GordonS

Depends on whether you count the time of the incident or the award.

You'd think if there was one football club whose supporters could find a real drummer it would be Rangers.

You're right, it's too hypothetical and I should probably have left it alone. I just think a bit more consensus and wider, long-term thinking would be good. As a Linlithgow Rose fan I love the SJC and I miss it, but listening to fans of other clubs I realise it's mostly fans of clubs that had realistic chances of winning it that feel this way.

People confuse majoritarianism with democracy. Democracy includes the idea of giving people as much freedom to make their own choices as you can. It's not just the majority getting their own way over minorities no matter what.

For conspiracy theorists everything that happened must have been intended to happen, so you just change the narrative to suit the events. Nothing could ever be coincidental.

I don't think it was entirely sensible tbh and Naomi Wolf is a fruit loop. The idea that any government would want to force people to stay at home instead of be out working and spending money is completely irrational and illogical. For example, one of the first big things they did after the first lockdown was Eat Out to Help Out. What civil liberties do we, or did we, have that governments want to curtail? The right to protest - but even at the height of Covid risks they were remarkably accepting of protests against Covid restrictions, the Met Police and racism. What else? People vastly overestimate how much governments care about what they do with their days.

A vote to force a minority to do something they don't want to do and don't need to do isn't necessarily democratic.

Aberdeen and Celtic played each other 8 times in 1987/88 - 4 league, 1 league cup and a Scottish Cup 3rd round match that went to 2 replays. Rangers and Hibs met 7 times in 1977/78 - 4 league, and three times in the Scottish Cup final. They played each other 4 times in May 1978 - the three cup finals on 12, 16 and 28 May and the final league game of the season on 31 May. Celtic and Rangers faced each other 7 times in 2010/11 - 4 league, league cup, and Scottish Cup with a replay.

No. If Hibs had beaten Leeds Utd in the 3rd round of the 67-68 Fairs Cup they'd have played Rangers in the QF, and if Rangers had beaten Leeds Utd in that tie they'd have played Dundee in the SF.

Bonar Bridge were a little bit screwed by Loch Ness failing to field a team against Thurso, with Thurso being awarded the win. Loch Ness would surely have won that game and Thurso would have finished behind Bonar Bridge on goal difference.

I love watching Leinster and they're putting on a show here in front of a packed Aviva. Assuming Leinster finish the job their semi-final will be against Northampton or Bulls at Croke Park, which could have a massive crowd.

Dalbeattie face a fixture scramble to get their league campaign completed in time for the Lowland League play-off. They're already scheduled to play Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and now they have another fixture to play. But three of their scheduled fixtures are cup ties, so presumably they'll shunt one or more.

Who did they sign?

Yup, Airdrie are the form team any way you slice the past 10 matches. Airdrie getting back-to-back promotions would be one of Scottish football's wilder stories, especially after finishing 21 points off the top last season and winning the play-off final on penalties.

The defences of Gartcairn and similar sides here read like someone with a trust fund from the bank of mum and dad complaining that those pointing out their unfair advantages are just jealous. Football is a zero-sum game and every winner needs a loser. If a club is getting boosted by cash going into their playing squad from anything other than matchday income, market-rate sponsorship and so on then they're not having success on merit, and other clubs that can only spend what they've earned through their own efforts are bumped down the league system below them and miss out on cup wins or runs too. A secondary impact that's apparent in England and will be repeated here if it continues is clubs in an arms race, being forced to whore themselves to rich guys looking for a hobby, leading to increasingly sketchy chancers taking control of clubs. The risks to their existence is obvious. If locals with money want to put invest in things like youth development or facilities that's great. If they put it into the first team squad they're just skewing the competition. Asking people to "applaud the ambition" is pretty insulting. There's nothing ambitious about having money fall into your lap. It's sheer blind luck. Other new clubs are working with what they earn, like (afaik) BSC Glasgow and Inverkeithing Hillfield Swifts. If you care about fairness and meritocracy in sport, that's who you should be be applauding.

Because the article specifically says it won't be funded with public money. Glasgow makes a lot of money from hosting events and conferences, they support a lot of jobs. If the CGF and commercial income cover the cost then there's only upside.

