Sneckboy

Draw for this season's League Cup 3rd round is tomorrow at 1pm (from Aberdeen). The 2nd round ties are tomorrow night, with the exception of Queen's Park v Rangers which is a 1st round game - with the winners playing ICT. It's seeded, with the top 8 ranked teams from last season being kept apart. A little 'messy' at present, but will be revised after tomorrow night's games. One thing that strikes me while writing this - which 'pot' will the likely Rangers or Inverness ball, go into!? Aberdeen (seeded) Celtic (seeded) Dundee or Raith Dundee United (seeded) Falkirk or Cowdenbeath Hamilton or Alloa Hibernian or Dumbarton Kilmarnock or Ayr Livingston or Queen of the South Morton or Partick Motherwell (seeded) Queen’s Park or Rangers or Inverness CT St Johnstone (seeded) St Mirren or Dunfermline Stenhousemuir or Hearts Stranraer or Ross County

Revised draw after replay wins for Hurlford and Hawick at the weekend. Hurlford's win ensures that the Scottish Junior Cup holders (from any season) visit Inverness for the first time. Hawick's win over Newton Stewart means that all South of Scotland League teams have fallen at the first hurdle. It really is an incredibly weak league and for me, sits 'below' the East of Scotland 1st Divison. Games due on 13 September: Lossiemouth v Turriff United Clachnacuddin v Hurlford United Golspie Sutherland v Dalbeattie Star Lothian Thistle Hutchison Vale v East Kilbride Preston Athletic v Threave Rovers Forres Mechanics v Civil Service Strollers Edinburgh City v Coldstream Auchinleck Talbot v Buckie Thistle Rothes v Banks O' Dee Cove Rangers v Hawick Royal Albert Fraserburgh v Linlithgow Rose Keith v Formartine United Selkirk v Bo'ness United Whitehill Welfare v Girvan Culter v Strathspey Thistle Huntly v Wick Academy Gretna 2008 v Gala Fairydean Rovers Deveronvale v Nairn County

It's a tricky one for ICT - do we sign one of these guys without having seen him play a competitive match? The next Development League game is away to Aberdeen on 2nd September....after the transfer window has closed! Uness, they can be signed after this time, being free-agents?

Always an accolade for the club for players to receive international recognition. 12th Man's query included 'plus subs' - so Ryan Esson could be included! Two others, who played U21s are Richie Foran and Daniel Devine - although obviously neither were involved on Saturday.

I can only ever remember Paterson being the only name in the frame! I think we pretty much had our sights set on Pele and he was going to be the one. I don't think Huntly welcomed our approach as they were hugely successful under Paterson - but he wanted to come here - and that was that! What an absolute legend that man was with ICT. The 3-1 Parkhead win (with a little help from the Sun's headline) brought us international recognition - but the way he steadily improved us through the divisions was fantastic. A lot of the success we're enjoying today is thanks largely to the foundations laid by Paterson.

As usual, Celtic were first up on Sportscene. We just happened to be playing them!

Kevin MacDonald is often linked due to his Inverness connections.

Ossie Ardiles was famously linked with us. Twice, I think! Not sure if he was ever seriously considered though. I remember the speculation before Hughes was appointed. The bookies had Chris Sutton as odds-on favourite at one time before Levein became favourite - then Kenny Shiels!

Phil McGuire, who's been playing for St. Andrews United in the East Juniors, has been appointed their player/manager.

caleydawson, don't be heading to Kilmarnock next weekend - it's a home match for us!

Yeah! Good thinking, that is correct!

That team looks fine - but can Williams and Christie be dropped? Got to say, small squad we may have - until suspensions and injuries, we've got good options.

Yeah. Agree. This is simply an inconvenient fixture for Celtic ahead of their huge game with NK Maribor - that's worth £millions to them. Celtic will be trying to get through this fixture injury-free. To be honest, this game is irrelevant to them in their season, as the league's no-contest. I always look at a point against Celtic as a one gained! 1-1 would be lovely! A win would be awesome, beautiful and incredibly satisfying - and it would put us onto 10 points early in the season - a solid base to go on with. Anything from tomorrow must be seen as a bonus.

I've got to say, well done to 'Yes' for reaching that landmark target. I remember thinking that 1,000,000 was asking a lot. But, what's got to be remembered - and mentioned in the last sentence - is that over 4 million folk are registered. 4.02Million I think is the official figure (rounded up). Assuming a turn out of 75% - it maybe higher!...then approx. 3 million folk will be voting next month. I would argue that 'Yes' need at least 1,500,000 votes to turn this dream into reality. As commendable as one-million is, they still need another 500,000. ie a city the size of Edinburgh. Yes, the pro-independence campaign is putting up a good fight, but I reckon they've just got too big a gap to close. My forecast is 42% YES...58% NO. A side note. I have just read that we may not get the result of the ballot overnight. That would be disappointing. Seemingly, the 32 Council areas will have their own 'results' and the totals only revealed 'as one'. Argyll and Bute - due to geographical reasons will likely take longer to declare. However, due to the relatively sparse population of that region, it's likely some exit poll results will have leaked and Salmond will have acknowledged defeat by 3am! But joking aside, it'll be fascinating to see if any of the 32 regions have voted YES. In theory 31 regions could vote YES but the overall result could still be a NO! I predict all 32 regions vote NO.

