My hometown football team has made the front pages of many newspapers today but not for the best of reasons. Did they win a cup final? Did they win the league? These are questions that you may have asked but the answer to both is no (this is Airdrie United we are talking about after all, lol) what they did was screw up something incredibly simple causing great anger and for once even a life long fan such as I can't ignore their error.
To mark remembrance day, on Saturday Airdrie United used a World War 2 picture of soldiers leaving on a train as the cover of their official programme along with the logo for the services charity PoppyScotland and the words "Lest We Forget". What's wrong with that? You may ponder well the image they used just happened to be of Nazi soldiers.
Club secretary Ann Marie Ballantyne said "A few people have picked up on this. It certainly wasn't deliberate." she also added "We were told the soldiers were Australian." This is obviously a huge mistake on the part of the club but unfortunately when a small element of your fan base utilise the Nazi salute when singing football songs this isn't going over well with most people around the country and this topic has lit up a lot of Scottish football forums. Spokesman Leigh James of PoppyScotland said "Obviously the club meant well."
My guess is not many football fans will be forgetting this blunder and will be reminding the club from the Away stand at many Airdrie home games to come. Here's a link to the full story: http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2010/11/15/football-club-s-poppy-tribute-backfires-after-using-picture-of-nazi-soldiers-on-match-programme-86908-22718341/
When I told my Gran about this story she had the opposite reaction to it than I expected she actually laughed and said "bunch of numpties." So maybe others will take that approach and acknowledge it for what it truly was a huge error and not a deliberate joke anyhoo...
Thanking you
The Housebound Writer
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