EAST Fife were the first team to win the Scottish League Cup three times.

In the same competition, Celtic participated in every final from the 1964/65 season when they lost to Rangers, right up to 1977/78 when an Old Firm defeat at Hampden made for unwanted bookends.

Between those two games, there was the strangest run of results. Five wins in a row, four defeats, a win and the run finished with two further losses.

Did you know Celtic lost every cup final Kenny Dalglish scored in?

Graeme Payne of Dundee United didn’t have the career predicted of him because of injury but has the honour of being named the SPFA’s first Young Player of the Year in 1978.

Gerry McCabe, during his Clydebank days, was First Division POTY three times in the 1980s.

The last Scot to win any individual award in England was Gordon Strachan in 1991 when captain of the Leeds United team which won the league.

For those still awake, the best is yet to come.

It is not hugely vital that I know Kenny Dawson’s 243 goals puts him top of Falkirk’s scoring list, or a record 27,381 somehow packed into Cliftonhill Stadium to watch Albion Rovers take on Rangers in 1936. But I’m happy that this is banked into my memory.

The capacity of Livingston’s home ground, the Tony Macaroni Stadium, is exactly 10,112. Livi’s record crowd of all time came against Rangers in 2001 and was…10,112. That’s my favourite statistic of all time. Did you know that? If not, why not?

I know all of this in my head, a head which forgets pin numbers, names of my close family, where I left keys and changed passwords within, oh, three hours.

This ability to recall random facts about Scottish football is thanks to the Evening Times Wee Red Book, now in its 91st year, a publication I bought every year and pored over with an intensity that was absent when it came to anything connected with school.

Along with the Scottish Football League Review, sadly no longer with us, the Wee Red Book, not to be confused with the one Mao Tse-tung penned (a very different chairman to Ann Budge, Billy Bowie and the rest), was essential reading.

Every version might have contained 95 per cent of the facts and figures of its immediate predecessor, but there were always new pictures, results and, best of all, a change in a lower league club’s capacity because they had built a new stand.

All of this fascinated me as a kid. It still does.

There is always something new to read up on and memorise. And there are even some women mentioned and involved these days.

Jackie Brogan, a big football fan, is the first female co-editor in the publication’s long history along with Stuart Sandler. The book features the Scottish Women’s League tables for the first time and quite rightly so.

I did ask to get involved but only if I could put an asterisk beside the 2001 World Player of the Year. Michael Owen won it. Zinedine Zidane did not. Football lost its way that year.

Why does football trivia appeal to so many people who ordinarily wouldn’t have anything to do with such geeky and nerdy ways?

My take is that for many it is a reminder of what once was the most important thing in the game. Not so long ago, it was who won the most cups, scored more goals than the rest, could boast the most successful history and who in each individual club were the all-time heroes.

Pick up the papers or go online and it is now all about how much a six-out-of-10 player earns in a week, as if it’s a boast a modestly gifted footballer earns in seven days ten times that of an NHS nurse in a year.

Marcus Rashford is a fine player, I really like him, he comes across as a well brought up boy who just so happens to have been born with a talent to kick a ball around. I wish him nothing but good.

However, at 21 he has just signed a contract of £200,000 a week putting him seventh on the list of best-paid players in the English Premier League.

The top 10, from a reputable financial football site, looks like this: 1 De Bruyne £16.68m, 2 Alexis £16.38m, 3 Pogba £15.08m, 4 Ozil £13.97m, 5. Martial £13m,

6 Rashford £12m, 7 Salah £10.4m,

8 De Gea £10.4m, 9 Kane £10.4m,

10 Lacazette £9.46m.

There are a few world-class players, one or two even give their all, but even considering the obscene wages English-based players demand and command, from last season I would say only Salah and Kane could come close to justifying what they earned.

Growing up as a football-obsessed boy, I couldn’t care less how much Paul Sturrock was paid. I was more interested in the way he never tucked in his shirt and always wore his socks down low without any shin guards.

Is that the case now? I don’t think so.

Footage emerged recently of a Manchester United, cough, supporter who couldn’t name the person whose face was on a t-shirt on sale outside Old Trafford. It was George Best.

History is important. Who won what back in the day is a big part of the story which brings us up to date to modern football. It also reminds us of achievements of the past. I don’t get why so many so-called dyed-in-the-wool fans are so ignorant.

I asked colleagues which club, along with Fiorentina took part in the first European Cup-Winners’ Cup final in 1961. They didn’t know. Both are Rangers fans...The Wee Red Book is now on sale.