Disaster For Scotland Avoided

PHEW! Glad that one is over.

 

Having got over such DISASTERS FOR SCOTLAND as the Iran game, the 0-0 draw wit Luxembourg, the draw in the Faroe Islands and that win in Cyprus when Richard Gough's winning goal seemed to have been timed by sun dials, I had a nervy feeling about last night's game against Gibraltar.

 

Surely Scotland cannot blow this one, was my pre-game view. Thankfully, not even Scotland could blow a match against a team I would expect even my own dear, threatened by closure at the end of this season Lugar Boswell Thistle to beat.

 

I am not even bothered about the fact we allowed the real Sons of the Rock to score their first international goal, watertight defence has never been the Scotland way. We won, we move on to tougher games.

 

I am pleased for Fletcher S, he has got the "couldn't score in a brothel with £1000 to spend" monkey off his back - perhaps he will now begin to hit the net with some regularity, in any case, it was long past time for Colin Stein's name to be expunged from the record book.

 

We have not booked our trip to France next summer - yet, but, we have reasonable grounds for optimism.

 

 

 

SPEAKING about getting back to where you want to be; it might be said that the Rangers Tribute Act were facing their own "Gibraltar Moment" on Saturday, when they took-on Cowdenbeath. They came through that test well, if not with flying colours.

 

You know, perhaps, just maybe, Stuart McCall can steady the ship and navigate Ra Peepul through the play-offs this time round. However, I hope, should be fail, the new owners hold their nerve and keep him on. In the longer term, it might do the RTA no harm at all, to have to spend a second season in the Championship.

 

 

 

OFF the Ball is, in some respects, an acquire taste. Stuart Cosgrove and Tam Cowan love to bill their wee programme as: "The most-petty and ill-informed football programme on radio", then they go out there and give air time to such terrific guests as experienced (it never does to call a lady "a veteran") Scotland goalkeeper Gemma Faye, who was on the show on Saturday.

 

Some of the so-called "serious" sports programmes might do well to pay a bit more attention to our women's game. For a start, as Gemma proved, our top girl players are much more-rounded characters and, I would suggest, more-intelligent, than their male counterparts.

 

Speaking of OTB, my old mucker Chick Young came up with a cracker when guesting on the Saturday night version of the show. After revealing that his great invitation XI, Dukla Pumpherston (football's version of rugby's Barbarians) had once played against the Gibraltar international team, he revealed that he had played in surely the ultimate Scottish local derby - AC Milanda v Inter Mill Inn.

 

This surely proves, when it comes to daft team names - nobody does it as well as we Scots.