Looking back: When Raith Rovers players starred in Robert Duvall film

Ally McCoist with Robert Duvall.Ally McCoist with Robert Duvall.
Ally McCoist with Robert Duvall.
Today marks twenty years since Robert Duvall and Ally McCoist made a football film in Fife featuring a number of Raith Rovers players that went straight to VHS.

You read that right. With Academy Award-winning Duvall as the gruff Scottish manager of fictional lower league side Kilnockie FC, he displayed a dazzling ineptitude for accents so shocking it would make Dick Van Dyke blush.

Meanwhile McCoist made his film debut as a former Celtic player going up against Rangers, which to be fair was actually more believable than Duvall’s accent.

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In filming A Shot At Glory, Duvall even based his character on former Raith boss, John McVeigh, apparently travelling to several games at Stark’s Park in order to watch Rovers play.

The film was said to be loosely-based on Raith’s meteoric rise in the 1990s, a period which saw them as the unlikely victors in a hard-fought Coca-Cola Cup final match against Celtic.

However, while the scenes for ‘Kilnockie’ village were filmed in Crail, bosses behind the production actually steered away from using Stark’s Park to shoot the pitch scenes.

Raith historian John Greer has previously sat through the film so you don’t have to.

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He said: “None of it was actually filmed in Kirkcaldy, but a lot was filmed in the East Neuk. But a lot of the players used in the film were Raith Rovers players.

“You had Peter Heatherstone, who was the assistant manager, he featured in it as Silky, which had no change at all. Kenny Black, Stevie Hamilton, Kevin Gaughan, Craig McEwan, and Paul Agnew also featured.

“But the funniest one was Didier Agathe, who appeared as a Rangers player, but less than 18 months later he was a signed Celtic player.

“The Rovers team trained as normal in the morning then all traveled along to the East Neuk, as there was a lot of footage of them running between St Monans and Anstruther.”

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It was said at the time that the Kirkcaldy ground would be the main focus, but it turned out that recent renovations at the stadium meant it wasn’t shabby enough to be the home of a poverty-stricken club.

“Initially there were going to be games filmed at Stark’s Park, but because it has been redeveloped they didn’t feel it was appropriate for the rags-to-riches plot.

“The good thing was that Robert Duvall came to quite a few Rovers games at the time and sat in the director’s box to get a feel for Scottish football.

“When Duvall came to games, I met him a few times. He said that John McVeight was the kind of hardman that he wanted to portray. He liked him because he kind of barked out instructions – he did so with a very dodgy Scottish accent. “It’s like Mel Gibson’s Braveheart accent – it’s not one that anyone will remember with fondness.”

If you’re waiting for a sequel, don’t hold your breath.

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