IT'S a small world.
Two years ago James Craigen and Gary Warren played together in a British Universities side while studying for their respective degrees, all the while still dreaming of making it as a footballer. This afternoon, having realised their goals, they will meet again, this time on opposite teams.
The pair took part in a tournament in China with the university side, beating their counterparts from Brazil en route to a final defeat. Today Craigen's Partick Thistle visit Warren's Inverness Caledonian Thistle as both clubs seek to continue impressive starts to the SPFL Premiership campaign.
"I've never played against him," said midfielder Craigen, 22. "He's a great player and a great person. He was the captain of our team in 2011. He was a great leader. We were beaten in the final by Japan in Shenzhen and got the silver medal. He was at Newport County in the Conference while doing a part-time teaching degree and I was at Edinburgh University.
"It's amazing we're now playing against each another in the SPFL a couple of years later. I always knew he'd go on to bigger things. There were a few clubs sniffing around him, Blackpool I think were one. It's no surprise to see him doing so well for Inverness over the last two seasons."
Craigen is not the only one renewing old acquaintance in the Highlands this afternoon. Firhill manager Alan Archibald worked under Terry Butcher during the latter's brief spell as assistant to Jimmy Bone at Thistle in 2007.
"In that short time he was there you could tell he would be a good manager," Archibald said. "You could see his qualities and that he was a very good coach.
"Terry has a lot of passion and it showed. He took a couple of drills which showed his organisation, but he was also very good about the dressing room. I learned a lot from him in a short period of time."
Chris Jack
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article