The Mantis

Had to look this one up out of curiosity. It was Butcher’s second game the week after we drew 0-0 with Celtic. A lot of ICT fans were sporting Butcher head bandages with blood ketchup and the Celtic fans were chanting “Argentina!” Our fans responded with “Thierry Henry” to the tune of “Tom Hark”.

Aye it’s sickening for a small Scottish band where a lot of the audience will know them. I’ve had a bit of correspondence with Andrew O’Donnell over the past months, he actually answers emails & tweets. The problem is, he can’t arrange many gigs as his time is taken up with filming. I only became aware of them because of the Roaming in the Wild tv programmes. You could have got up to 8 so in theory that’s only the first 125 people. I only wanted 2 but had a false start on the iPad before logging in on my desktop which probably cost me the chance.

Playing Aviemore Arena in February. 1000 tickets sold out yesterday in less than 5 mins. Gutted not to get any then tonight I see this utter c**t on gumtree selling a pair for £500.

Spoke to the chairman a couple of weeks ago, he’s hopeful of getting funding to get the pitch levelled and replaced by the ahem, good old plastic. A couple of years back in the LL he described the cost of removing the slope as ‘astronomical’. I go along a few times a season but have to admit it’s not a great watch at NDP, although I think the quality of squad is night and day from last season. Probably nip down on Tuesday night v the Fifers.

Cheers for that. Like I say, I’m familiar with Leys Park Rd and all the wee corners including the wee street next to Macklin Motors, Ronaldson I think, but I’ve been quite seriously ill and not planning on walking more than 100m or so. So I’ll get there early and if the Halbeath Rd is too busy the North car park will be fine.

Been to EEP many a time so quite familiar with the on-street parking and various wee corners but not the official car park. Suffered a bit of ill-health recently so probably get there early to save a long walk or maybe just use the car park at the ground. Is the car park open to anybody or just members? I assume it costs a fiver or whatever?

One from Simpson Park, October 1995, Swifts 0 Bonnyrigg 3 in the SJC. A true aerial shot as I am 6’1”

Good on ya. A couple of years back I watched Lossie 4 Rothes 6 on the Saturday, walked the coast from Garmouth to Lossie on Sunday, bus to Inversneckie in time for ICT 3 Crusaders 2. Happy days.

Is Paisley Panda no longer a thing? Back when ICT were good, the panda was cavorting about in front of us to the tune of “I’ve got a brand new combine harvester”. By half time it was 4-0 ICT and despite us chanting “bring on the panda” the substitution by Hendrie/ Coughlin or whoever didn’t materialise.

As long as he doesn’t bring Gregor or whatever his old man is using as an alias these days… Fair play to big Jordan, a nice guy who has managed to carve out a career as a professional footballer with virtually no talent whatsoever. I imagine he was the biggest guy in his school team.

For some reason, on European nights, when you click on the matches from the list of fixtures, if it’s an English team it goes under the submenu of “European Football”, but if it’s a Scottish team it reverts to “Scottish Football “. A bit ironic given the brexit result…

England 2 Scotland 3 1967 Got the whole game on DVD years ago and decided to give it another watch yesterday. It would be interesting to hear if anybody else has it, or was at the game. I was nearly 12 and a bunch of us listened to it on a wee transistor radio out on the pavement… It’s like night and day compared to modern fitba. As your typical oldie, I’m usually of the opinion that the modern game is technically far superior but completely devoid of any entertainment value. Nobody takes a risk any more. The first thing that strikes you is how wasteful both teams are in possession (I thought the very same when I recently saw extended highlights of Inter v Celtic). Both lined up a very open 4-3-3 and went at it from the start. Denis Law misses an open goal on 20 mins as Wallace fizzes a cross over from the right. The players are given an amazing amount of time to run with the ball even allowing that people always bang on about the big Wembley pitch. But when there’s a tackle, boy it’s fierce. Much is made of Jack Charlton hobbling early on and moving up front, but there must have been at least 6 players needing attention during the first half. Second half the players definitely tire and the pace becomes less frantic. The German ref let a lot of heavy tackles go, although he was more niggly about other stuff such as dissent or obstruction. At 25 mins, Ray Wilson absolutely halves the overlapping Tommy Gemmell and bizarrely a corner is awarded to Scotland. In today’s game it would have probably finished about 7-a-side. Not a weakness in the Scotland team that day and for me Bobby Charlton was the standout for England. Although it’s often reported as Baxter’s game, it’s interesting to see how Denis Law was getting stuck in and niggling away at them from the start. He really enjoyed putting one over on the English. Very pleasing to see the gradual disintegration of Alan Ball into a seething mess as Baxter and Law took the piss out of him as the game wore on. Otherwise it was played in a very sporting spirit and you can see players exchanging friendly chat e.g. Law and Stiles. I don’t think there was one example of a defender shepherding it out for a goal kick in the whole game. They always tried to play the ball rather than let it go out. I can’t say I saw any gobbing either.

My first game since September 9th. Ended up in hospital for nearly 6 weeks with pneumonia. Dunbar Utd 1 East Fife 0. Got driven by a mate as it was my first outing. A quick beer at the Station Yard Micropub and managed to squeeze into the stand. The Fifers had the bulk of the ball as expected but apart from a looping header from Faz which came off the bar they had very little to offer. Then in a rare Dunny break just before half time the nippy no 11 Gregory got upended by Comerford and Whitson put Dunny ahead from the spot. The Fifers laid siege to the goal for about 15 minutes after the break but eventually seemed to run out of ideas and Dunny had a couple of great chances to sew it up. Scenes at the end.

No just brief highlights which I probably have somewhere.

Aye, no problem. It’s nice when people ask instead of just pinching it and cropping your name off the bottom

The 3rd one down is mine, Ettrick Park. Selkirk v Arbroath 1994.

Aye, Gille Bride ( St Bride’s gillie) is the Gaelic for the Oystercatcher, or Shalder as they call it in Shetland, or Tjaldur in Iceland.

Yo ho ho - oof!

Been there a couple of times, the last being 2-2 v WW in 2015. The spread they put on at half time put Edinburgh Uni to shame. Wick went 2-1 up in 92 minutes and a disgusted Sir Peter went for a pish. When he came out we were all dancing about as it was now 2-2.

Zico

More to the point, last time I was there (must have been the Buckie game last season) the c***s never gave any warning. It looked like 2 identical turnstiles apart from one saying card payments. And the pies were all sold out and I got the last of the soup which was lukewarm and absolutely bogging.

Oops brain fart

This is an unattributed quote so it had me confused for a bit. However, you've got the wrong Usher. You've got Usher's of Trowbridge, Wilts and we're talking about Thomas Usher of Edinburgh. Ushers of Trowbridge Thomas Usher

Nah, it was Vaux Breweries of Sunderland that took them over. In my young days the brewers were known as Usher-Vaux and they produced this insipid beer which must have suited a Teesside Wearside palate as it was similar to Vaux beer which I probably tasted once on holiday. I believe that Ushers was respectable enough in Scotland before that, also their whisky. it was Drybroughs that were taken over by Watneys. Yeah a good bit of marketing but still shite. Pretty awful to think that back then, people including me would choose a pub that sold Tartan Special or McEwan’s Export, the ‘finest’ beers you could get in Scotland at the time. The other main player was Tennents, whose lager I think was top quality compared to what they sell now, but unless you were a lager drinker you wouldn’t bother with their tied houses as their various ales, like Bass Special, were awful. Unless you could find a pub which said ‘free house’.

No highlights from Creetown? I saw it was being filmed…