The Mantis

That's OK then, if somebody told you! I think people overuse the word 'sectarian' when really they mean 'political'. Why do your team (the green huns) and the other lot (the blue tims) have to sing political songs at all? BTW 'Boys of the Old Brigade' - if I'm not mistaken, that's the one where this jolly chap asks his pal where he's off to, and he says he's away to join the IRA, n'est-ce pas?

I haven't seen Mike Troughton for a couple of years or I could ask him. I would guess that those photos were all taken on the day we beat Elgin in 1993. Mike and his other half Jess had a habit of being first in the ground so he probably took them on his way to the main stand.

Oh well that was quick. Here's some more old grounds. I suppose I should get around to updating that page, I see it's been 8 years

Free the flag you fish-sh*gg*n-b*st*rds PS There's only one Scotty Davies

Never bothered trying to get pehs yesterday from bitter experience at big games. However if you went out the A9 side of the North stand at time up you could get a peh without queueing. Only Scotch pehs mind, but plenty left. Got a pish nae bother though at the west side during the game.

A good one from section G today though. When the Tims were chanting 'Argentina' and I was wondering what a good reply would be, all the jolly young chappies started giving it 'Thierry Henry'. Which was nice

Eventful, yes, but a very poor game. I would have to say, when I was young and daft, 1973, Scottish Cup, Celtic 2 Rangers 3. Dalglish 1-0, Parlane 1-1, Conn 1-2, Connelly pen 2-2, Forsyth 2-3. 122000 crowd as well.

Never rated him at all. A winger who won't run at his man, but turns inside then passes back every time? Nice lad, never really settled, but no confidence, no pace,no thanks.

Aye pretty decent...

Nah, they never had cameras in div 2......

Maybe you could translate that into phlegmish for our visitors.

Don't do that, you'll only encourage him.

I'm not doing that drive again 2 days later, looks like you two ugly cnuts will have to make up your own songs.

What Johndo said, basically. Mrs Mantis had visitors arriving so I had to get my erse back up the road. Shame I missed the post mortems in Jim's Bar. Not for me to question what T&J were trying to get out of this game but for us travelling punters it would have made for a less depressing drive home if we had put out a stronger side and won the game. As it was we had to wait 70 mins for Roonaldo to make an appearance before scoring the goal of the game with possibly his first touch, clipping it home from a Nick Ross driven cross. No Esson, Duncan, Hayes or Foran, plus only 20 mins of Rooney. Oh well it's only a friendly but it's more ammo for those who say the SPL is pish. I think Fleetwood expected to beat us. They'd already had games against Blackburn and Rochdale and a foreign trip, while we had played, em, Forres and so on. Tuffey- just what the Partick fans say- a great shot stopper but he cost us the game by dropping the ball for the second goal, plus one or two other fumbles. I can't remember what happened at the first goal but I know it was a shambles. McCann- worrying, bring back Bambi, or even Rossco at RB. Eric- why? Golly- been a great servant but we need a LB, even if we use Roy in the short term. Innes- probably the new Machine. Sutherland-very promising but I don't think TB will give him much game time in the SPL. Likewise Shinnie and Ross. Blumenhell- too early to say, a bit of a sand-dancer, hope he's better than Berkovic was when we stuffed the Tic. Roy's sitter just after they scored was a shocker. Had about 3 feet of room to place it inside the post, or blast it, but he placed it to the keeper's diving feet. Shinnie rattled the bar before half time. I actually found it really enjoyable for a friendly, the teams created about the same number of chances each, but Fleetwood Mac always tried to play it while we had too much punting it long (are you listening Ross). If we stuck to passing the ball I thought we were the better side. If you look at Fleetwood's site they averaged about 1000 fans last year, the ground holds about 3700 (but they're building a new stand). So a much smaller club than us. But they leave us standing with that sports bar (and that's separate from their social club) plus the tv interviews and scoreboard and all that stuff (mind you I've never really seen the point of spending money on a big screen apart from telling everybody you have a big screen). I never usually bother with programmes but I got one this time. ?1.50 for 16 pages and they don't have anything about us, apart from the team lineups, and their statto says he was in Sneck once on holiday.....

Just back half an hour ago so need fed- will post some comments tomorrow.

Probably be there but looks now as if it has to be a car job and home the same night.

Holidays really bring out the pedant in me too...... these cable-knit jumpers are not from Scotland but from the Aran Isles off Donegal. I had the misfortune to win one 30 years ago while doing teaching practice in a Catholic school. Even though they made me, as a 'guest', draw the winning ticket myself :) BTW somebody recently showed me a programme from a school prizegiving here in darkest Midlothian about 1962 IIRC. 'Jerusalem' was sung and the lyrics were printed in the programme. By those standards, 10 years previously we would all happily be singing the verse about crushing the rebellious Scots in the national anthem.

Just use the search function!

Care to elaborate?

No they won't (insert FFS smiley). They'll be hoping we don't feck up their season like we've done before more than once. Laurence from some of the little essays you've enlightened us with I don't think it's dawned on you yet we've been in the SPL before......

After a long spell of stability with Roxburgh and Brown, Scotland have had a dose of turbulence recently. The major mistake was appointing a complete numpty in Berti Vogts. Vogts was a pretty stuffy full back who played against Rangers and Scotland in the 70s and had been so impressed by the work ethic and love of the jersey that he thought he could just turn up and harness this without any tactical know-how.... huge mistake which took us down to about 86 in the rankings. Then we had McLeish and Smith who knew what they were doing and gave us a great Euro 2008 campaign with France and Italy in the group. Doubtful if even engerland would have qualified from a group like that but we nearly pulled it off and in doing so, rose to about 12 in the world, artificially high, but it shows what can be done with a unified squad and lack of injuries. So much negativity- has everybody forgotten how much the nation was buzzing during that campaign? Next up was clueless Burley who has quickly undone all of the good work in a disastrous World Cup campaign. Realistically you would expect Levein to take us back to a decent level, say 20-25 in the world. All this is from memory and no doubt I've missed out a manager or two and got my decades all wrong. Still, the overall trend is downwards and I feel sorry for all the youngsters who haven't been able to support their nation in major tournaments for 12 years. I was talking to a bunch of 4th year boys the other day and they can hardly believe we qualified for 5 World Cups in a row and beat England fairly regularly in the 70s. Another thing few people know is that England only recently overtook us in wins head-to-head.

Apparently he tried but missed

Plus Rooney has actually worked hard on his game and showed a big improvement last year. He'll handle the step up better this time. Mind you, Barrowman's a legend in his own lunchtime.

I think Yngwie's right- NZ are just playing out of their skins. Just like County. I think Scotland have fewer good players than say 20 years ago, but on paper we can still put out a decent squad so it's down to staying injury free and having a decent boss. Before Burley took over we were something like 12 in the world which was a false position. Now we're 43 which is also false, just as it was false when we were about 86 under that total numpty Vogts. We're probably in the low 20s and I expect Levein to take us back to something like that. We've not had any luck with the draws for qualifying, yet we nearly got to Euro 2008 even with France and Italy in the group. This time we did poorly under Burley but it would have taken a miracle to get out of the group with the Netherlands in it. Our luck has to turn one day so we get an easy group like England