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Date: 11th August 2026
Robert Louis Stevenson talk and suddenly we are into football history – Denis Frize
On Friday night I went to a meeting of the Robert Louis Stevenson Society in the New Town .
The speaker was Jeremy Hodges, I then spent the après-lecture in the company of him and Mrs. Hodges.
Yes. The same Mrs. Hodges as worked at the ‘Fa[kirk Herald’
So I uncovered my relationship with you through writing for the SFSA.
So we found a lot in common. We both had lived in Stenhousemuir and I was trained meticulously as a teacher of English in Larbert High. Mrs B was of course Stenhousemuir through and through. But so were the antecedents of Sheila, my wife since that day on the 1st August 1969.
Her grandfather, John MacDougall, was the Stenhousemuir goalie immediately before 1914 And Willie Maley came down from Glasgow and offered him the job of Celtic goalie.
But he had to have his parents’ permission to sign. And his parents wouldn’t allow him because he had ‘ a bad chest’
Or…..as Mrs H and I both jaloused…..
That pre-1914 Celtic team were the first to win the League nine times in a row.
So Sheila’s grandfather would in all likelihood have been in the famous Wee Red Book as ,MacDougall J. Celtic and Scotland.
As a wee boy I met another of that team, Browning J., Celtic and Scotland.
He kept his newsagent’s in Main Street, Alexandria, just round the corner from where I lived. Sheila knew his grand daughter as they both went to Main Street School. It just goes to show that our fitba history is all around us if we choose to look for it.
Denis
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Posted in: Fan's Blog, Latest News
Tags: Celtic, Scottish football, Stenhousemuir