Where Are They Now

[E-P-K]

I met Noel Whelan in Buggsy Browns, while he was "recovering " from injury, smoking and enjoying a JD and coke.

 

About the same time he had his M3 stolen from a hooker female associate

 

 

 

 

Remember, Alex De Rocco who we had on trial, and Petr the Polish lad who scored 6 against the Broch in pre season,

[E-P-K]

Alex Di Rocco.

 

Aberdeen 1 Motherwell 3

 

Di Rocco comes off the bench and grabs a double. 3-3.

 

What a guy.

 

 

The divine ponytail 2

 

 

Who's yer dadi

 

 

Worth a shout just for his part in turning Balde at the snow ball fight game

[Henry]

 

Ben Thornley finally hung up his boots in 2008, following a spell at Witton Albion in the Northern Premier League.

 

Now working as a pundit for MUTV apparently.

[Henry]

Alex di Rocco is an advisor in wealth management in Reims these days:

 

http://www.football365.fr/de-gestion-du-patrimoine-626853.shtml

 

Little bit about his time in Aberdeen in that link, chrome will translate it for you

[Henry]

David Rowson, still battling on at Stenhousemuir at the age of 37.

 

 

Javan Vidal is at Rochdale these days

 

 

And Jared Hogdkiss is captain at Forest Green Rovers.

 

[Dynamo]

isaac Osbourne plays for Partick Thistle and he was shit last night.

[dave_min]

isaac Osbourne plays for Partick Thistle and he was shit last night.

 

Mark Kerr is also at Partick Thistle and is so shit he didn't even get to play last night.

[The Hulk]

David Rowson, still battling on at Stenhousemuir at the age of 37.

 

 

Left Partick in the summer after a year out injured, before that he was club captain I believe.

 

Rowson for me was one of those that in another era could have been a really good player for us. I think he had some really good raw talent, could've been a decent midfield anchor man but he grew up in some really really shitey Dons teams, yet teams that often had decent central experienced midfield players that he couldn't displace. I think at the end of his time with us he was being deployed at right-back and he was becoming "utility man".

 

I think when he ended up at Thistle he started planning for his career outside football (accountancy?), I saw him knocking about a few times in Glasgow suited and booted (maybe someone in the know will confirm this).

[Henry]

Stephen Glass is Shamrock Rovers manager.

 

Not sure if you're fishing, but Glass is doing youth coaching in North Carolina these days:

 

http://www.trianglefc.org/news_article.php?aid=213

[fine-n-dandy]

He's probably already in this thread (can't be arsed checking) but Arild Stavrum is now taking up fictional crime writing.

 

 

Daily record have the cheek to describe him as a headless chicken when he played in Scotland (a player that scored a goal almost every two games)

 

WHILE hardly being regarded as a football hotbed, Norway has provided Scottish football with its record signing in £12million man Tore Andre Flo.

Given the current problems engulfing Ibrox, those days of milk and honey must seem like a distant memory. That said, if anything Flo has now come to represent something of a white elephant in Rangers' history - an expensive acquisition, signed for way over the odds, who spectacularly failed to live up to expectations.

Celtic have had similar disappointments, although the role that Harald Brattbakk played in the Parkhead side's 1998 title victory at least earns him a place in the club's history.

There has also been a few headless chickens - namely Vidar Riseth and Arild Stavrum - and unsung heroes, such as Erik Pedersen and a total of 15 Norwegians have played in the Scottish top flight for just four different clubs.

 

 

 

 

Anyway, interview with him in the Sunday post.

 

http://www.sundaypost.com/sport/football/big-interview-arild-stavrum-1.154472

 

 

“The agents, the fixers, the people who contribute nothing to football and leech money out — don’t like me,”

Arild Stavrum has never been afraid to shock.

Back in 2000 while he was starring for Aberdeen, the pony-tailed Norwegian cut off all his hair, boxed it up and posted it off to the local paper!

That was in response to a reporter hinting his long locks were hindering him on the pitch.

The fact Stavrum was delighted when they then put the hair up as a competition prize was evidence of an extrovert personality.

Thirteen years on, he is more concerned with messages delivered with body parts as he tries to make inroads on his goal of becoming Scandinavia’s next superstar crime writer.

The works of Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbo and the late Stieg Larsson have, between them, sold 100 million copies, with many being turned into successful film adaptations.

That’s one reason why Stavrum will watch Tuesday’s clash between Norway and Scotland on television rather than in person in order to concentrate on his writing duties.

