What becomes of the broken-hearted? Or perhaps more to the point, what becomes of the scunnered, the disillusioned and the bored? For many of us bitten by the football bug, it’s often a lifelong condition, almost like a kind of malaria: manageable but prone to sudden, intense flare-ups, and impossible to cure.

But sometimes diehard supporters stop going to matches after years or even decades of faithful attendances. Why? Death is an obvious reason, or having to work on a Saturday, increased family responsibilities, poor health, the cost of living, moving away from the area, taking up a competing pursuit, falling out with friends, taking the huff with the club directors, or quite simply becoming fed up with football.

Precious few leave to follow a different team, and those who do should be treated with suspicion and their credibility doubted. There is always a theory or half-story about why a fellow supporter might have disappeared. Curious about their true reasons, I set out to track down five individuals who were once permanent fixtures in the lower leagues of Scottish football but have since vanished from the scene.

Mr Virgin Records

In the 1980s, as a shy and impressionable teenager, I was fascinated by an unusual figure on the terraces who seemed to come from another world. That much was true, because this person came from Glasgow, and yet was a faithful follower of a football team in Fife. Even more intriguing was the air of urbane about him: mid 20s, tweed jacket, moustache, Hamlet cigar, and always carrying a Virgin Records poly bag containing – mystery of mysteries – the latest addition to his LP collection, bought on the way to the game in some big city or another.

He became known as “Mr Virgin Records” because we didn’t know his real name. None of us had been brave enough to speak to someone so sophisticated or otherworldly. He would turn up at every East Fife away game and the occasional home match, always travelling alone, and always finding a place on the terraces where he could keep his own company. A real cool cat.

Then he disappeared, sometime in the mid-to-late 1980s. There had been no clues, no obvious disenchantment, no sign of his interest tailing off. Just gone. Never to be seen again.

“I didn’t have much choice,” says Fraser Forsyth, now 62, when recently tracked down to his home in West Sussex. “My job took me down to Southampton in 1985, then I moved up to Crawley, and I have been here ever since. I did go to see football at times with mates here who supported clubs like Portsmouth, Southampton and Chelsea, but it was only ever on a one-off basis. I have occasionally managed to arrange family holidays in Scotland to coincide with taking in a game or two – Cullen was handy for an away match at Elgin City – but there are only so many times you can get away with that.”

Health issues mean Fraser has been unable to travel to Scotland in recent years, but he did manage to attend an away match in the Scottish Challenge Cup last season – against The New Saints in Oswestry.

“When I was young, I lived near Hampden and my dad and my brother were Celtic fans, but I was uneasy about the Rangers-Celtic stuff: ‘Tell me your football team and I will tell you the way you vote,’ that kind of thing. I didn’t feel that was right, so I chose a different direction and went on to enjoy fantastic days at the football which I wouldn’t have had if I had supported one of the big Glasgow teams.

“That never left me, and when the chance came to see East Fife again last season, on the English-Welsh border of all places, the excitement was still there. I just loved it. I miss it, even after all this time, and I would still want to go to most games if I could. I watch all the highlights on YouTube, but as anyone knows, it’s not the same.”

With Fraser’s sudden disappearance now explained, it left only the mystery of what was in the Virgin Records bag to solve. “Yes, I had a new one every week!” laughs Fraser, sounding surprised and unnerved that anyone remembers this detail. “My routine was to get an LP, a book for the journey, breakfast at the station, and away we go.

“The range was eclectic. The LP might have been Gil Scott-Heron, a bit of blues, maybe something completely different, The Triffids, The Blasters, or some soul. One day it nearly came a cropper after we got a result at Easter Road. In fact, it wasn’t an LP that day, it was two 12-inch singles – No Woman No Cry by Bob Marley and Sexual Healing by Marvin Gaye, if you must know. There was a big rammy outside the ground so my brother and I ran up to someone’s door, rang the bell and pleaded insanity. It worked, and the pair of us survived, as did the records.

“It wasn’t the only time my LP would save the day. There were some good days out, and there were some bad days out. And if it was a bad day at the football, I always had my new record to look forward to when I got home. It’s a cliche, but those were the days. Happy days indeed.”

Stevie’s pal John

Stevie and John were joined at the hip. There was never one without the other, and Stevie’s position as secretary of the supporters’ club – a grand title for “the guy who runs the buses to away games” – saw John installed as de facto assistant secretary. At half-time at home games, out would come Stevie’s A4 hardback ledger, and names would be taken for the next away match, along with pickup locations. A queue formed, kept orderly by John as Stevie scribbled down the vital details. Keeping the travelling supporters just as orderly on the bus was not as easy, but that’s a story best left untold.

