07/09/2026
ALI SIMPSON - 200 NOT OUT!
Saturday's cup tie at Lanark saw our longest serving player Ali Simpson join the ranks of those relatively few players in the near nine decade history of Haddington Athletic - certain all with the club at heart join us in congratulating the big man on a fantastic achievement, all the more so given injury kept him sidelined for the entire 2025-26 campaign and a good chunk of 2024-25 too.
Ali's into his ninth season at Millfield now, having made his competitive debut as a trialist in our very first senior contest at Coldstream on 28 July 2018 when we ran out 5-3 winners in a sectional League Cup tie. He signed a deal days later and has been a tremendous Hi Hi's servant ever since - only six others have passed the 200 mark since the turn of the millennium. Prior to his joining at age 25 Ali had focused for a time on his golf, at which he excelled having grown up in Dirleton close to some of the best courses around - he'd played amateur football for North Berwick and had a season apiece at Ormiston Primrose and Hawick Royal Albert.
In his time at the club Ali has performed ably in a variety of roles, settling in recent times in central midfield - aged 33 now he looks to have overcome his injury troubles, to the point he was unlucky not to pick up a Man Of The Match award on his two hundredth outing at Lanark. Hopefully he'll line up in Hi Hi's colours on many more occasions to come!
Rundown below of Ali's 200 games - bear in mind we'd a curtailed schedule across 2020 and 2021 during Covid19 times; number of games the team played are in brackets.
2018-19 26 games 3 goals (37)
2019-20 21 + 3 sub 4 goals (28)
2020-21 6 + 7 sub 1 goal (13)
2021-22 35 + 6 sub 2 goals (47)
2022-23 31 + 1 sub 3 goals (38)
2023-24 34 + 1 sub 0 goals (41)
2024-25 17 + 6 sub 0 goals (37)
2025-26 0 games (41)
2026-27 2 + 4 sub 0 goals (9)
TOTAL 172 + 28 sub 13 goals