Stavrum has written four novels, all involving football to varying degrees, and they’ve sold well in his homeland.

One, Golden Boys the story of the murder of Norway’s top football agent, is currently being translated into English ahead of a UK release next summer.

“It will be the realisation of one of my lifetime ambitions,” says 41-year-old Stavrum, who was in the Aberdeen side which lost 4-0 to Rangers in the 2000 Scottish Cup Final.

“I was thrilled when my books were first published in Norway, but this is on another level altogether.

“To have a publisher who has the faith to have someone spend months translating your work so it can be read in a different country, in a different language, is a brilliant feeling.

“To put it into a football context, it will be up there with playing for Norway or scoring against Hibs to help Aberdeen reach the Scottish Cup Final. And, of course, both were fantastic.

“How far it will take me, I can’t know. But in writing, as in football, you have to be yourself.”

The peppering of his conversation with references to the two disciplines is no coincidence.

Stavrum credits good writing with helping him become a better footballer. Likewise, he credits football with helping him become the writer he wanted to be.

“For me, the two go very much hand in hand,” explains the former striker, who also works as a part-time teacher and occasional television pundit.

“I always read and loved books by guys like Mankell and Nesbo, but when I was playing it became an even bigger thing for me.

“Basically, I found I had problems thinking about football all the time. I did not want everything in my life to be about the game.

“You can watch films and what have you but they don’t have the same ability to take you out of yourself the way that books do.

“I found that reading was great at helping me switch off from playing, so that when I needed to be sharp for Aberdeen or whoever, I could be.

“Eventually I found myself wanting to write books, to tell stories the way I wanted. To do things with characters that worked for me and pleased me.

“And when I started, it was natural to me to write about football.”

Not about goals, cup runs and formations, though, but of a game corrupted by bungs, blackmail, and bent agents.

Of games being thrown on orders of criminal match-fixers and of a part of the industry the public never usually sees.

A work of fiction?

Well, right now the SFA are looking to recruit a former top policeman to become their full-time Security & Integrity Officer, to look into match-fixing.

“I have always felt football throws up lots of different possibilities when it comes to constructing a crime story,” Stavrum continues.

“If you get a transfer deal worth £8 or £9million, say, it is not impossible to get a scenario where some £300,000 can just disappear — and that is a serious amount of money!

“In dressing-rooms, too, there can be huge differences in what individual players earn. That can lead to jealousy and tension, which can lead to trouble.

“I have been there, and it holds every bit as true in Norway or in Scotland as it does in the high-profile English Premier League.

“It’s true, I do focus on dark areas of the game — but they do exist, believe me.”

Sometimes life imitates art. When it happened to Stavrum, it proved pleasingly profitable.

“When I first wrote about match-fixing, I drew a lot of criticism,” he reveals. “People said: ‘This is not possible in Norway. There is no way that it can go on here.’

“Then, three months later, an enormous scandal exploded about match-fixing in Norway!

“You never like to see these things happen because if games have been thrown, then the people who have paid money in good faith to go and watch their sport have been cheated.

“In this case, though, it was nice to see people who had questioned my work proved wrong. It was also very good publicity for the books!”

Not that everyone in the game was pleased.

“The real-life equivalents of the people I criticise in my books — the agents, the fixers, the people who contribute nothing to football and leech money out — don’t like me,” says Stavrum.

“I provoke them, but that is OK. I don’t care what they think.

“Football doesn’t belong to them, and if readers take only that one message from my books, I will be a very happy man.”

[fine-n-dandy]

Wonder if Stavrums books will be worth a read once they're translated into English?

Golden boys released in UK next Summer

 

He has four books out & all are fictional crime involving football it seems

[Jocky Balboa]

 

Ben Thornley finally hung up his boots in 2008, following a spell at Witton Albion in the Northern Premier League.

 

Now working as a pundit for MUTV apparently.

 

 

Ben Thornley finally hung up his boots in 2008, following a spell at Witton Albion in the Northern Premier League.

 

Now working as a pundit for MUTV apparently.

Ben Thornley... what a waste. There was a player in there.

[ollie1903]

Ben Thornley pished himself, whilst lying on the pavement outside waterstones bookshop, blootered, on a Saturday afternoon as the Dons were playing away at Celtic.

[The Oxford Don]

Patrizio Bilio, anyone?

 

Always thought he was half-decent.

[ChutneyLove]

Ben Thornley pished himself, whilst lying on the pavement outside waterstones bookshop, blootered, on a Saturday afternoon as the Dons were playing away at Celtic.

