Swello

Never apologise for mentioning Pakora on this thread. Is that Broughton as in the Broughton between Biggar and Peebles?

Oi! - that's our reasoning. Lanarkshire derby is the bottom of the heap now unfortunately as we almost never play Airdrie so any rivalry has died and Accies, despite becoming really quite annoying at their peak, have now disappeared again. I worked at Rosyth Dockyard for a while in the 90's when Rovers were at their peak and even then - I got the impression from the Pars and Rovers supporters I worked with that it wasn't the most bitter of rivalries whereas Airdrie were fucking hated (my memory is that the ever lovely Airdrie supporters had interrupted a minutes silence or tribute of some sort for Norrie McCathie)

At least it doesn't say "I was surprised to see so many Motherwell players stretchered off in a bounce game"

I still have both of these in a box somewhere. Abiding memory of the jester strip was the late Jamie Dolan being sent out at half time in an end of season game to show it off to the East Stand. Very muted applause later and mortified Jamie trooped back off. Always liked the luminous effort because of that Shivute goal at Ibrox.

Now I feel bad. My feelings towards it are mainly based on the fact that Paul Kinnaird wore it.

There's virtually no evidence of what fans want, despite them being the main funding source for Scottish clubs - no-one ever asks.

Certainly one of the best ever - the away top was also a classic and the team that went in it was my favourite of all time.

(a) That's objectively quite funny, (b) it's reminded me of how much I love Cedric Kipre and (c) I would be 100% willing to accept a once a season shocker like that against my team if every other game was VAR free and I didn't have to spend half the season looking at referee standing with his finger to his ear.

Mine was this monstrosity (maybe the worst ever), bought from a wee sliding window inside the main stand where I (as a nervous young boy) had to disturb a grumpy secretary from her typing. She fished it out an unmarked cardboard box.

I think the only real blot on the landscape since Dingwall is the Morton game (which is still a sickener) - we've been competitive in every other game and defeats at Tynecastle and at home to Celtic are fine in the context of the overall run.

I would argue that for teams of our size, a competition that - on a good year - you could conceivably compete and achieve group stage football is a far bigger prize than the dull procession of losses against teams from a different level that we experienced in a lot of our qualifications. Losing to Odense in the EL Playoff will always be one the very sorest losses for me because it was two teams from the same planet football-wise, getting pumped by Panathinaikos, not so much.

Aye - with some of the crosses that Gent has put in with no takers, an out and out poacher would be ideal.

Makes perfect sense - but that is not the model we have. We have an executive board who is technically not accountable to anyone other than themselves. They hire, they fire - and they bring a couple of Well Society reps along for the ride.

Fully agree - and the situation where it's a case of "it's great that you're the owners but don't expect to be doing any actual owning" is a very weird thing to have come about. This is good to hear as it's exactly what should happen - the Society should be in a position to nominate (or approve) the majority of the BoD and approve the CEO and Chairman appointments. There is nothing that says directors need to come from the Society - just that the right people are nominated by them if that's what they want to do.

This is the part that honestly I've always found more difficult to understand from a governance point of view (and it may just be because I'm not very bright and I'm picking it up wrong). The well society must be the only majority shareholder (are we allowed to say owner?) in football history that has minority voting rights on the board of it's own club. Let's leave aside the argument that the 'Well society would ever become involved in any day to day decisions (which would be a ridiculous state of affairs) - but in the situation where the Executive Board was minded to do something "big" that the Society were dead against (let's say selling Fir Park to a housing developer and sharing NDP for an open ended period) - what safeguards are there that the 71% shareholding could actually be brought to bear? If I understand correctly, it's one person, one vote on the Executive Board, so the Well society reps are always in the minority, far more so if/when new directors are added. It kind of feels like the whole thing relies on the "good chap principle" that the UK model of governance was based on before the current lot finally trashed it - basically, the folk on the Exec board were good guys like Alan Burrows or Jim McMahon who wouldn't knowingly make a harmful decision, so the 'Well Society can sit in the corner and nod their head and not worry about it - but this obviously becomes a different story when we invite outside investment or the cast changes.

Aye - Spittal will be elsewhere in the summer but as with every player that sees out their contract, if his form wins him an upwards move, that can only be a good thing for us. He's also our POTY by a frightening distance.

The club should top off what's been a great weekend by publicly asking for a retrospective red card for McAusland.

That high angle is the most revealing - there's at least a metre of fresh air between them when Casey gets the ball. But again, don't get suckered into taking the outrage fodder seriously - all these talking head roasters don't really think it's a red card but it's what they get paid to do.

Old Firm managers, especially given the constant (and massively fucking tiresome) infowars that go on around the two clubs, are politicians as well as coaches. They understand that what they say is printed/broadcast uncritically and so they get their soundbite in to ensure that's what's spoken/written about rather than the fact they were fairly shite and struggled to beat teams with a fraction of their resources. As they unusually both got beat on the same weekend, we neatly got to see both Clement (in a relatively low key way to be fair) and Brendan (in a pretty blatant way that will do nothing for the safety of John Beaton's windaes) using exactly the same tactic.

They were still in Denial at that point so it was fine. It was a bit mental outside the ground afterwards though once they turned to Anger.. (and it's great to see that Alan Thompson hasn't made it to Acceptance all these years later)

There was a mental amount of Celtic supporters in our stands that day. Most in the East Stand were outed at their goal and unfortunately, some were "roughed up" (not my words, the words of a Celtic supporter who wrote into the Evening Times about his experience ). The Cooper stand was basically full of them - watch the replay of the goals to see just how few folk were celebrating.

Is there a contractual reason that they can't do that style of highlights for other games (ie, longer highlights for a couple of games on the Saturday show)? Hearts-Celtic was like the highlights from Sportscene of old where they didn't just show you the goals.

"Crying Man in Blarney Hat" was my favourite. I'd pay to see it in a gallery.

Aberdeen have got Dens, Fir Park and Almondvale in their next 4 fixtures (along with what could be a 6 pointer against County at home) - if they don't take much from meat and potatoes games like that, I would start to think it likely that they could be in the playoffs, as post split won't be easy for them. Still think they'll have enough, mind.

I can't believe there's people here write players off after 3 touches - amateur stuff. Our signings are usually decided on when they are still a rumour on a ten follower ITK twitter account.