IrishBhoy

You might be joking but I would genuinely put some effort into trying this. Sportsound is an absolute rabble and if a few enthusiastic Scottish football fans got together I am quite confident that they could come up with a show similar to Open All Mics that was more professional and even handed than anything we’ve been subjected to over the past 5 years or so. Back in the 90s you could tune into pirate radio stations from some guys bedroom, so surely it can’t be too much trouble to broadcast in this digital age. Im usually at a game on a Saturday so only listen before and after, but the times where I’ve happened to be in the car at 3pm hoping to hear updates from across the leagues, I’m left listening to guys shouting ‘Gooooaaaalllll’, then describing the action for the next minute without actually saying who has scored. I know that’s a common complaint but It really is basic stuff. Then you get the constant bickering between the pundits, usually on the topic of some inane incident that happened 3 weeks ago, or you get Miller droning on refusing to give accurate updates if Aberdeen aren’t playing well, or Stewart taking a stance that everyone else disagrees with then having to listen to him beatIng that opinion to death over the course of the show. It’s like the sort of thing high school students would put together in 5th year, only it’s our national broadcaster and we are literally paying for it.

Well myself and the other guy shared a laugh about so that will do me.

Username is 16 years old, I frequented Parkhead as a child hence the name but started going to St Mirren games with a couple of work colleagues and enjoyed the experience much more, and have followed them home and away for over 10 years. If I could change the name I would.

‘No offence Lynn’ ‘Oh none taken’ ‘You don’t know what I’m going to say. Wait until I’ve said what I’m going to say before you decide not to take offence… No offence Lynn, but your life is technically not worth insuring’.

Walking out the stadium moments after Watson had scored Killies 5th a guy infront of me said to his pal ’I’ve had some shite days supporting St Mirren but that’s got to be the shitiest’, I said ‘We’re you not at Hampden to watch us get beat off 9 man Rangers?’, and he started laughing and said ‘Second shitiest day then’. Always good to have a sense of perspective.

The appraisal scene is one of the best bits of UK comedy television ever, could watch it every day and not get tired of it. Sad to hear of his passing at such a relatively young age.

Always the same.

Been rewatching Peep Show after giving myself a couple of years break and it’s still extremely high level comedy. When Jez and Hans are gifted the pub and Jez turns and says ‘I'm just really not happy with the name "Free the Paedos". Will never not be funny.

That was the sort of goal you usually see during an under 16s game on a Saturday morning.

Yeah you’re right, for some reason I was certain South Africa had won their opening game, but I’ve just went and looked and they drew 1-1 with Mexico.

Playing in the opening game will be class, there’s been some brilliant opening games between World Cups and Euros over the years, and a few shock results too. Senegal beating France in the opening game of the 2002 World Cup I think, and did South Africa cause an upset the year they hosted it? Can still remember running home from school in 1998 when Scotland v Brazil was the opening game, think I was in Primary 4 at the time, and being naive enough to think we had a chance at winning. That Brazil team was iconic; Taffarel, Roberto Carlos, Cafu, Rivaldo, Dunga and R9, up against Tom Boyd and Colin Calderwood Mental that was 25 years ago.

I started a new job a few weeks ago and the first couple of days were spent doing an online induction on Microsoft Teams. It was pretty standard stuff, but at one point the guy taking the course said ‘if you receive good customer service, you’ll tell 3 people… but if you receive bad customer service, you’ll tell 9’ and I went…

Wasn’t getting at the St Johnstone fans who turned up, fair play to every one of them that made the trip to Paisley after the start they’ve had this season. Good to see that St Mirren now have a core support of around 5000 fans that are going to turn up week in week out though. I remember going to some of the games in the Championship under Ian Murray and you were lucky if there was 3000 there for a 3pm kick off on a Saturday.

Mad that we are over a year into the VAR era and you've still got pundits perplexed ‘because VAR didn’t check it’. From everything we have been shown of the inner workings of VAR, everything is checked by the VAR team, and only when the guys at Clydesdale House decide that an incident requires either more time to analyse it, or for the referee to review it at the pitch side monitor, will the fans in the stadium become aware that a check is in progress. To be fair it’s not just Scottish pundits that can’t get their head round this, I’ve heard pundits on Sky say stuff like ‘why is that not going to VAR?’ etc. If a decision isn’t clear cut then I don’t even mind that the game moves on quickly, it’s one of the annoyances I have with the Scottish VAR system that you will be sitting at a game watching Nick Walsh put his hand to his ear for a minute or so, only to wave the game on as the fans in the stadium are oblivious to what they were checking. It feels like the officials in Scotland have strayed too far from the ‘clear and obvious’ criteria which is supposed to be used in order to overturn an onfield decision, instead we have referees on the pitch who are happy not to award penalties/red cards knowing that VAR will step in if they have made an arse of it.

Was unfortunate enough to endure Peter Grant’s co-commentary on the Celtic St Mirren game during the week, and he made Pat Bonner sound like Derek Rae. He genuinely burst into a tirade which began ‘did Rangers not get a penalty for that exact thing at the weekend?’ As if every decision between the OF needs balanced out, because it’s not like the other 10 teams in the league don’t see horrific decisions going against them on an almost weekly basis. Is every single person associated with Celtic programmed to find any angle that can paint them as the victim? Hartson, Sutton, Boyd, Bonner et al all do the same, a team that has literally won 12 domestic trophies in a row in recent history, genuinely believe there is a refereeing conspiracy against them. I thought Tom Boyd was the biggest simpleton that Celtic TV could muster up, but unbelievably Grant was nearly as bad. The fact he’s still making a living from football is worrying, although after his recent stint at Dunfermline I think Celtic TV is as good as it gets for him.