When the supporters’ club bus picked up Stevie en route to away games, he would often be accompanied by his father, Danny, and his brother, Martin, but without fail John would be with him. Danny was a legendary figure who commanded respect and did not suffer fools, particularly players who had not been trying. “They couldnae beat Casey’s drum!” remains a memorable cry at the full-time whistle, because to this day I have no idea who Casey was, or why he needed a drum (although I could understand the sentiment).

John was a quiet figure by contrast. When he did not turn up one week, we presumed he was unwell, or on holiday. Then Stevie broke the shocking news on the bus: John had said he was done. Not coming back. Finito. Aye, we thought, a likely story. He will get over it. They always do. And yet, it turned out he was not kidding.

“He just said he’d had enough and would not go back,” recalls Stevie, who remains a regular with his brother Martin. “Mind you, my dad said the same as he left the game most weeks and kept coming back! As far as I know, John never went to football again. He must have meant what he said. We’re talking 40 years ago now, so I think if he was ever going to come back it would have happened by now. It was a shame, but these things happen. He got married at that time, so life would change. But there might be a simpler reason. Maybe watching East Fife put him off football for life.”

The Fintry Fifer

When it comes to memorable characters, the “Fintry Fifer” would be right up there at any club in the land. He was last seen at a game in the late 1990s but remains unforgettable for anyone who ever encountered him.

The Dundonian, real name Jim, was the classic home-and-away diehard, a genuine fanatic whose life appeared to be more devoted to his football team than anything else. He was unmissable, sporting the same replica 1980s shirt every week, with his jacket stuffed into a supermarket plastic bag. What made him unmissable, however, were his shouts from the terracing. “Silky soccer!” was a trademark call as the ball was hoofed up route one, along with “Excite me, East Fife!” and the dubious-but-possibly-innocent “Up my end, Scotty!” as he encouraged his favourite player Robert Scott to attack the opposition goal, which Jim would stand behind.

He always travelled to games on public transport, occasionally enjoying a refreshment, and was at times accompanied by a friend who would turn up at games with a six-pack of crisps and scoff the lot in 90 minutes. Crisp-a-thon, we called him.

Jim’s dedication to his team saw his travel travails featured in the sports pages of the Dundee Evening Telegraph under the headline “Fintry’s follow, follow Fifer”, and his own work published in the club fanzine was just as lyrical. Try this sample verse from a lengthy poem lamenting a summer that had dragged on without football:

It’s Saturday and the sun is shining
Perhaps a visit to RSS Discovery
A step back in time, into history
Yet I’m not happy
You almost feel that Captain Scott is standing there
But he’s not the Robert Scott I long to see.

“The first time I met Jim, I had to show him ID to prove who I was, because he didn’t believe me,” recalls the former fanzine editor Michael McColl. “That was what he was like – he was different. He became a cult figure, and I was happy to give him his own column in the fanzine.

“Then a few years later, he just disappeared off the face of the earth. He just seemed to vanish. No one knew what happened to him. I became aware that he had poor health, but heard no more than that, and I believe he passed away a few years ago. I doubt if anyone knows for sure. I don’t think anyone really got to know the real Jim or his background.”

It was time to find out. Inquiries revealed that Jim was the only boy of five children born into a farming family near Scotlandwell. He took an interest in football from his mother who supported Aberdeen, but opted for East Fife as his own team. After spending time in London, he trained to be a schoolteacher, then settled in a housing scheme in Dundee when he returned to Scotland, hence becoming the “Fintry Fifer”.

Times were hard, and life clearly had its ups and downs for Jim, who did not continue in teaching and instead became a builder’s labourer. He did indeed suffer long-term poor health, as Jim himself had hinted at during an away game against Dundee at Christmas 1996, which might well have been the last match he attended. The 6-0 drubbing at Dens came just 11 days after a 7-1 home defeat to Dundee, a shambles which the manager Jimmy Bone had rather hastily promised “will never happen again”. If the second of these back-to-back humiliations was indeed the Fintry Fifer’s farewell, then who could blame him.

It also turned out that Jim had in fact died as recently as 2023, at 72, almost 30 years after we last saw him. The shout of “Silky soccer!” has never been heard at Methil again, and probably never will be.

