Isn’t It Good, Norwegian Feud
It was a mixed bag last week in terms of results. Unfortunately, Kilmarnock dropped out of Europa League qualifying after narrowly lost out to Cercle Brugge. A 1-0 defeat coupled with the 1-1 draw at Rugby Park was enough to send the Belgians through, but at this stage there’s still a parachute down to the Conference League which is where Kilmarnock now find themselves.
They’ll now face Tromso, hosting the Norwegian side at Rugby Park tonight with a 7pm kick off. Tromso reached this stage by winning their first qualifying tie last week against KuPS of Finland, winning both legs 1-0. I can’t find the second leg footage, so the first leg in Finland will have to do here!
If you’ve been following these blogs in the last couple of weeks, you’ll already know about the only other time that Tromso have visited Scotland. That’s because it was back in the 1987/88 Cup Winners’ Cup first round against St Mirren. The 1-0 win courtesy of Kenny McDowall’s early goal was enough to not only win the game that night but also the tie.
It’s also in that video I’ve included twice now, so I won’t do it a third time!
This is the first time Tromso have been in Europe for ten years. Prior to last week’s tie, their last game in Europe was a 2-1 aggregate defeat to Vikingur Gota of the Faroe Islands in the second qualifying round of the 2014/15 Europa League. Which was a bit of a shock for a team who had made the Europa League group stages the season before! Mind you, they did reach that after losing to Besiktas, only for the Turkish side to be disqualified due to match fixing!
That was Tromso’s second group stage appearance, having also featured in the 2005/06 UEFA Cup where they managed to beat Red Star Belgrade.
As the Norwegian league plays summer football rathe than winter football, Tromso are currently mid-season and lost 1-0 away to Rosenborg at the weekend. Having played 18 matches, they’re currently sitting 13th, just two points ahead of bottom spot and all the teams behind them have matches in hand over them.
Apologies here, the Norwegian rights holders don’t like you embedding their videos in your own site. It works if you click the link though.
Kilmarnock of course started their new domestic campaign away to Celtic, losing 4-0 to the champions on their flag day. This video may or may not work without watching it on YouTube… but I doubt Kilmarnock fans want to see this one anyway!
Just as half time will be sounding at Rugby Park, over at St Mirren Park the match will be kicking off. St Mirren had a terrific result at home last week, beating Valur 4-1 on the night and on aggregate to progress to this round.
Their opponents, like Kilmarnock, are Norwegian. Brann are facing a Scottish side for the first time having overcome Go Ahead Eagles last week 2-1 on aggregate. The away leg for Brann was a goalless draw, but you can at least watch that one here.
Brann narrowly missed out on the group stages of this competition last year, losing in the playoff round on penalties to AZ Alkmaar. Their only group stage appearance came back in the 2008/09 UEFA Cup, a group from which they progressed only to lose out to Everton in the last 32.
As previously noted several times now, St Mirren have hosted Norwegians before, but since it was only Tromso I’m not going into it twice in one blog! and for what might be the fourth time at this point!
The bad news for St Mirren is that Brann are doing far better than Tromso domestically. They’re currently second in the league, albeit 7 points behind leaders Bodo/Glimt after 18 games. On Sunday they beat Stromsgodset 3-2 away from home. And here we go with the embedded videos issue again…
The better news for St Mirren though is that they’re on a high. Not only did they beat Valur 4-1 at home on Thursday, they then followed that up with a 3-0 win at home in their Scottish Premiership opener against Hibernian. St Mirren fans will probably happily click into this one!
As with Rangers earlier in the week, the playoff draws were all done on Monday so both Kilmarnock and St Mirren know what awaits them if they can trounce Tromso and “Jamie Lannister” Brann respectively.
For Kilmarnock, the game to keep an eye on actually took place yesterday, with Copenhagen of Denmark taking on Banik Ostrava of Czechia which is currently 1-0 to the Danes after their home leg. For St Mirren, Corvinul Hunedoara and Astana kicks off at the same time as the Kilmarnock game tonight in Romania, with the second leg to come in Kazakhstan.
But that’s hopefully still come. For now, it’s good luck to both Kilmarnock and St Mirren!