The Mantis

Ah well, that was an interesting wee tour of Peeblesshire 😎

Still ploughing my way through “The A Team” epic even including a drive down from Ullapool last night. The Dale Stephen section was excellent and stresses the feel of ICT getting back to being a family again.

Depends what you mean. I don’t think we’ve ended up in the seaside leagues because we’re a diddy club. We’ve maybe become a diddy club by atrocious management and by being in Lge 1. The Championship should be the absolute basement for ICT if the club was run by competent, ego-free individuals who recruited wisely. Most of the clubs I mentioned above have been relegated but bounced back just like we did in 2010. We’re certainly a bigger club than Airdrie, Queens Park and Morton, and possibly Livi and Ayr, who are all now a division above us. Admittedly the whole pyramid is riddled with clubs who have fallen from grace. In a ‘sliding doors’ situation, if we had stayed up in 2017, with County going down in 2018, the balance of power would possibly have shifted, although our squad of 2015 badly needed a rebuild, and Yogi/Richie wouldn’t have been capable so we would have had to recruit somebody who was. As Charles says, the election of County alongside us in 1994 was probably unfortunate. I would have had Elgin in rather than County, and that’s without hindsight …

I’m not buying that at all, no sir 😂. We were an established premiership club at the time with the right personnel on and off the field and had finished in 7th place the previous year. We had as much right to be there as the likes of Motherwell, St Johnstone, Ross County, Dundee, Kilmarnock etc, although I accept that most of these clubs, but not all, have been relegated since, and Dundee Utd finished 12th. The secret to staying up is stability which we pretty much had in spades during that period. The Yogi situation upset the whole balance in a precursor of the perfect storm we have witnessed recently. in recent years.

Two games that still rip my knitting nearly 20 years later. 2005-6. We are at home to Partick in round 4. We are in the Premier and they are two divisions below us. We have come from behind and lead 2-1. With eight minutes left, Liam Fox is put through on Kenny Arthur but blooters it straight at the keeper. In stoppage time Paul Ritchie wins Partick a penalty which they convert for 2-2. We dominate the replay but go out after one of the worst sets of penalties ever seen, I.e. before the one at Forthbank. Both the ugly sisters were already out and that was the year Hearts beat Gretna in the final. Even worse: 2006-7 and we are at home to Celtic in the quarter-final. For most of the game we lead through a Bayne strike and Celtic rarely threaten. With three minutes to go we are taunting the disguised Tims in the north stand who are leaving early. Then from a corner, Pressley heads the equaliser and we are resigned to a trip to Parkheid for the replay. Then Kenny Miller hits the winner. With Rangers already out, the other semi-finalists are St Johnstone, Hibernian and Dunfermline.

Beat me to it…

Cheers Don. Didn’t manage up this week which was a shame as I could have gone for 17 quid with Scotrail. Looking forward to the cup game though. I see they’ve done away with the temporary stands.

I saw him a few times during his season at Whitehill, my local team. He had a bit of a rep as a penalty saver.

Missed out on tickets a few times but going to see them in Glasgow in January. Also got 2 or 3 programmes recorded off BBC Alba - if you can get it over there you should look out for repeats. Meanwhile I’m over in Lewis this week so I’ll see if Boydie is hanging around his fishing boat or maybe the Crit (Criterion Bar) 😂

Not sticking up for the Currant Buns but there was no pyramid in 2012.

Can’t see that being the case as I got the same form, and apart from the shares and a season ticket, there’s no way I’ve got any claim on the club.

Massive disappointment in the end. So much positivity in the bar and in the stand, and the team were excellent first half, or maybe it just seemed that way after a year of sideways crab-like fitba. Great to see a team getting forward on both flanks. Hilton’s goal was pretty much Dumbarton’s only attacking effort of the half, completely against the run of play, but what a worldie giving Musa no chance, although he was allowed too much room to turn. The Sons started the second half much better and I always felt that if they scored first, they would win. One or two experienced pros such as Wallace and Carlo. They stuck to the basics, defended well without trying to be fancy, and hit us on the break. A couple of unforced errors cost us. ICT heads dropped at 2-1 and we never looked like coming back. Fantastic support today and great applause for the team at the end. Rather weird coming to a team with such a poor support when you are used to Championship crowds like Partick and the Pars. Hardly heard a sound when they scored. Big uphill task now.

Ah but I see you covered yourself by referring to somebody else with a different name

Valiant attempt to steer the thread back on topic 👏👏👏

I thought it was Davidson at first but @ymip assured me it was Duffy. I thought he’d be more suited to Lge 1 but he still seems to have a mistake in him. Davidson looks not bad though - I wouldn’t have said that a year ago. But we’re much poorer without Devine. Not been back to see Scotland since the downpour v Georgia. I did see CR7 with the missus in 2018 at the Bernabeu when he was still a nipper and he scored 4 in a 6-3 win against Girona.

Especially if it's a 3G carpet.

Think the attendance was announced as 943.

I await the club’s next annoncement (hope I got my spelling right).

Surely if you read between the lines, Savage has been implying all along that it would be hard to avoid.

It was never dull when he played 😂 However MOTD makes the PremierLeague games look like cliffhangers. I’ve been to a good few where nothing much happened. Tactically and technically it may be on a different planet from what we watch but that doesn’t make it entertaining. Neither do the huge crowds always mean a good atmosphere. The problem is specifically with ICT. Duncball would make your eyes bleed. OK we were all spoiled watching Pele’s teams but It doesn’t have to be this way. Just on another tack, I recently saw extended highlights of Celtic v Inter from 1967. Regarded as a massively entertaining game but in many respects the standard was shocking compared to nowadays. Loads of unforced errors and missed sitters. I also watched the whole of England 2 Scotland 3 recently. What a contrast. Both sides were allowed to carry the ball in space in the middle of the park but about 30 yards out the (brutal) tackles flew in. I think the trainers were on the pitch 6 times in the first half alone, but the players just got up and got on with it. Also a distinct lack of shepherding it out for a bye kick, they just tried to play it. Never noticed any gobbing either 😉

I’m in Iceland this week buddy. Not the frozen food store either. It was booked in November. It’s Lewis not Harris btw 😂

Ooh Laura, that's above and beyond the call of duty 😂

You wonder how these people can fun a successful business when their gut feeling in recruiting an individual can be so off the mark. Even we the fans were less gullible and less than convinced by his appearance on the podcast, or by his body language in the famous press conference. But in 2019 we were well warned on p&b by the Dundee contributors who were pointing and laughing and saying that he would destroy our club.

Is that not normally the case though - it is in my experience. After all you've already paid for your seat. Sadly won't make it as I'll be abroad.

Aye it’s in common use here, maybe there’s a Canuck equivalent. Also see ‘clusterf ***’