Ritchie’s wee brother

Grant Malcolm always looked like the wee boy who had come to the game because he had no choice in the matter, dragged along because the only alternative was an afternoon at the shops with mum. His dad and big brother Ritchie would never miss a match, and when Grant became too heavy to lift over the turnstiles he joined the ranks of the season ticket holders. Even then, he was always the wide-eyed wee brother who was seen but not heard. An adult acquaintance at the match might remember his name now and then, but “Ritchie’s wee brother” was an easy fall-back.

Yet, during that time when other children might have been tempted to report emotional abuse to Childline, Grant became hooked, and he was a matchday mainstay for almost four decades – until a global pandemic intervened. “The Covid break forced a change of habit and new ones came in,” reflects Grant, now 46. “I stopped going to the football. I stopped other things as well, like going to the gym I’d been a member of for 20 years. And although I still had a season ticket for the football, it was hard to get the time to attend games.

“My boys attend the Fife Football Performance Academy, so when Covid interrupted I stepped up and learned to coach. I went a bit crazy with it and took it all the way to the Uefa C licence. Coming out of Covid I was coaching my boys and I was also coaching at Raith Ladies, to get the experience required for the Uefa qualification. I was on the pitch six days a week and something had to give. I guess stopping going to the match on a Saturday all boils down to enforced changes of habit and overload from other commitments.

“Being involved with the boys’ team and the ladies’ team meant I was getting my football fix in other places. It’s also true that results during this period meant there wasn’t much to miss about going to the match, other than gloom and disappointment. And I also don’t think the quality of lower league football is what it once was. Strangely, after all that time, I didn’t miss it. It was really surprising how something that was a lifelong obsession was so easily replaced.”

Popular belief is that you can break a habit in 21 days, although research published in 2009 came up with a timescale of 18 to 254 days. After an absence of around 1000 days, did Grant think he had gone for good?

“The funny thing is, I’ve been able to go to a few games this season, and enjoyed it,” he says. “The football has been far from pretty, but the arrival of Dick and Ian Campbell has been good entertainment. It has also helped that the rail link to Leven has opened, and for the first time in my life I can get the train to home games, which has been fun. Maybe it’ll become a habit again. It makes a big difference when going to the game is a positive experience.”

Mackintosh Man

One of the sadly inevitable experiences for devoted supporters of lower-league teams is the passing of the generations. The comforting familiarity of seeing the same faces in the usual places takes a hit when time claims another beloved figure, taking with them a lifetime of dedication. It is even harder when these fans take with them their first-hand accounts of the long-gone glory days.

East Fife were among the best teams in the country when they first went to matches but the decline over the subsequent decades has been irreversible. It is difficult to have too much respect for the fans who stayed loyal when the rain came, and did not stop. Maybe that is why one gentleman of that generation would always come to matches dressed in a Mackintosh raincoat, come hail or shine, whether it be a late summer afternoon or darkest December. Just in case.

Every week without exception he would arrive in the raincoat, buttoned all the way up to the top, topped off with a flat cap. The ensemble was completed by his leather gloves, sturdy shoes and a club scarf which had seen better days – in every sense – tucked flat inside his coat. And while he would not be mistaken for Beau Brummell, he was always smart.

His ears were … well, let’s just say they were a distinguishing feature, and shone bright red beneath the bunnet that was never taken off. He would stand – and later sit – alone, showing little emotion or animation. When the heavens opened, a drip would form on the end of his nose, but even that wasn’t enough to move him. He was old when I was young, and yet he did not seem to age. I took him for granted, because he was always there.

One day not long ago I thought of him for no obvious reason, and the sinking feeling was instant. He had been out of mind because he had been out of sight for more years than I first realised. There was no escaping the conclusion that Father Time alone meant that Mackintosh Man had long since hung his raincoat on its peg for the last time.

Who was he? Did anyone know his name? Where did he come from? Did anyone ever speak to him? Someone must have known him, surely? The obvious place to ask was among other lifelong supporters, but each inquiry brought the same response: “I know exactly who you are talking about, but I have no idea who he was.” Some recalled him on the Kirkland Road terracing, others could picture him slowly but steadily climbing the steps of the stand at the new ground. No one could remember seeing him speak to a soul, but everyone described him as a comforting presence.

Whoever he was, he served as a poignant reminder that, when all seems lost on the pitch, we must remember that teams are transient, but the club endures as long as enough people believe in it. There is always hope for better days ahead. Never say never again.