Tannadice devotee Eddie a great loss
If emotion were measured by goals then St Mirren will lose by a barrowload on Saturday.
The Paisley club will find themselves battling the tide in a sea of love directed towards . You would imagine that it is a football match that Dundee United just cannot lose.
He was just about the only chairman I can recall whose name was chanted by fans - in adulation that is - and the embracing of his memory will be strengthened by the . Even from beyond the grave, that wee man controls the destiny of the football club he adored.
The former Dundee United chairman is in a better place now, although I doubt whether dear Eddie ever imagined a Valhalla that was removed from Tannadice.
In a world peppered with Russians and Arabs who pick up and lay down football clubs like toys, it may be some time before we see his likes again. He was a throwback to the days of the local butcher, baker or painter and decorater who made a few bob and spent it on his local team.
Eddie invested his profits in United, although that is maybe the wrong word. If owning a yacht is like standing in a shower ripping up tenners then buying a football club is like papering the outside of the main stand with £100 notes.
He wasn't the perfect angel, of course, too frequently pushing the eject button on his managers ridiculously quickly. And I used to wonder at his impatience as he thundered downstairs and into the dressing-room almost before the team at a full-time whistle.
He failed to appreciate the sanctity of the immediate post-match time that manager and players need together. But he learned and, in any case, you could forgive his faults, which were drowned by his commitment, financial, emotional and in time that he gave to the club.
However, there are others who understand his ways.
The vultures were gathering last week over Cappielow, where the word was that the jacket of Davie Irons was on a peg that was now attached just by Sellotape.
A applied the oxygen to his survival chances, but I still question the logic of binning a manager who has been in charge for just 21 matches.
But, in any case, there is the steady hand on the Greenock Morton tiller of Douglas Rae, who has made his fortune from confectionary but who, like Eddie, has invested more than sweeties in his love affair with the local football club.
Rae has threatened to walk away - taking his wallet with him presumably - if supporters responsible for showering his manager and players with verbal abuse don't shut up.
He wasn't defending the standard of - in fact, he was scathing about it - but he acknowledged that football people should be entitled to the laws of decency under which normal people operate.
Like Thompson, Rae is old school. A different generation. Different standards.
Morton deserve better than to be dancing on the quicksand end of the First Division and I suspect that a promotion-chasing team could attract double the current average, in which case a Scottish Premier League place would be within touching distance.
All of which would be interesting news for the aforementioned St Mirren. Another game, another sea of emotion.
I wish them - and dear Eddie's friends and family - all the best on Saturday.
"Tell them who you are and what you are about," they said. To be honest, there are days when I struggle to remember myself. Forty years toiling at the coalface of football journalism does that to you. But I have reason to believe that I have reached the heady heights of the title of Football Correspondent of ´óÏó´«Ã½ Scotland which gives me a renown, in Scottish terms, of somewhere between Alex Salmond and the deep fried Mars Bar.
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