DoofersDad

I'm with Sneckboy on this. Having written to the SFA arguing why Ciftci's band should be a lot more than the 2 game "offer" in the citing, I would hope the SFA will actually write to me to inform me of the outcome. If they do, then I doubt they will justify their not proven conclusion to me. I will give them the opportunity to, but if I hear nothing by early next week I will write again and ask them why they concluded it was not proven when there is pretty clear evidence. I doubt they'll tell me then but I can but ask. Of course, he was only cited for the one incident and therefore they will argue that the Shinnie incident was not an issue for consideration at the appeal. With regard to the Warren incident and in the absence of footage from another camera angle, the argument may be that there is no proof that Cifci made contact with Warren. Whilst it seems pretty clear from the footage that he did, they may say that Warren could have slipped when Ciftci approached him and it simply appeared that Ciftci struck him. And without footage to confirm there was contact, then a not proven conclusion is all they can give. Mind you, the footage as it stands plus the fact that Warren reacted they way he did (and presumably a statement from Warren that he was struck?) should all add up to pretty compelling evidence. Anyhow, loophole or not, Dundee Utd management must know what he did, and in challenging the complaint they deserve the contempt of decent football supporters throughout the country.

Unbelievable. Does the guy have to knife someone on the pitch before the SFA takes action against him? Just what more proof can you have than clear video evidence on the SPFL website? I sincerely hope the club takes this up with the SFA because the SFA is clearly failing in it's obligations to uphold the dignity and reputation of the game in Scotland and in it's duty of care towards honest players at the receiving end of such dangerous and malicious pre-meditated thuggery.

Based on population I would class that as proportional representation which based on your figures I argee but not the concept in this scenario which I believe should be equal hence 25% each - think there is a difference in what people consider the context of the terms equal or proportional. Its neither xenephobic or any other discrimination from my perspective no matter how you wish to try and spin it. I could state how N Ireland don't have as much population or football quality as Scotland but wont - I believe that they would as equal to 25% representation in a GB team as anyone else. If based on the logic you propose then there is no motivation for any of the nations other than England to be involved. Based on populus we would each get 1 or 2 players to supplement and England select? It seems that if anyone is promoting a xenephobic approach its those who wish to have a team GB dominated by only England players. At least with othere Olympic disciplines within team GB there are qualifiers to decide who is the 'best' - whats the criteria for football to be done this way? I'm honestly not sure if you are on a fishing trip or whether you seriously believe this. But on the off chance that you are actually serious, I'll bite. This is sport we are talking about and not politics. If participation in any team sport at an international level requires us to have a British team then can you not simply accept that? Can you not accept that regardless of which part of the UK team members come from, chosing a team on merit means it is our best team? What possible reason is there for saying there has to be the same number of team members from each of the home nations? How can it possibly be equal or fair to say that one player has 10 times more chance of playing for his country than another simply because of where he was born? What such an absurd policy would do is to reduce the chances of success and deny better players the opportunity to play at the top level. It really is discrimination of the worst kind. And you can just imagine what it would do for team morale - better players sitting on the bench or not even in the squad whilst a League One player whose mother happened to have been born in Belfast is on the pitch as part of the N. Ireland quota and makes the errors that ruin the teams chances of success. Or in an athletics context, should Team GB's relay squads have one runner from each of the 4 home countries? These are events we have won medals in with some regularity because the team has been selected on merit. If we had to pick relay teams for the World championships and the Olympics based on one runner from each home country we would probably never win any medals. What is particularly nasty about such an approach in my view is that it denies success to athletes who have devoted their lives to try and excel in their chosen sport and who, if selection was based on merit, would have a good chance of success. I am an Englishman who has lived in Scotland for the last 40 years and I would echo what Alex says about xenophobia in the sense that I have never experienced personal animosity because I am English. But what I cannot for the life of me understand is how some Scots seem happy to support manifestly unfair proposals like this which actually reduce the chance of their team succeeding. I don't know if it is this that Lawrence was really alluding to but it does seem to me that the a minority of Scots simply cannot take any joy or pride in a British victory, even if there is a small Scottish representation, if the majority of the team are English. They seem to fear it will be seen as an English victory and therefore something to be resented. So rather than celebrate a British victory, (albeit one where Scots are proud team members selected on merit), they would prefer to adopt a grossly discriminative quota selection policy which denies participation by athletes who on merit deserve selection. Thereby they both deny the athletes the chance of the success they deserve as well as denying themselves the pleasure of celebrating that success. However, such a policy also reduces the chances of the English celebrating success and therefore it is all somehow worthwhile! For goodness sake, can we not consign such bizarre attitudes to the dustbin of history and get behind our sportsmen and women, give them the best opportunity to succeed and then celebrate their success with them?

