The McAlpine Prophecy: Ederson on Tannadice Street

A boffin from Sheffield. A student from Montana. And a goalkeeper from Brazil with a foot like a traction engine

Michael Marra, that great chronicler of all things Dundee, first planted the seeds. In his song Hamish The Goalie, Marra suggested Hamish McAlpine, the flamboyant, moustachioed Dundee United goalkeeper of the 1970s and 80s, was capable of punting the ball superhuman distances; “out runs Hamish and the ball’s in Invergowrie Bay”, he sang.

McAlpine certainly had some strike on him. In 1987, while playing in a Division One match for Raith Rovers, one of his trademark mammoth punts forward found its way arcing over the head of Chris Holland in the Kilmarnock goal and into the back of the net. Holland looked stunned, McAlpine proffered a boot to a team-mate who duly bent down and kissed it.

McAlpine would briefly assume the penalty-taking duties during a spell in the 1970s when he famously dispatched a couple of rockets past bemused fellow members of ‘The Goalkeepers Union’ before an infamous miss against Celtic at Parkhead. That would be the last time he took a spot-kick, having scored three and missed four. All of which made for great theatre for those watching on.

Such was the superhuman allure around McAlpine that it seemed faintly possible that he just might have been able to punt the ball into Invergowrie Bay. However, it was a notion dismissed instantly by the thrawn McAlpine many years later in an interview with long-standing Nutmeg contributor Alan Pattullo in The Scotsman. “Ach, dinnae be stupid,” he said, before torpedoing another popular urban myth of the time: that he had actually cleared the ball from United’s home ground of Tannadice to nearby Dens Park, a couple of hundred yards up the street.

“Never even tried it,” was McAlpine’s abrupt rebuttal, which simultaneously seemed to betray a belief that he might just have been able to, if he’d bothered attempting the feat.

So, is it possible? Would it, with favourable wind conditions, the correct technique and accuracy – not to mention the aid of an oversized quadricep – be possible to send a size-5 Mitre all the way back up Tannadice Street and into Dens Park? We’re not talking a goal scored here, or some perfect placement onto the much-criticised Dens playing surface. No, just enough leg on a punt so that it might leapfrog over a wall where the corner of the Bob Shankly Stand meets the Main Stand and into the concrete gangways would do.

Enter Alasdair Rae, formerly professor of urban studies at the University of Sheffield and now owner of a data analysis company, who posed the question on Twitter in 2019.

Rae uncovered a 2013 thesis by Ryan Swenson - then a senior maths and engineering student at Carroll College, Montana, today a maths teacher and tennis coach at a high school in the same state - which advanced a model which claimed to be able to predict the trajectory of a kicked American football “taking into account air resistance, crosswinds, headwinds, tailwinds, various initial velocities, different kick angles, and any geographic location”.

It wasn’t just scientific and meteorological considerations that were required, however, as Alasdair noted. There would need to be some incredibly good fortune with the European fixture list if the perfect McAlpine surrogate was to end up with the ball in his hands at Tannadice.

For the stars to align, Manchester City would need to endure a stinker of a season and fall into the Europa Conference League, while Dundee United would need to upset the odds and end their wait for European group-stage football. The two would need to be drawn together, bringing to Tayside Pep Guardiola and his behemoth of a goalkeeper, Ederson, a modern-day No.1 with a requisite Hot Shot Hamish (McAlpine) kickout.

In 2018, the Brazilian broke the world record for the the longest kickout, recorded at 75.35m in wind-controlled conditions.

Ramp up that north-east wind and add in some Dundonian pavement, and Rae believes the big man would have a chance.

So that should have been that, but it was clear Alasdair was still pondering the matter a year later:

And he was still transfixed by the notion following a stroll across the Tay Bridge on a visit to Dundee in October 2023.

So there you have it. Yes, it should be possible to kick a ball from Tannadice to Dens Park so long as the wind is right, the bounce is fortuitous and you have a leg that shoots like a cannon. Maybe it’s not too late for Hamish to dig out an old pair of Gola boots for an attempt at it. But in that Scotsman interview with Alan Pattullo he revealed that his football memorabilia was “in the attic with the rest of the crap,” so perhaps it’s more likely that he would give you a withering look and reply with a taciturn “Ach, dinnae be stupid”.