The 125 Greatest Pars of All Time

New book charting the best players ever to play for Dunfermline marks the start of club's 125th anniversary celebrations

Dunfermline Athletic will be 125 years old in 2010, but the club are making an early start to celebrating their century and a quarter with the publication of a book to honour their all-time top players. ///
	...	Co-authors Duncan Simpson and Gordon Baird decided to go for the top 125 players to match the number of years that the club has been in existence, but getting it down to that number from the thousands who have played for the Pars, and then agreeing an order from first to 125th has been a huge task. "We decided that this wasn't the sort of list that could be put to a popular vote. There are a lot of players in this book that many ordinary fans will never have heard of, and indeed we hadn't ourselves until we'd done some fairly hefty research.

"Lists like this are always controversial because it's all about opinions, but it should give fans the chance to debate just who have been the very best Pars in the last 125 years."

East End Park's Director of Football Jim Leishman is one who is likely to appear in the top 125 and he had this to say about the publication:
"I think that this is another important contribution to the club's history. We tend to talk about the great players from the 1960s, but every era produced some wonderful talent so it makes interesting reading. Its publication is the first event of a large number that we are planning for 2010 to celebrate the 125 years."

Sir Alex Ferguson is another who features, and he very kindly agreed to write the introduction to the book. In his piece he comments, "I often say that history repeats itself and there is nothing that is impossible in football. If Dunfermline can get inspiration from some of the characters in the pages of this book, and if new heroes can emerge, who knows what could happen in the future?"

The 125 Greatest Pars of All Time provides photographs, biographies and statistics on the top 125 Pars, and includes players and officials from the nineteenth century to last season. The authors decided not to include any of the present-day Pars - that will be for a future publication! The book also includes team pictures from the last 125 years and a memorabilia section.

The memorabilia part will be of interest because it includes images of Pars memorabilia not seen before, including the earliest match programmes, photographs and cigarette cards. It also includes the entry from the 1885 SFA Handbook, which featured Dunfermline Athletic for the first time. According to the Handbook, Andrew Westwood Junior was Secretary, the team played in maroon jerseys and blue knickers, and there were 60 members!

The 125 Greatest Pars of All Time will be officially launched on Saturday 19th December 2009 in the DAFC Christmas Store at Kingsgate Shopping Centre at 9.00am.

The 125 Greatest Pars of All Time is available only through the official DAFC Club Shop, on line or through mail order, priced £8.