IrishBhoy

The guy is a p***k. He should be nowhere near St Mirren, and I think the only reason he is putting himself out there just now is for clicks on his social media accounts. He is good friends with a friend of mine and I’ve actually played golf with him on a couple of occasions at Mar Hall. No doubt the guy has a few quid, but he’s basically scamming gullible fools by selling them places on property investment courses at £4/5k a time. Hes also a thin skinned man child, who made a video showing documents proving that he was the owner of his McLaren supercar, all because someone commented saying he wasn’t the owner. If you had enough money that you could afford half a million quid worth of cars, would you be concerning yourself with the opinions of anonymous people on the internet? I do know that he is a genuine St Mirren supporter, I’ve seen him regularly at the games, but even if he fronted up the cash I would be extremely wary of having him holding any influence over the running of the club. I’m 99% sure it’s a social media stunt, and I hope the club realise this.

Don’t envy Scottie or Rory here, potentially 36+ holes today for the grand prize of 3rd position. Don’t think either of them will be caring much wether they win or lose so we could see some exciting holes between them, they will be going for everything.

McIlroy has just cost me about 2800 quid how the f**k did he manage to throw that away over the last few holes. I tuned out when I seen him 2up on 15, I am absolutely spewing genuinely cannot believe what I’ve just seen. Put an accumulator on this morning for McIlroy to win, along with Forest Green at 7/1 and England -1. Literally could have cashed out for 1200 quid odd on the 15th tee but wasn’t even sweating that he would throw it away. Genuinely feel like turning up at his door and assaulting him, I know he’s a nice guy but he’s just done me up like a kipper, and the worst thing about it is that he is absolutely oblivious to it all. Can’t even watch the rest of the coverage now.

Benavidez Plant was an excellent fight. It’s a shame that boxing fans are so starved of genuine 50/50 matchups with two guys operating at a high level that a fight like that is seen as an outlier. I can’t remember a time for a good few years where I’ve been as ambivalent towards the upcoming fights. Tank v Garcia should be good, but that’s another fight that should have happened 2 years ago. Josh Taylor v Teofimo Lopez is another I’m looking forward to but I don’t think that’s even been confirmed. Canelo v Ryder, Joshua v Franklin? I wouldn’t pay much attention to either of those fights if they were happening in my front garden.

The scene where Tim and Gareth are working together for the ‘Fox, Chicken, Grain’ exercise is also absolutely top tier. ‘Hello, I’m a chicken. Thank you Tim for leaving me with my favourite food!’ ‘Yeah Gareth I just said you couldn’t do that.’

I think knowing that the story is at a point where there is still more to come, then the ending becomes a bit more understandable. It was a poignant moment where Ellie attempted to put all her trust in to Joel and allow him to come clean, but instead he doubled down on his lies because the idea of him losing Ellie by telling the truth was the hardest road for him to take, but continuing the lie was the easy way out.

‘Training’ is my favourite episode as well. It’s near 23 years old and there still hasn’t been a TV show that’s came close to The Office for me. Gervais’ portrayal of Brent in that episode is as close to comedic perfection as you will find, absolutely top tier.

Extremely well deserved. He was unfortunate to miss out on being part of the World Cup squad and I think the Australian manager had picked largely the same team that was called up for Qatar, but good to see that Strains performances have been acknowledged now that a couple of guys have dropped out.

Rangers fans trying to sing sectarian bile through the Hibs fans tribute to Ron Gordon angered me far more than it probably should have, seeing as I have no particular connection to any of the teams. I won’t hear a word from Rangers fans that it was a ‘minority’ either, it was the vast majority of the away end trying to drown out Sunshine on Leith with a rendition of The Billy Boys, for absolutely no good reason. When Walter Smith died there wasn’t a team in the league, with the possible exception of a few mindless Celtic fans, who dared to disrespect any minutes silences or tributes Rangers fans wanted to hold towards him. The fact that these mutants have turned up in Edinburgh knowing there was going to be some sort of tribute before the game, after singing through the minutes applause at Hampden a week earlier, and thought that the smart thing to do was to try and make the spectacle all about them makes me genuinely angry. If I was in any sort of position of authority at Hibs I would be letting Rangers know that their fans are no longer welcome at Easter Road, and if they tried to argue the point in any way they would be pointed directly towards the attempted bigotry at Easter Road, and the audible rendition of the Billy Boys at Hampden. Old Firm fans truly are the absolute dregs of society, living in a world that revolves around the fortunes of a football team.

The most recent defeat against Hibs at home is the best example of that. The referee was just flat out refusing to give a foul in favour of Main no matter what the defender was doing. He was getting dragged about by his shirt collar and the decision was going against him for backing in. I’ve never seen a St Mirren player that gets as many blatant fouls against him waved away as much as Curtis Main does.

I understand that, but even at the angle of this camera it would take much more than the width of a football pitch to see any convergence of the half way line and the ‘offside’ line, maybe if you took away the stand and continued the lines out to reach Harthill you would see it. If you stood perpendicular to a train track, the section directly in front of you would run as close to parallel that it wasn’t noticeable, but if you turned to look 100 yards away you would see the rails begin to meet gradually until the vanishing point. What a genuinely interesting debate this is, it’s an important issue and something I feel very strongly about, as I can tell you do too.

I’ve spoke to guys who watched him come up through the Junior ranks and they can’t believe he’s officiating at this level. Apparently he was an absolute bombscare every week. He was the referee a few weeks ago when Hamilton Arbroath was on BBC Scotland and couldn’t get his red card out quick enough to send off an Arbroath defender for a clumsy tackle 40 yards from goal, which was rescinded after appeal. The standard of refereeing in Scotland has a bleak future if he is seen as one of the better ones. His attitude towards the players is horrendous, he’s acts like a PE teacher trying to control a bunch of 12 year olds. For balance I should say I’ve liked the look of David Dickinson when I’ve seen him recently. He’s made a few mistakes but he seems to be one of a handful of referees who tries to get along with the players rather than running around dishing out yellow cards and over dramatic lectures like some high school hall monitor (Collum, Napier, Dallas).

Or incompetent, a cheat and built like the fat end of a 7 iron. What is it with the majority of Scottish referees and assistants having the build of a recovering heroin addict? Collum, Napier, McLean and Clancy must weigh about 25 stone combined. I’m sure Class A drugs isn’t the issue as I know for certain that the Category 1 officials in Scotland are only taken from white collar jobs, Hugh Dallas insists on it. If you work as a joiner or a plumber and have aspirations to officiate in the Premiership you can forget it, no matter how good a referee you are. Policeman, politician, school teacher etc.? No ceiling as to how high you can go. Plumber, joiner or mechanic? Johnstone Burgh v Yoker Athletic with no linesmen and 50 drunk neds on the sideline.

The biggest issue for me is 3/4 minutes looking at where the line gets drawn on the furthest forward part of the attackers body, trying to pinpoint the sleeve line where the arm becomes body or a boot sticking out behind a defender etc. But don’t spend any time at all trying to find the moment the ball is played forward. A player could play the ball forward and his foot could be in contact with the ball for 3 separate frames; is it taken from the first frame that shows any foot to ball contact, is it taken when the foot is compressing the ball but before it has left the foot or is it taken at the closest point to when the ball has actually left the foot? I genuinely don’t know. There’s a few guys on here who are qualified referees or guys clued up on the laws of the game, does anyone know what Scottish VAR officials use to determine the point of contact when deciding an offside decision?

Yeah I will maybe row back on the squinty line issue I only seen it on Sky just after the goal, but I’ve had a closer look at a screenshot on Twitter and it’s not noticeably far away from running parallel with the half way line.