And with that post, any respect I had for Mr Thornley has just soared skyward. Here's me thinking he wasted his time in Aberdeen.

[Stoney]

Patrizio Bilio, anyone?

 

Always thought he was half-decent.

 

Remember hearing we signed him on the way home from Moldova,

 

Think we played motherwell away on the sunday and he came off the bench and just about broke the cross bar in two from 30+ yards, was one of the best hits i've seen.

 

Think he scored a peach the week after with a similar shot from similar distance - but it wasnt AS good.......

 

Always a bit dissapointed that goal never went in - i think we won that match anyways.

[Stoney]

Im speaking shit, we did sign him after the Nistru game, bit the motherwell game i referred to was after berlin, but we did win the game.....so alls well that ends well

[Poodler]

I still mind that shot that hit the bar!

[boboisared]

Left Partick in the summer after a year out injured, before that he was club captain I believe.

 

Rowson for me was one of those that in another era could have been a really good player for us. I think he had some really good raw talent, could've been a decent midfield anchor man but he grew up in some really really shitey Dons teams, yet teams that often had decent central experienced midfield players that he couldn't displace. I think at the end of his time with us he was being deployed at right-back and he was becoming "utility man".

 

I think when he ended up at Thistle he started planning for his career outside football (accountancy?), I saw him knocking about a few times in Glasgow suited and booted (maybe someone in the know will confirm this).

My mate is a financial advisor and told me he was either working with Rowson or that Rowson was training to work with him.

[King Street Loon]

Hallur Hansson - scored last night for the Faroes against Malta.

That's 2 in 2 or 3 games that he's scored at international level I think.

I know he scored before this window.

 

Seems to be doing alright.

[muttonhumper]

Karim Touzani was probably Aberdeen's best player at that time, it's just a pity the fat cunt couldn't see it and played him:

 

1. Out of position at times

2. Never gave him a fair chance.

3. Sold him for fuck all when there was money to be had from him.

 

He was a good player.

 

Agreed.

 

Was solid in midfield, but hopeless in defence where the slug liked to persist with him.

 

Fuck sake, a blin man wi' a gless bool up his erse could see that.

[The Oxford Don]

 

Remember hearing we signed him on the way home from Moldova,

 

Think we played motherwell away on the sunday and he came off the bench and just about broke the cross bar in two from 30+ yards, was one of the best hits i've seen.

 

Think he scored a peach the week after with a similar shot from similar distance - but it wasnt AS good.......

 

Always a bit dissapointed that goal never went in - i think we won that match anyways.

 

Aye, that shot at Fir Park was something else. If the ball had bounced up into the roof of the net instead of back out, we'd have been talking about one of the best AFC goals of all time.

[StandFree1982]

We've killed many a good footballers career through sticking them alongside shite, playing them in the wrong position, or having an inept buffoon of a manager. It a lot of cases it was all three.

[Terrorfex]

Nicolas Fabiano. Now plying his trade for a French amateur club.

 

What a legend.

[Stoney]

 

Aye, that shot at Fir Park was something else. If the ball had bounced up into the roof of the net instead of back out, we'd have been talking about one of the best AFC goals of all time.

 

Not sure it would have beaten Derek Youngs goal at Ibrox but it would have been in my top two for sure

[ericblack4boss]

Nicolas Fabiano. Now plying his trade for a French amateur club.

 

What a legend.

Ebbes Great White Hope. He came through the highly regarded Bleomfontaine youth academy in France the same system as Trezeguet and the likes.

[Jocky Balboa]

Ben Thornley pished himself, whilst lying on the pavement outside waterstones bookshop, blootered, on a Saturday afternoon as the Dons were playing away at Celtic.

Doesn't surprise me, if true. He was constantly overweight when with us despite such a hype when he arrived and a promising start (didn't he score 2 on his home debut?).

 

I know he was unlucky with injuries before coming to us, but we gave him a new start. He only has himself to blame.

[ollie1903]

100% true story JB min

[Moorie86]

Doesn't surprise me, if true. He was constantly overweight when with us despite such a hype when he arrived and a promising start (didn't he score 2 on his home debut?).

 

I know he was unlucky with injuries before coming to us, but we gave him a new start. He only has himself to blame.

Don't forget the topless double page of him in the Green Final.

[Dandyesque]

We've killed many a good footballers career through sticking them alongside shite, playing them in the wrong position, or having an inept buffoon of a manager. It a lot of cases it was all three.

 

If you've got number three on your list, numbers one and two are practically a given