By Kris Smith
To start off week eight of our ‘Look Back’ series, we will be taking you back to the 2008-2009 campaign, which was the club’s eighth year in existence and their fourth season of competing in the Northern League.
As the Stars competed in just one league competition that season, they only played a total of 16 league games that season and they finished fourth in the Northern League.
Also, Solway Sharks won their first Northern League title and finished with 26 points but Dundee’s biggest rivals, Fife Flyers were beaten to the title, despite winning the same amount of points as Solway.
After the regular seasons had ended, Dundee had a record of 7-0-9 (wins-ties-losses) and they had scored 72 goals and conceded 59 over the 16 fixtures.
The Tayside club qualified for the playoffs but were eliminated by the Sharks in the Semi-Finals after losing 3-2 in Solway.
However, Dundee were involved in four cup competitions, and they reached the final of two of them.
The Stars were again involved in the Scottish Cup and the Scottish Autumn Cup and in the Scottish Cup, they won their first tie, which was in the Quarter-Finals against Edinburgh Capitals second team.
Two 14 goal nights for Stars sent them through to the Semi-Finals after they recorded 14-0 and 14-2 victories against the Caps.
They then knocked out Paisley Pirates by an aggregate score of 21-6 to reach the final, where they fell 6-4 to the Flyers over two legs.
Then in the Autumn Cup, the Tayside team came third in the group stage and therefore failed to make it to the final, as only the top two teams advance into the two-legged championship series, which was won by Fife.
In the 2008-2009 season, the team also competed in the FFDR Cup, which was a group based competition, with the top placed team being crowned the winners.
The Stars finished second in the FFDR Cup with eight points and that was only two less than Caps, who won the cup with 10 points but it was also contested by two other teams; Fife and Braehead Paisley Pirates.
Finally, the Stars were involved in an international cup competition that featured two teams from Ireland.
The Dundalk Bulls and the Latvian Hawks both came over from Dundalk to compete against the Stars, the Flyers, the Sharks and the Pirates.
After 20 games, Fife topped the group with 34 points and the Stars came second with 33 but only two more teams would qualify for the knockout stage and they were the Bulls and the Hawks.
In the Semi-Finals, Dundee beat Dundalk 6-2 and faced Fife in the Final but the Flyers would claim the trophy by winning 3-2 after penalties.
That season’s top point and goal scorer was forward, John Dolan with 30 points after he scored 20 times in the Northern League and assisted on a further 10 goals.
Also, centerman Iain Robertson was the most penalised player with 51 penalty minutes and had the most assists on the team, after he created 16 goals.
Roger Hunt was still the Head Coach for the 2008-2009 campaign but it would also be his final year at the club after spending eight years with the Stars.
The team had three Scottish netminders that season and they were; Craig Arthur, Andy Moffat and David Jackson.
On the blue line, there were new names such as Daniel Topping, Chad Reekie and Callum Flynn and there were a few returnees in; Sam McCluskey, Craig Phillips, Jeff Marshall and Calum MacEachran.
Meanwhile, the Stars again put together had another dangerous offensive unit, with key names such as Dolan, Robertson, John Haig, Liam Greig, Gordon Latto and Allan Hamilton returning.
Next we will be bringing you a look back at one Star Player from the 2008-2009 season and that will be released Wednesday at 12pm!
If you want to be a part of the historic 20th Dundee Stars season then you can buy your season tickets by contacting [email protected]