What you are proposing is not equal representation though. Scotland has less that 10% of the UK's population and therefore should have only 1 player on the park at any time by your argument. But the whole concept of equal representation is nonsense because it discriminates against individuals who are more deserving of a place. Just pick the best team regardless of nationality because every one has an equal opportunity of selection if it is merit based. In any case, large numbers of players may have been born in Scotland and have an English parent and therefore maybe considered English or Scottish. Presumably you are also in favour of geographical representation within the Scottish team?

Behind him. At a respectful distance, of course.

You can still see the scorch marks on the roof. Those were the days when you could do real chemistry in school!

So the authorities think that allowing a few extra fans to pay some money to stand on that tiny bit of terracing and support their local football cub is a "retrograde move" in terms of ground use? What utter sh*te. What is true is that employing these idiots is certainly a retrograde move in terms of good use of taxpayers' money.

What's the odds of Charles becoming leader again? I think they will need a leader in Parliament and I think Clegg's seat is vulnerable to say the least. As you say, an honest politician and a decent man.

Whilst my view expressed on another thread is that sportsmen and women and sports fans in the UK would be better served by having a single UK (or GB) team for all team sports, the fact is that with a few exceptions and anomolies (eg. the "English" cricket team represents the Cricket Board of England and Wales) the home nations have separate sporting bodies. The major exception to the rule is the Olympics. That being the case, the issue really ought to be why the home nations are not represented separately at the Olympics. But, if there is a sound and compelling reason for the Olympics being different and requiring it being a GB & NI team, then why on earth should we approach the fielding of a UK team in football any different to all other Olympic team games? Being scared of Blatter is simply not a valid reason in my book. OK, so Blatter will raise some questions. So what? The questions are there in any case and not just for football but all sports. If there are valid reasons for the home nations to have separate football associations, what's the problem?

One could be excused for not realising there was actually going to be a General Election in May. Despite the fact that there is a potential for a radical shift from previous voting patterns resulting in the potential of having the largest party having major problems in forming a credible Government, discussion and media coverage all seems pretty low key. It is as though none of the parties want to peak too early in the race or, if I am being cynical, don't want other parties to have too much time to pick holes in their arguments. Scottish Labour have certainly dug a hole for themselves by trying to be as independent as possible from the UK party whilst apparently opposing Scotland being independent from the UK. Focusing on support for labour in Westminster is what they should be focused on but that means making a case for Ed Milliband as Prime Minister which, one has to admit, is not an easy sell. In any case, if Labour do lose seats in Scotland (which seems highly likely) it will be to the SNP. The SNP will support a Labour administration at Westminster - but at a price. Labour supporters in Scotland may well feel that they are better off voting SNP on the basis that it will make no difference to the ability of Milliband to form a Labour Government but an agreement with the SNP would likely result in greater benefit to Scotland than a majority Labour administration. Whilst they are currently nowhere in the polls, the Lib Dems may yet emerge as king makers again. They have been roundly vilified for getting into bed with the Tories but unfairly so in my book. Had they not done so and another election was held, we could have ended up with a majority Tory administration where the impact of austerity measures would have been far more hard hitting. Worse still, we could have ended up with a majority Labour Government with a spending agenda which would have made the debt position far worse. In truth, the Lib Dems have been a moderating influence on the Tories and whilst they have gone along with a lot of policy which may have been quite at odds with their manifesto, they have done so as the cost of blocking more extreme Tory ideas and of getting some of their own manifesto priorities onto the statute book. Coalition politics is about compromise and the junior members of a coalition clearly have to compromise more than the biggest partner. I think history will conclude that the Lib Dems have done a pretty good job of moderating the right wing zeal of certain sections of the Tory party. They would have done exactly the same had Labour got in at the last election. I reckon that as the election progresses people will increasing recognise that and will appreciate that having a strong lib Dem presence in the next parliament will good for political stability in this country.

