Jim Fleeting
He came, he saw, he went away again. That was the short legacy of Jim Fleeting’s reign as manager of Stirling Albion. An average lower league defender, Fleeting was a surprise appointment in the summer of 1988 to take over the club. But take over he did. And how. He revolutionised our attacking style of play, and for the first 3 months of season 1988-89, produced football on the pitch, the likes of which I’d never seen the Albion play. Hopes were very high that promotion would be obtained at the end of the season, and there was no reason to think otherwise. A managerial vacancy opened at Partick Thistle around the end of September, and they declared their interest in our dynamic new manager. Fleeting was not to be moved however, claiming, ‘I have a loyalty to Stirling Albion, a very sincere loyalty I have to say’. The fans were in raptures. Until that is, Kilmarnock, his home town team, came knocking on the door a few weeks later. And before you could say, ‘It’s alright, he won’t leave’, he left. It wasn’t the fact that he joined his local club as manager, after all, most of us would given the chance, it was his exclamation of loyalty to the cause a few weeks earlier that caused most consternation among the fans. Something that has still not been forgiven by many supporters today. |