The SFA should have learned from what the WSL clubs have been doing - playing at smaller home stadiums and taking occasional bigger matches to the club's main ground, with the number of those matches increasing as the support base sustains it. That's how Arsenal have got their average attendance up to 35,000 despite a lack of success on the pitch. They also do clever stuff like Emirates-only season tickets and early purchase discounts. IMO we should be based between Firhill and one of the Edinburgh grounds - you always get the best crowds where the most people can walk or make a short bus or train journey - and take the bigger games to Hampden, creating more of a buzz around them. The aim would be over time to have more and more games at Hampden. The SFA should also have learned from the SRU that making tickets free for season pass holders/ members for men's games is a mistake. It devalues them and leads to hundreds of tickets being taken and then not used. Obviously the big crowds England gets are because of their successes, but also because of their branding, all the 'Lionesses' stuff. I think the huge mistake the SFA makes is trying to attract existing football-watching men to the women's games. The sad reality is that the vast majority of people in the UK who attend women's football games at all levels are female. At the England v Scotland game in Sunderland it was really noticeable in the crowds before and after the game that there was far more women than men, and excluding men on their own, I only saw two guys who weren't going to the game with women. I didn't see any other male-only groups, and after I first noticed it I was looking for them. The FA's marketing around the women's team is more aimed at women. One weird thing is that the atmosphere at women's football internationals is much, much worse than women's rugby internationals, even allowing for ground sizes. I think the main difference is that female players go en masse to the rugby games, you see whole squads at a time in their club hats and training gear. They drink a lot of beer and make a lot of noise. The SFA works to get girls' clubs to Hampden, but not women's. And your last point - I see a lot guys saying they don't watch women's football like it's a different form of football. They'll travel across the country for a tenth-tier men's game or follow an eye-bleedingly terrible Scottish club and then complain about the standard of women's internationals. I used to try to persuade them but my opinion now is that they're a lost cause and they'll never get past the sex of the players. The target audience is younger people and women.

In England there's no parole for sentences under 4 years. He's doing the 18 months.

So no public money and all funding coming from the private sector and the Commonwealth Games Foundation? The commercial income of the Glasgow games themselves was £118 million so if the CGF are willing to chuck £100 million or so on top, the games should be self-financing. We should require a UK government guarantee as a back-up. Over the 7 years up to and including the 2014 Glasgow games they contributed £740 million to Scotland's GVA, of which £390 million was in Glasgow. Obviously hosting again wouldn't generate anything like that because all the construction has been done, but Glasgow has had nothing but benefit from hosting sporting events like the indoor athletics and cycling championships recently, because they don't carry big costs and they bring good business to the hospitality sectors. There's no doubt that, if you could host the games without any public funding, it would be an absolute no-brainer.

Saturday, April 13 Brechin City – Forres Mechanics Buckie Thistle – Deveronvale Strathspey Thistle – Fraserburgh Monday, April 15 Buckie Thistle – Strathspey Thistle Wednesday, April 17 Fraserburgh – Brora Rangers Strathspey Thistle – Buckie Thistle [Probably Keith v Brechin City] Saturday, April 20 Brora Rangers – Brechin City Buckie Thistle – Keith Fraserburgh – Strathspey Thistle

Covid gave us a pretty perfect experiment for this. Home advantage is obvious just from looking at any full league table. The causes of it are debatable. McCarrick et al at Leeds and Newcastle universities published a paper on the 2019-20 season in 15 leagues across 11 European countries which compared 3515 matches played pre-lockdowns with crowds, and 1329 with no crowd. They found that the difference in points-per-game won by home teams and away teams was halved, other metrics like shots, shots on target and corners showed an even bigger closing of the gap, while on fouls, yellow and red cards the gap vanished and home sides actually did worse. So the effect is real and, on the outcome of games, fans are about half of it. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S146902922100131X#sec3

Buckie beat Brora 2-0. How good is this:

I'm 49 years old. One of the big learning points of my life so far has been that those with imposter syndrome almost always shouldn't have it, and those without it usually should.

To add to what's been said above, Fraserburgh are by far the form team in the league and with Brora at home and Strathspey twice you'd have to expect them to take 9 points and substantially improve their goal difference. Brechin have done poorly against the better sides and have to go away to Keith - who despite their defeat on Monday are still the second-best team in the league any way you want to look at the last 6 to 10 games - away to Brora and home against Forres. Taking 7 points from that, or 6 and better Fraserburgh's goal difference, won't be easy. Going to Brora for the last game is very squeaky bum. I'm not sure which of the two are favourites, you can make a case for either. Buckie are still well in it, they have to play 5 games in 10 days but two are against Strathspey and the other 3 are at home. Four wins and a draw would be enough to guarantee finishing above Fraserburgh. It wouldn't be a surprise if all three finished on 78 points. ETA: It's Keith v Brechin tonight. The pitch just passed an inspection at 11.30am, there's another inspection at 4pm. Fingers crossed it goes ahead. If they broadcast it I'd watch instead of the Champions League.