I can see no reason why nationalists would ever take pleasure from their failure at a quintessentially English sport. On the contrary, they take great delight in doing well in such sports particularly when they do better than their neighbours South of the border. I would have thought nationalists would see success at such sports as a reflection of the ability of Scotland to succeed politically as an independent nation. But it is interesting in that sense to look at the success of the Irish Rugby side. There, politics have been set aside and the team represents the island of Ireland despite the troubled political background. They seem to do pretty well on it. The West Indian nations do it in cricket. One could argue that in turn reflects a political message of being better together, but that would be rather flippant. In truth, it is a numbers game and it follows that if you have more people to choose from, you are more likely to have a better team. Of course, England has a much larger population and is in a better position to succeed on it's own, and it has enjoyed success. England won the football world cup with players from England, but how much more success might a UK team have had with the likes of Best, Giggs and Dalgleish gracing the world stage as part of a top team? I just wish we could keep the petty nationalism out of sport and separate sport from politics. The sad thing for me about the way nationalism impacts on British sport is that the insistence on having separate English and Scottish teams teams etc rather than a British team actually reduces the chances of supporters throughout the UK of enjoying success at international level and denies the top players the chance of success or even of competing at the top level. Instead of celebrating success, we are forced to wallow in a level of mediocrity and resort to mocking each other over our failures. Perhaps this is where Charles is coming from. We enter international competitions with a team structure of our own choosing which makes us less likely to be successful. So when we fail to succeed then there is a simply inevitability about it. It really is quite pathetic. Personally I would like to see other sports taking a lesson from golf. After routine gubbings by the US, it was decided to open the Ryder Cup team up to European players and as a result the Ryder Cup has become one of the great events in world sport. Just because it is not a Scottish team does not stop us from celebrating our victory. Indeed, the fact that the team is a broader international team makes an individual nation celebrate the participation of it's own citizens at the pinnacle of international sport that much more.

I agree with Scotty and Renegade. The article quotes the spokesman of County calling for the return of terracing to be added into the debate and I think that is the line we should take. Costs for German style standing areas are prohibitative for most of the SPFL clubs but common sense tells us that there should be no need for that. Of course Hillsborough was awful but as so often happens, the response to such tragedies takes us too far the other way. There is nothing wrong with terracing per se. As long as barriers are maintained and entry is appropriately controlled terraces are perfectly safe. Frankly people are currently more at risk of tripping and falling into the row in front when squeezing past others to get to their seat. There needs to be a serious reconsideration of terracing. In the meantime, as CaleyD says, the more pragmatic attitude the stewards are taking now is a sensible interim position.

After my earlier rant on here I thought it would be more constructive to rant to the SFA as they are, after, all, the governing body of football in Scotland. So I wrote to the compliance officer saying that I thought the premeditated and dangerous nature of Ciftci's actions, which appeared to have been made with the intent to harm, warranted a much more serious penalty than the standard red card offences which occur in the heat of the game. I also pointed out that if they fail to distinguish between this type of incident and the more usual type of incident then they will be failing in their duty of upholding "the dignity and reputation" of the the game in Scotland. I don't suppose it will make any difference although if enough people from all clubs took the time to write to request more robust action in stamping down on the worst aspects of cheating in the game, we might just get somewhere.

Well you certainly can't take away from Hercher that not only did he score on his league debut, but he scored a hat-trick. I think a cup debut hat-trick from Eddie Ofere would do very nicely as well.

Despite all the positive milestones, we may also record our lowest average home attendance in the top flight. A millstone rather than a milestone.

IHE is quite correct but I can't help thinking if we had got all 9 points (which arguably we should have done), we would tonight be sitting level on points with Celtic and 15 points ahead of Dundee Utd. It would have been a genuine 3 way title race with us involved! However, it's not to be, but we are still in a very good place. By the way, when was the last time the bottom four all won on the same day?

Looking on the bright side, the fact that Hamilton, Dundee and St Johnstone all failed to win and bearing in mind that St Johnstone still have to play both Hamilton and Dundee, today's results have confirmed a top 6 finish for us

He was born in England although eligible toplay for Tanzania.

Won't it be a bit on the small size?