Barry Wilson's trying everything to shore up Elgin City's leaky defence. He's got former Livingston team-mate and veteran, man-of-many-clubs defender Marvin Andrews at Borough Briggs! Picture shows Barry anxiously thinking 'you can't take that bottle onto the field'!

It's a thankless task being a referee! Damned if they do...damned if they don't. Trigger-happy and too quick if they flash a card instantly, indecisive and weak if they take their time and/or take no action. We've got to remember they're human and will make mistakes. They don't have the benefit of multiple, slow-motion, different-angled replays. I genuinely don't think they go out to penalise certain clubs. I try to look at it objectively - we benefit from 'bad' decisions from refs but tend to remember more the one's that go against us. One of the worst from last season was Carl Tremarco's reckless lunge at a County player which, for me, merited an ordering-off! Mind you, I wasn't complaining at the time - but, had it been the other way round, I'd have been raging! That said, and as I mentioned, they are only human - and they may well be 'reluctant' to make certain calls in some situations. All-be-it on a subconscious level. For example, Referee X may be about to officiate say, St Mirren v Dundee United. He'll be acutely aware of his 'stats' of never having sent-off a St Mirren player in his career, yet has a 'history' of 5 Dundee Utd dismissals. He would take the field, be professional and officiate the game as he saw fit, but on an innate level, he'd be hoping there weren't any 'decisions to be made' that would put him in a position to send-off a Utd player. Conversely, when or if, he was dismissing a St Mirren player, deep down inside, he'd be thinking to himself 'they can't accuse me of being biased against them - it's the first time I've ever sent-off one of their guys'. It must also be remembered that the referees themselves are being monitored by an observer, who rates and reports on all aspects of their performance. We're fickle, us fans. It's rare to hear the losing team complimenting the referee - indeed, I'm still waiting for an instance where both sets of fans have agreed that the referee has had a good game!

From another angle, why does flashing a red-card make a referee 'terrible'!? I've seen me shouting at the TV at referees for not getting their cards out! It sometimes takes a strong referee to do such. Have you never been frustrated at referees 'chickening out' of big decisions at the likes of Ibrox or Parkhead, over the years? An example from earlier this week was the Arsenal game where I tuned-in near the end - an Arsenal player committed a clearly bookable foul, and the commentator said 'he could be in trouble here' as he was already on a yellow. But nothing was given. I thought it was a terrible decision. A few minutes later, in the post-match highlights, I learned that Arsenal had already had a man sent-off. That explained it for me! Anyway, the whole point of me putting up that graphic was to dispel the persistent myth about Collum - it displays the averages over a 10 year period, not just last season!

speech

Prior to last season, Collum had only ever sent off 1 ICT player. The stats show he's by no means the worst. Nobody gets their hackles up at the mention of say, Alan Muir. Who?! Collum's dished us 4 reds in 31 games, Muir's sent-off 4 in just 18, for example. ICT sendings-off since our first SPL game of 2004. Includes all competitions. Referee ICT games ICT red cards games-to-red ratio active or (retired)

Highland League Martin Laing (Rothes 0-8 Clachnacuddin) Adam McLeod TWO GOALS (Deveronvale 6-3 Strathspey Thistle) Andrew Skinner (Rothes 0-8 Clachnacuddin) Martin Bavidge (Inverurie Loco Works 3-0 Keith) David Watson (Rothes 0-8 Clachnacuddin) Lewis MacKinnon (Buckie Thistle 2-3 Formartine United)

Craig Dargo has joined Berwick Rangers! He made his debut last night, coming off the bench, in Berwick's defeat to Morton in the Challenge Cup.

Liam Brady was Arsenal's youth manager at the time of the link-up - but he's since left the post. It's likely the 'arrangement' is no longer in place!

It's early days, but the way Brora have started, they could well be unstoppable! So much so, that they're 2-3 defeat tonight to East Fife is something of a surprise. I had a quick look at the Fifer's Fans Forum (there is one!) and there's a few comments about them 'not seeing that coming' and 'best result in years'! An interesting, almost unbelievable, statistic I picked up from that forum - and I've checked it's accuracy, is that East Fife, in their 111 year history, have never been beaten in any competition by a non-league side! On paper, that was under serious threat tonight and was looking likely when Zander Sutherland put Brora 2-1 up - but they edged home in the end!

Thanks caleydawson. No sign of the trialists?

13th September. The week after the Scotland game! ICT are away to Partick on the 13th.