{"id":165662,"date":"2025-09-18T15:13:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T15:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/165662\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T15:13:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T15:13:07","slug":"go-karting-brawl-sas-kidnap-when-football-team-bonding-goes-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/165662\/","title":{"rendered":"Go-karting brawl & SAS kidnap – when football team bonding goes wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gary Caldwell’s version of team bonding<\/a> when Partick Thistle boss in 2018 was a little bit more extreme than some cold water therapy in a beautiful loch.<\/p>\n

The team were second bottom of the Scottish Championship and their grim start to the season had ended Alan Archibald’s tenure.<\/p>\n

He was replaced by Caldwell, who had failed to win any of his first five matches – so he called in some help from the SAS.<\/p>\n

Former Thistle striker Kris Doolan said “guys with masks rag-dolled” the players and had them “bouncing off walls in total darkness”.<\/p>\n

One player ran off into the hills and was dragged back by four soldiers. Another broke down in tears. <\/p>\n

Thistle ended the season safe in sixth place in the second tier. Perhaps it was a success?<\/p>\n

Ex-Hearts defender Neilson’s tale of scrapping with goalkeeper Gordon after some foul play at go-karting seems quite vanilla in comparison.<\/p>\n

“I cut him up to be honest with you, I put him into the barriers,” says Neilson. “He got out and I saw him coming towards me, and as we know he’s a big lad.<\/p>\n

“He took his helmet off, threw it at me and I thought I’ve got to do something here. So I threw a punch, he threw a punch and it was a kind of ruckus from there.<\/p>\n

“Then it died down, but it was a good laugh at the end of it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gary Caldwell’s version of team bonding when Partick Thistle boss in 2018 was a little bit more extreme…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-165662","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-soccer","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}