According to Wikipedia (who already have him listed as an ICT player till the end of season) he has played in 3 friendlies for Nigeria so presumably can't be too shabby. At 6'3" he's a big lad and obviously gives us options of high balls into the centre when surfaces are not so great for the passing game. His video of goal highlights is nothing like as impressive as Kinks and some of the goals shown demonstrate schoolboy defending rather than an exciting attacking talent. However, the perceived ability of a striker is often a refection of the qualities of the players around him and hopefully he has been signed because Yogi judges that he will fit in well with the squad we have. Let's make him very welcome and hope his goal scoring feats, if nothing else, are similar to Iain Stewart.

HT 0-1 FT 1-2 1st ICT Tansey 1st Opp McManus Time 41 mins

I think I would rather be a Scottish Cricket fan today than a West Indies one. All sorts of records in that game, but the one that I find is quite astonishing is that Holder, the West Indies captain, only conceded 9 runs from his first 5 overs but ended up conceding a record 104 in his 10! That included 64 off the last 2. Quite incredible stuff.

Regardless of who might be bottom of the 2nd Division, who might be in the play offs from the Highland League? There is a bit of discussion above with some folk thinking that Brora were taking steps to meet the criteria for league entry. However, I recall recently hearing Charles reporting on Good Morning Scotland that Brora were unlikely to apply. Can anyone update? I was sort of looking forward to the Brora / County derbies in the 2016/17 season.

I'm actually rather disappointed with the notice of complaint. It only makes reference to the Warren incident and offers a 2 game ban if accepted. Ciftci's actions deserve a far more severe punishment and having been able to view the footage at leisure, the SFA should be able to see Ciftci's premeditated and dangerously violent conduct for what it is. The shove on Shinnie was a forceful one which sent Shinnie sprawling. It was a deliberate, malicious act and seemed designed to send him hard into the path of Meekings. Fortunately they did not collide but they could easily have clashed heads with serious consequences. It was worthy of a red card and how the referee failed to give even a foul simply beggars belief. It also beggars belief that the SFA who will now have seen the incident also feel that no punishment is warranted. The 2nd incident was even worse. This was way off the ball and whilst Warren was watching the play, Ciftci launched into him from behind and sent him sprawling. That was not a foul in the course of play, it was an unprovoked assault and if you or I did that to someone in the street we'd get arrested. Warren obviously retaliated in some manner and whilst I am not defending him, a reaction is entirely understandable. Surely the original offence (which the SFA have seen) is a far more serious offence than Warren's reaction so how can they only slap on the same punishment as Warren will get? Players get suspended following red cards when they bring down a player in a goal scoring position even when genuinely going for the ball. They get suspended for badly timed timed tackles again where there is no malicious intent and they get sent off for raising an arm to push away an opponent who has fouled them or who is threatening them. Fair enough. But Ciftci's behaviour is far worse than that. It isn't spur of the moment, it isn't accidental and it isn't in reaction to being fouled. It is deliberate, malicious behaviour designed to harm an opponent - and on Tuesday night he indulged in at least two such acts of unprovoked thuggery. If the SFA had any balls about them they would be banning Ciftci for the rest of the season. What also disgusts me is the news that Dundee Utd are appealing the notice of complaint. They should consider themselves extremely fortunate that the offered ban is only 2 matches. What they should be doing is apologising for Ciftci's behaviour and announcing that internal disciplinary measures are being taken against him. I would hope that behind the scenes our club has complained to the SFA.and will do so again in the light of the leniency of the offer. By appealing the notice one can only assume that Dundee Utd condone such behaviour. The SFA's response should be to significantly lengthen the ban and perhaps Dundee Utd should also be fined as condoning such behaviour surely brings the game into disrepute. I know this is a bit of a rant but there is a really important principle here. Football is a hard game and we know that when players are giving 100% there will be times when players are hurt by mis-timed tackles and in the heat of the moment players will over-react to incidents. Players will get sent off and take their punishment and that is simply an inevitable part of the game. What is not an inevitable or acceptable part of the game is when players deliberately try to harm opponents. If the powers that be are not prepared to distinguish such thuggery from the normal inevitable consequences of committed competitive play then we have no chance of ever addressing some of the more innocuous forms of cheating such as holding and shirt pulling at set pieces.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cricket/31635759 How on earth did Scotland manage to lose that one? Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory!