A good player will play anywhere!

About this recording

Donald Eyers, from Lybster, shares some stories about his time as a footballer with Brora Rangers and Wick Academy in the 1970s.

At a young age, Donald found that football held a much greater appeal than working on the croft. He was so dedicated that he once played seven games in six days.

Donald recalls taking part in inter-district encounters between Wick and Thurso, providing seven assists in one of those games, as well as representing Caithness in inter-county matches against Orkney. He is proud to have been part of a Caithness select that won the Scottish Cup for youth clubs in 1971.

Donald’s preferred position was left-back and he was a reliable penalty-taker.

He looks back on some of his experiences with Brora in the Highland League, then with Academy in the North Reserve League, and talks about many of the talented footballers he played alongside. Two who feature prominently in his memories are Lybster duo Jamesie Mackay, who went on to play for Hibernian, and Michael Larnach, who had a spell at Newcastle United.

One of Donald’s “claims to fame” from his Brora years is having a penalty saved by Jim Leighton, who was playing in goal for Deveronvale at the time and went on to be part of the most successful Aberdeen team in history before moving to Manchester United, and is one of Scotland’s most capped internationalists.

Donald also reveals how in cold weather he was able to pull on a natty pair of woollen gloves matching the black-and-white stripes of his Academy kit… thanks to his mother-in-law, a keen knitter. And he tells of the unorthodox signing-on fee he received on joining the Helmsdale club Bunillidh Thistle.

Now in his seventies, he is sometimes asked how the Academy team from his era would get on against the present-day side. “Football is a different game now,” Donald says. “By half-time we’d have had five on the park because of the tackling we used to do for a start. It was no rougher than the Highland League or the county league because everybody played the same game. If you won the ball and hit somebody, that was it. You had won the ball; the fact that if you followed through and caught somebody… it was part of the game, it’s as simple as that.”

Pitch conditions could sometimes be difficult, and tactics were always evolving, but Donald’s mantra is: “A good player will play anywhere!”

As he looks back on his time as a footballer, he says he realises how lucky he was to have had so many high-quality players as team-mates.

Donald’s daughter Tracy also features in the Wick Voices collection. Search for Tracy Chisholm (“Wherever you are in the world there’s Caithness folk”).

Gallery photos:

Wick Academy’s successful team in the late 1970s, when they were North Reserve League champions, with Donald Eyers on the left in the front row. Back (from left): J MacDonald (manager), D Rosie, G Topping, P Miller, D McAdie, A Bremner, R Sutherland, P George, C Harper (chairman). Front: D Eyers, E Larnach, D Lyall, W Wydmuch, I Munro, G Maxwell, J Harrold, S Harper.

Donald with some of his memorabilia, including a copy of the programme for Lybster's 1987 centenary match against Dunbeath, while attending a football reminiscence group meeting at Nucleus in Wick in March 2025.