GordonS

Junior Cup finals can still draw a big crowd. St Mirren or Ayr would be my first choices for those but I understand why they pick Broadwood, at least they're going to need 2 or 3 stands. A Lowland League Cup final is never getting more than about 1,000 unless it's something like Linlithgow Rose v Bo'ness. Rose played Tranent in the EoS League Cup final at Newtongrange the season before last and I doubt that hit 4 figures.

EK were only formed 14 years ago, they don't really have a loyal fan base yet. From what I've seen a lot of them are Celtic fans first and EK fans second, which is fair enough IMO.

627 in a ground with 8,000 seats is rubbish. 627 in a ground like Prestonfield or Cliftonhill is perfectly fine. It was always a terrible choice of ground.

Liverpool are proof that the people who complain about teams trying to walk it in are clueless. They constantly shoot too early instead of trying to improve the position. So many blocked shots that were obviously going to be blocked. Every time I watch them I can't understand how they're top of the league. Presumably it's because they create a huge number of opportunities and play the averages.

The pitch surprised me because I expected it to be wet and to cut up easily, but it was firm and held up throughout the match. Well done to them for that. What really surprised me though was how long and tussocky the grass was. Maybe it's because they haven't been able to get machinery on the pitch as it's been too wet. Weirdly it might have allowed the game to be played to a finish because, on a plastic pitch or a surface like a bowling green, you'd never have been able to stop the ball rolling away when it was put down for a set piece. I think that was the main reason the game at Meadowbank was abandoned. While I'm here I'll say Berwick is one of my favourite away trips, it's a unique and beautiful place. I went down early for a mooch around, drove over the Lammermuirs on the way, the missus came down by train later and we had a wander and fish suppers. Good crowd yesterday too, I think they said 483. Looking forward to many more trips in years to come.

As the crow flies Stranraer is closer to Hampden, Belfast, England, the Isle of Man and even the country of Ireland than it is to Gretna. Though Gretna would, just be their shortest drive, if Stranraer go down their geographically closest rival will either be East Kilbride, or if they go up, Caledonian Braves.

It varies hugely depending on the actual conspiracy. On climate change I've never come across a denier who didn't have strong political opposition to the implication of climate change. Reducing emissions inevitably means constraints on personal freedoms. Instead of reacting like the rest of us who are reluctantly accepting harsh realities and trying to find the least bad way to do it, like children they just yell "NO IT ISN'T!" They choose to believe that the people warning them about climate change just want to control them, so the conspiracies are inevitable from there. There's no scientific evidence that could ever change their mind because they'll never believe anyone who produces it.

I'll say this about you, at least you posted this on an appropriate thread. In terms of scientific credibility, rejecting the basics of climate change - that the atmosphere has warmed by about one degree in the last 150 years and that the cause is human action, mostly burning oil, gas and coal - is right on a par with flat earthism. The amount of demented sh*tf*ckery they need to go through now to try to refute that reality is hilarious. They even deny warming has occurred, in which case someone's going to have to explain how the trees are in on it.

I think it makes DC a good pundit though. He doesn't let his ego come out in passing judgement on drivers, he's always fair. He knows he was a good driver and he knows exactly how much better the champions and the greats were. I think he offers good insights for us plebs into what it's like for the drivers.

I see Rangers' knucklescrapers and the OF's lickspittle cheerleaders in the media are turning on Tom English for speculating that Ally McCoist means he'll be singing about being up to his knees in f*nian blood. Clueless bampots saying McCoist should sure for "slander". If McCoist didn't mean that song, or one at that level, what song did he mean? He said that he's going to break the Act, meaning he intends to behave in a way that is threatening, abusive or insulting with the intention of stirring up hatred of a protected group - in this case, that could only be Catholics. So either he intends to sing songs like the Billy Boys, or he's a clueless f**k passing comment on a piece of legislation without the faintest idea what it says. I honestly don't know which of those two applies.

Cheap late hit on Vellacott over the try line, something that needs to be removed from the game. Ref gave a yellow at least, but it's contact direct to the head using a tucked arm with no mitigation. Anywhere else on the pitch it's a red.

I assume you're including the interim manager in that, and not going all the way back to 2005? Under Shelley Kerr we were one of only 9 UEFA nations to qualify for the World Cup and we played pretty well for 2 games and 75 minutes of the third. The collapse in Paris rightly sours everything else but we did play well across the tournament. Against England in Sunderland last year you could see the quality we've got on the pitch. 2-0 down they stopped playing the manager's tactics and went at England, and were really unlucky not to get something from the game.

Glasgow Warriors representing the finest traditions of Scottish rugby by losing a match they should have won, in a way that allows them to "have a lot of positives to take from the game".

IIRC you were complaining about the penalty decisions against Scotland in Cardiff were sign of something dodgy, but I don't recall objecting to any of those penalties or feeling the decisions were uneven. Tonight's decisions are all going one way and it's classic 'French referee for a game with a team from a wee country' stuff.

Increasingly I feel like every criticism my football-supporting pals make about rugby is true.

There's also the Reserve League Cup which has a group stage, but yeah, it's still very few games a season and they're all midweek. Livi are also more likely to use first team players in need of minutes in the SPFL reserves than in an EoS squad. Livi promote non-league games in West Lothian when they're not playing so they might be using this for a bit of outreach too.

Number 2, definitely. I don't know why playing for better clubs would make any of them worse for the national side. Apart from the manager, our main problems are ACLs for Weir and Watson, other injuries for Kirsty Hansen and Martha Thomas and Kim Little retiring about 10 years early.

The players are playing the system they're told to play. How many did we ever have in front of the ball? Three in the middle of the box for corners. Constantly transitioning with only one in front of the ball. Scotland look flat all the time because PML makes them play that way. Most of them are hugely more dynamic when they play for their clubs. This is about the manager. Did anyone complain it was a "poor advert" for men's football when we beat San Marino 2-0 away in one of the worst performances I've ever seen from a Scotland team, after Kazakhstan hammered us 3-0? And we sure as fk are not "pumping in £" to women's football.

Predictably poor stuff. We have better players than Serbia, they know it but we don't. We're playing conservatively as we always do under PML instead of going out to impose ourselves on the game and it's inviting Serbia into it. And Claire Emslie drives me mental.

If we had any sort of strategic approach to player development the SFA would be scouring schools for tall lassies interested in training to be a goalkeeper. Lee Gibson is 5 foot 6.

Not by their fathers they weren't. Verstappen and Hamilton both got, "If you want me love you, fkn brake later." Hamilton faced a lot of prejudice coming through, for being both black and poor. Interesting that Schumacher was also an outsider growing up - his dad was a bricklayer who maintained the local kart track - and Fernando Alonso was working class too.

Last time we won a competitive match in 90 minutes was against the Faroe Isles in September 2022. We badly need to make it to Switzerland next year but with that manager I fear we'll miss out yet again.

In principal I don't object to reserves starting at the bottom, but I have to say it's not the same when you play them. They generally have no support at all and you know that winning is less important to them than developing players for the first team. As others have said, if they're largely ring-fenced for the season that's less of an issue. You wouldn't want them making up a big proportion of your division though. I wonder if this would this mean Livi withdrawing from the SPFL reserve league, or playing in both.

Finally got through to the SRU ticket centre, after two spells of more than half an hour at a time on hold to them earlier in the week. They don't have a map of the categories, which strikes me as either amateur or manipulative. New category 7 is the back 8 rows behind the goals (rows PP to WW), into the west corners, plus the very front of the west stand. Category 6 is mostly the 8 or so rows in front of category 7 (rows HH-OO). My son and I are talking about not renewing and going to one away game each season instead.