The official attendance last Saturday was 5,500 but the atmosphere amongst the home support would have put bigger teams to shame. Nothing against St Johnstone, but they had a few hundred away fans at most in a stand which holds the best part of 1500, so 5,500 in attendance means the home end was about 80 percent full. Compare that to a Rugby Park or a McDiarmid when the stadium has 5,000 in attendance and you can hear the grass grow. There’s more empty seats than there is fans. When I first started getting taken to Saints games in the mid 90’s you could count on one hand how many games had more than 5,000 in attendance, now it’s a regular occurrence. It shouldn’t be taken for granted these days but it’s brilliant to see the stadium filled out no matter the fixture.

Got back in the car after the St Mirren v St Johnstone game on Saturday just in time to hear Willie Millers analysis, which bared very little resemblance to the game I had just watched. Apparently St Mirrens first goal was a cross into the box which was neatly chested down by Kiltie in to the path of Baccus, when in reality the ball hardly left the grass and Kiltie played the ball into Mandron before taking the ball back just inside the box then laying it off for Baccus to score. He got the players involved for the 3rd goal wrong and then dismissed the 4th goal as a tap in at the back post after a cut back, when it was actually an Olusanya shot off the post which came out to Kiltie and deflected in off the face of a St Johnstone defender. It’s really not a difficult job, but getting extremely basic facts wrong doesn’t seem to be an issue at Sportsound, I’m sure he will be back next week sounding like he’s being forced to attend the game against his will.

Only problem with the wooden boards is they block part of the digital screens. I was in the back row of the West Stand on Saturday and you couldn’t see the bottom of the screen because of them. You could obviously still make out everything that was displayed on them but I imagine if someone is paying for screen time, especially during games which are shown live on TV, they would want the full advert on show.

I had hospitality through St Mirren that day and we were supposed to go back to the stadium for a couple of hours after the game, but the bus dropped us off at the main door and almost everyone went straight up the road. That bus journey from Hampden was horrific. A guy at our table had won a hospitality package for 2 for the upcoming game against Celtic, and due to how scunnered he was after the Final he gave his prize away to my uncle. That ended up being the 4-0 Celtic game and one of the best ever nights at St Mirren Park never seen the guy since but I bet he regretted that.

5000 possibly a bit of an exaggeration but there wasn’t many Rangers fans left around the away end, who had been giving the St Mirren fans abuse whilst winning 1-0. It was a shame not to return the favour when we scored.

We kept hearing that Fury had put himself through a 12 week camp for this fight, but he looked in a terrible shape on Saturday. Flab falling over his shorts and he was fighting with his mouth open from about the second round onwards. After the knockdown he looked in a state of shock to me, but he also boxed like he knew he was going to get the decision. To be fair Ngannou really pulled back after the knockdown, and limited himself to counters that largely missed their mark. The 96-93 card for Fury is well wide of the mark but I couldn’t argue with it being 95-94 in his favour. There is always an underdog bias when scoring a fight with a heavy favourite, and I don’t think Ngannou showed enough in the second half of the fight to overcome that.

I remember a few years back Stevie Thompson scored late in injury time to salvage a 1-1 draw against them at Ibrox, and you were lucky if there was more than 5000 fans left in the stadium. I’ve left a game of football early on a handful of occasions, usually when my team is getting beat by 4 or 5 goals. I don’t understand the logic of leaving early when your team is winning and there’s only 1 goal in it, but Rangers fans seem to value an empty subway carriage more than cheering their team to a victory or waiting to show appreciation after a win. I’ve got a good friend who has had a season ticket in the top tier of the main stand at Ibrox since he was a child, and anytime I speak to him on a Saturday he says he left at half time to go and sit in a pub on Paisley Road West which streams the game on a dodgy firestick. Reading that back it’s possible he’s just an alcoholic that can’t go 45 minutes without a pint.

Didn’t see this before I posted praising them I did think that the adverts that were mostly white seemed to illuminate the stadium a bit, especially when it changed from an advert that was darker in colour, and it did catch your eye from the west stand but nothing drastic. The boards could be used for so much more than what they were on Saturday, and I was surprised we didn’t see things like the substitutions flashing up on them or showing the amount of time added on at the end of the half like you do in other stadiums, although hopefully that will come down the road. I did comment to my father that I found it strange that they have still kept the triangular shaped wooden advertising boards that sit in front of the digital screens, but I imagine those advertising contracts would have been set out at the start of the season and will need to be honoured until the seasons end.Their removal would also help aid an increased run up distance for Gogic’s long throws, and I think they will be gone for the start of next season. I’m almost certain they are they same ones that we had running along the front of the main stand at Love Street, obviously with different advertising on them now.

Was sitting in the West Stand on Saturday and I must say what a difference there is in the stadium now compared to what it first looked like back on the opening game against Kilmarnock all those years ago. The digital advertising boards and the full stands really make a difference, as does the scoreboard refurbishment and the decoration of the breeze block under the stands. I know there was a lot of rival fans scoffing when we built an 8,000 seater stadium, but teams like Kilmarnock, St. Johnstone, Livingston etc. must be looking on in envy at the atmosphere created at Greenhill Road every home game these days. It helps that the players are doing the job on the pitch at the moment but hopefully a lot of these fans turning up nowadays keep showing up when the teams isn’t as successful.

Didn’t think it was a foul in real time and don’t think there’s anything in it after watching the replay. He’s entitled to go for the ball seeing as it’s uncontested about 4 yards from goal, keeper gets there first and Lovelace lands on Hemmings but not with the kind of force that would result in a red card.