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.

Even 70 yards scaled down its not like your following the lines to a vanishing point, over that distance it should be quite clear to the human eye that the lines are parallel with either the goal line or the half way line. Anyway I think we are debating a nothing issue here, you’re correct ‘drawn’ was probably the wrong word. I imagine it’s more dragged from the goal line on some sort of programme that has the scale and dimensions of the pitch calibrated from each camera position. I’m not saying the line drawn for Motherwells first goal was wrong, but watching it at the time it just looked slightly off to my eye. The camera angle provided wasn’t the best but as I said, I’m glad it was found in favour of the Motherwell player because there was millimetres in it either way.

I do see your point but what I’m saying is that goals are being ruled out by VAR when there is a good chance that the attacking player isn’t actually offside, due to the inadequacies in the technology used in Scotland. I’m all for a good offside trap if we can clearly ascertain that the player is offside, but I’m not wanting to see legitimate goals ruled out because the official in charge of choosing the specific frame that the lines are drawn on hasn’t taken any particular effort to accurately pinpoint the moment that the ball is initially played forward. We would be as well going back to letting the assistant referees have the final say over offsides if the VAR is going to use pictures with a frame rate that literally cannot run the rule over tight offside decisions with any kind of accuracy. As much as you laud the skill of a defences offside trap, there is as much to be said for an attackers well timed run. I agree with some of what you say, but disagree that defenders dont still have some advantages over the attackers. It happens often where you will see a foul given in favour of the defending team for an absolute nothing incident at a corner or a free kick, and rarely is it penalised when an attacker is getting held back from the ball or his shirt pulled in the box in the same scenario. Defenders under pressure running towards their own goal with the ball only need to feel the slightest bit of contact from an opponent in order for them to go down and 99 times out of 100 the referee buys it and a soft foul is given in their favour. There is loads of stuff like that where fouls that happen at the corner flag are given every time but the exact same incident in the box would be waved away every time.

I can understand that point but the aim of the game in football is scoring goals, not deploying an offside trap to leave an attacker quarter of an inch offside. Nobody is going to be speaking about legendary offside traps in years to come, but with the current laws and the way VAR is being used in Scotland, there’s a good chance that legendary goals could be ruled out for offside because the VAR official used the wrong frame to determine when the ball was played forward. In the Champions League the ball has a sensor that can give accurate data to the VAR officials and allows them to pinpoint the exact frame to use as the ball is played forward. That technology doesn’t exist in Scotland, and if you have a defender rushing out at speed combined with an attacker going forward, finding the exact moment the ball is played is extremely important, when one frame could have the attacker level and the next frame could have the attacker a yard offside. Drawing lines and ruling goals out because that certain still image shows a player a few millimetres offside is laughable when you aren’t going to be accurate in finding out when the ball was played forward.

I understand that parallel lines will always converge to a point the further they travel, but should that really be the case over a distance of 70 odd yards? A train track disappearing into the distance over the space of a mile or so, sure. But a noticeable difference from one side of a football pitch to the other? Nah. Surely the amount of convergence would be negligible, especially when viewing the lines from the angle shown in the screenshot from Fir Park. I’m not saying that the cut of the grass should be taken as any kind of authority when deciding offside decisions, but to my eye the line drawn by the VAR officials from the back of Goldson along to Johnston looked a little bit iffy. As I said I think it was extremely tight, and the Primary School graphics drawn by the officials had Johnston just onside, which I think was the correct decision when there’s literally a few millimetres in it either way. The cameras used by VAR don’t have a frame rate that even allows them to accurately determine the exact moment the ball is played forward, which makes the prolonged offside decisions and drawing of lines to rule out a goal where the attackers knee is a quarter of an inch infront of the second last defender a bit of a joke. Far more leeway should be given to the attacking team in order to compensate for the undeniable fact that the VAR officials are working with technology that isn’t up to the job of calling such tight and important decisions that can change depending on which frame they decide use.

I thought the same as you on first viewing, and I still think it’s incredibly tight no matter what arbitrary lines are drawn by the VAR team, probably using Microsoft Paint on Windows XP, but no matter what team scores a goal from an offside decision as tight as that I wouldn’t like to see it ruled out when the available camera angles don’t make it obvious.

Listen it’s not a penalty in a month of Sundays, how VAR hasn’t overruled that decision after having the luxury of multiple replays is baffling. We’re not exactly short on examples of Scottish officials using VAR horrendously, but this is another one to add to the list. St. Mirren have had their fair share of ridiculous penalty decisions against them as I’m sure Dundee United have too, but it’s still no excuse. The most surprising thing for me is that a foul was given in favour of Curtis Main, most weeks it takes serious assault charges to be issued by the Procurator Fiscal for him to get a free kick on the half way line, so it was a shock to see him getting awarded a decision as soft as that in the box.

There was a point when I was watching that I genuinely thought they had taken Bella Ramseys face and used SFX to create the actress that played her mum, using some AI technology that I didn’t know about. What a weird coincidence that she was the voice of Ellie in the games long before Ramsey was cast for the TV show. I’ve really enjoyed the show, having never even heard of the game until I got a couple of episodes in. I must admit I was quite disappointed with the ending as I was looking for more of a rounded conclusion, although after speaking to a couple of guys in work who have played the games they said the first chapter ends in exactly the same way, so it didn’t come as much as a disappointment to them as it did to me. I understand it sets up the next season quite nicely but after investing my time in 9 episodes worth the ending seemed a bit flat on the face of it.

Let’s try and get the old band back together; The Scarf, DrewDon, ParanoidAndroid, 19QOS19, DA Baracus… Best episode from the original two seasons of The (UK) Office and why?

Underrated scene.

To be fair I think you’re better off with Birighitti after seeing some of Barkas’ displays. Neil Lennon and his scouting team really dropped the ball on that transfer. £5M quid for a goalkeeper that was so bad he got replaced by Scott Bain