football is one of many interesting details covered in Brian Bollen's new history of the club "Images of Sport: Airdrieonians Football Club" (published 2002). See http://freespace.virgin.net/brian.bollen for more details.
A Coatbridge man myself, and absolutely not a football fan, I did some research for Brian to uncover details of the trip. This was feasible because I live in Norway and speak Norwegian. I started the task as a favour for a friend, but soon became enthusiastically involved digging for details - my fascination being as much about how the Scottish team were viewed by the Norwegians and Swedes as about the footall itself.
I have tried to provide some of the flavour of the trip in two ways. One is a selection of translated extracts of Norwegian newspaper reports of the time. The other is a collection of photos from some of the newspapers. For anyone who is particularly interested, I can provide full copies of all the Norwegian and Swedish newspaper articles I located, or even produce more complete translations of any of the reports.
As I said earlier, I am by no means a football fan. Despite this, I thorougly enjoyed Brian's book on Airdrionians: it is in fact the only book on football I have ever managed to read from cover to cover. I think this is because Brian writes in an interesting way, and manages to position the history of the club itself into a wider context. I am sure that anyone with a real interest in the club, and in football (neither of which I have myself) will enjoy the book even more. Of course, the book includes some details of the Scandinavian trip, but not as much as is included here on the website.
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