The Thistle is the unlucky local football team of Drumsagart, a drab industrial town in Lanarkshire. Cursed with poverty, an ineffective president and a string of defeats, the Thistle team members are running low on morale, especially when it seems like there are many people against them...
Within the severe and depressed slums of Drumsagart, rife with unemployment and discontent, the members of Thistle cling to their game as an escape. And when they actually start winning, a momentum grows up in the community around them, as they come to represent ambition and hope. The Holy Grail of football, the Scottish Junior Cup, glitters at the end of a string of matches and suddenly the entire town of Drumsagart is depending on it...
'As a story-teller, Jenkins has few equals'
* Tribune *Robin Jenkins was born in 1912. He studied at Glasgow University and travelled and worked in Spain, Afghanistan and Borneo. He is the author of over twenty novels, including the acclaimed Fergus Lamont and The Cone Gatherers. In 2003 he was awarded a Saltire Award for Life-time Achievement. He died in 2005.