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Tone down, sophia! :004: Arrant, pedantic and supercilious posts packed full of assumed wisdom may fill you with glee; you may be the consummate wind-up merchant; fair play if that's so: but, if not, is this really the place? If you're not already a slightly overbearing primary school teacher, why not book yerself in for the appropriate operation/training and patronise small children for the rest of your career? Alternatively, accept that knowing where an apostrophe belongs really doesn't single you out for footballing brain of the decade, lord high executioner, or supreme being, and try to relate to your fellow posters in a manner which suggests you consider them as something approaching equals (whether you do or not - it's called tact). Exception to your earlier post - like toothache, there's a point at which the annoying pain has to be addressed. As for Ian Black - you assert that every booking he's received has been the result of a lunging challenge and that the supporters have been frustrated by that. Are you really saying that you reckon he's never been booked for anything other than a bad tackle, and that the fans have been in agreement with the bookings? You seem to be saying exactly that and, even judging by the small sample of fans on this board, it's complete bollocks. Ian has a far broader repertoire of bookings than you allow :001: Accept all in good humour, or as good as possible :004:

If you'll keep up your smart-arsed sixth-former brand of cant, I'll do my best to point out that you're doing so. Good enough?

Still the odd time when keeper's ball wasn't taken, but he's definitely getting better. So is the defence. Chicken or egg? Whatever, grand performance Mr. F :022:

Playing hard-to-get? :017:

Spot on. Let's hope this does as much for Marius as Dargo's lob at Ibrox did for Craig's record. The skill wasn't in doubt; maybe now the shooting boots are properly on. :022:

Roy had a good first half but I though he faded in the second - the commentators seemed to think he'd picked up a knock, though he was fizzing at being hooked.

Bollocks. Simply not true. I'd post more, but it would really be just a long-winded way of saying 'bollocks', so I'll leave it be. Anyone who agrees will understand precisely why the quoted text is bollocks - anyone who doesn't is unlikely to get it after any length of explanation. ICTChris, agreed about Blackie's mouthing off, but Russell Duncan and more recently Phil McGuire need some serious talking to also.

If Russell made mistakes, then so did Proc, getting dispossessed or giving the ball away in very dangerous situations - remember him and Cowie standing off Donald down the Hibs left wing? Big Phil gave Chip dog's abuse for that, but isn't David supposed to be the defender (besides which Cowie was behind the player and stood a good chance of giving away a free kick with a challenge from there)? Still not convinced that he's got the Rossco's-gonna-getcha factor but, aye, he's making the case for a start. They should definitely have had the first penalty claim, and McGuire should have been off, but we all know this stuff evens itself out over a season - the officials seem to be pretty unbiased in their breathtaking incompetence :rolleyes02: Can't really disagree with anything else said. Cracking game (I was running very late and missed what the commentators said was a slow first fifteen), one of the best matches I've seen at TCS for a while. Something about the Hibees seems to suit us, and I've always enjoyed these fixtures. No exception today. Well done all :021: Marius - absolutely made up for you, you deserved a third. It was obvious what that first one meant to you and to the rest of the boys; I haven't seen anyone so clearly elated to score since the sublime Mr. Rankin's first goal in an ICT jersey. :clapping02:

22nd March 2006, 90th minute when we were 2-0 down at Parkhead. Don't remember the goal at all and can't find footage of it, but I knew he'd scored one.

Without analysing the entire match up to that point you can't say whether or not there had been some niggles building up, or whether Ross just felt they hadn't quite finished their punch-up in town - either way, really disappointing :007:

The referee was an absolute ******* disgrace, a blind, idiotic, cack-handed, moronic, incompetent **** of seriously dubious parentage with a Motherwell accent. Boyle? Wish someone would pop the ****. I can think of several grounds where he'd have needed a police escort, and if he puts in performances like that elsewhere he'd best think about getting a helicopter to land on the centre spot at full time. The team just didn't show up. Hastings was the only player I felt put in anything like a real performance in the first half, although Dennis and Graham worked hard throughout, and Grant and Caff both played well for my money. Bar a couple of decent dead-balls, Cowie was painfully anonymous and played better at right back after Ross's moment of madness than in midfield. Whoever gave him motm must have been drowning their sorrows in style up in the Kingsmills suite. Russell's back to his feckless best when passing the ball to anyone but an ICT player, Roy put in a decent shift but I'm baffled that he didn't get hooked instead of Blackie at half time. Brewster looked absolutely flummoxed after the first sending-off, let alone the second, but then he never has had much of a clue when events on the park depart from the script. It was screamingly obvious to everyone I spoke to that, with one of Jim Henson's finest running the game, Bayne should have been subbed at half time and Niculae brought on to avoid a sending-off. Brew, that was your fault pal, swallow the pill - aye, the ref was a complete wonker but it's up to you to see stuff like that coming. We played better with nine men than we did with eleven, but the opposition had twelve from the start. Gutted, gutted, gutted, that I didn't stay at home in the warm. Off to rant somewhere else :rolleyes02:

Brilliant news, now get on and see if you can persuade Brew to give you a start, Richie :021:

4-1 down, and the radio sounds like it's under mortar attack. Giving up :009:

That's Bayne on the scoresheet. Where are Xausa, Sheerin and Mann when you need 'em? :014:

I'm pretty happy with what we've seen so far. It hasn't all been roses, but we've played some entertaining football rather than the boring, predictable, one-dimensional home performances we saw under Brew's first stewardship. It's a bit early to say all's well but it looks promising :003: I do wonder, though, where we'd be if you took Niculae out of the equation - the guy's gotta be wondering what the **** he has to do to score, but he's very much the unsung hero for me.

Malkowski. He's error-prone, much as he claims it's all behind him (including the ball, Zibi?), but he makes the saves as well. Ask the Elgin defence about Ally's mistakes...

Despite my blind spot where Bobby is concerned - never really understood the 'fantastic distribution' tag he got from punting the ball upfield to forwards who, frankly, made the punts look good - I would have liked to have seen him warming up after a patchy defensive performance in the first half. We need someone to command the box, and switching keepers isn't likely to produce the goods from that area. Ross is not the problem - most of the time a midfielder back-fills for him. Ross clearly hasn't been told not to make the runs, so surely the questions should be asked of the midfielders who aren't falling back to cover? I just wish he could have scored at the other end :rolleyes02:

Can't disagree, fine performance from the lad, especially a couple of times as last man when we were fully committed up the park.

Absolutely, no malice in it at all, entirely tongue in cheek - and I'd a good, long while to listen to it as I spent an hour getting from the car park to the A9 (a big thankyou to the stewards, traffic wardens and police who, strolling past the endless line of cars, made it there far faster on foot).

Seems his real point is that we never approach filling the seats we have except when Invernesian Old-Firmers swell the ranks of the home support (and get home supporters chucked out for complaining about their presence :rolleyes02:). It's a nice sound-bite (print-bite?), dripping with vibrant ambition, but it's just back-page filling in a slow sports news week. The club will build another stand once we can fill the ones we already have? Well blow me down... Btw, I love the talk of a bar at the ground, but does anyone really think it'd encourage more people to come to the game? I've been to grounds with bars which act as a real draw for the community, which encourage support (and which are open all week) but they're in or nearby residential areas or town centres, not two miles out on an industrial estate. A bar at the TCS might bring in a bit of money on match days but you'd need to divide the car park into 'Post-match drinks' and 'Away home' sections to avoid chaos afterwards; and would you ever trek out there when there were no home game, when there's Greig Street and Innes Street so much more accessible? Hmm... :024:

Now that's where you're wrong... What I'm saying, if you stop taking me out of context for a moment :016: is that, rightly or wrongly, the treatment of professional sportsmen, or celebrities, in these situations is significantly worse than anything you or I would be subjected to, because people take notice of the case. Everyone was talking about Richie being arrested within a day of it happening and there's been at least a steady murmur about it ever since. Very few people would give a toss if it were you or me caught in possession. Because his profile is that much higher he gets that much more attention, including the unwelcome sort i.e. people calling for him to be hung out to dry. There's an ambiguity of attitude, too, towards entertainers who are (or are perceived to be) very well paid - they're respected or at least admired because they entertain and sometimes inspire, but there's a resentment of their success there. So when they finally slip up the schadenfreude is particularly vitriolic. And of course, we're far more likely to see them slip up precisely because we're looking out for it. None of that is rocket science. It does, however, describe a double standard, in that you would receive significantly different treatment for making the same error as Richie, and there's practically nothing the guy can do to change that without being roundly boonigged for inaction or derided for making token gestures.

Mm, and to suggest that I suggested that suggests a failure to read properly; how did you term it - a croc of chit? If you're incapable, as it seems, of seeing the double (or at least differing) standards applied here and the near-impossible position faced by the player - most folk would have hired Max Clifford by now - then this is a waste of my typing.

Oh god, not again... I hear what you're saying, however what applies to you and me does not apply in the same way to a professional footballer in Richie's position, whichever way you try to dress it up and whatever morality you sling at it. The points about difference in treatment for the unique job sportsmen these days find themselves doing have been made time and again on this thread, and I won't reiterate them. Suffice to say that if Richie came out and said he'd undertake to go round schools, enter the Priory and publicly birch himself in Falcon Square, there would be those who would pour scorn on the whole thing as a cynical publicity stunt designed to get himself out of a hole, followed by the conspiracy theorists and the 'had it from a reliable source' brigade who know that the board/sponsors/Pope-Elvis-Shergar (they're the same person, you know) have put him up to it. If he says nothing he's guilty, and if he says everything he's guilty - let alone what instructions he is under about what he can and cannot say.The lad can't win, at least not in this forum.

If that has more than 100 votes I'll eat Spiers' hats. All the sweaty-palmed, repressed, Wee Frees who really wish they could do a line or two before calling the premium rate lines in the personals are clearly online in puritanical force (as opposed to the vast majority of completely non-hypocritical Wee Frees, you understand).

Bloody ****, how many of us fulfil 'early promise'? Your implication - please don't hide from this - is that Richie's lifestyle has mitigated his performance. Now, that may or may not be the case (as Capecchi notes, we cannot do the appropriate controls), but he's still put in some cracking performances for us over the last couple of years, and the management and the fans have evidently been happy to see them. [modified here] For those who'd hang RH or at best sack him: The world you appear to want to inhabit is not one I wish to share. Let me know if you ever have political ambitions, because I believe visa applications take time :-