Phew.
They say following Scotland isn't easy, and most of the time I'm prepared to disagree. Usually, you have a few drinks, have a good sing song, and sit back and see what happens. It really couldn't be much easier.
Scrap that. Scrap that when a game is tumbling into stoppage time at Hampden Park and the best 11 football players Scotland can produce have, so far, failed to hold the lead at any point against Liechtenstein.
That's a country with an entire population smaller than the crowd watching the game. The size of Falkirk. The fourth smallest country in Europe behind Monaco, San Marino and Vatican City.
That's not easy at all.
Not to watch Scotland struggle on our own patch like that. Sure, we've drawn with the Faroe Islands before - but never in Glasgow. Never at Hampden. Never at home.
Never in the same arena where France and the Netherlands have been felled, where we held Germany and Italy, where we thrashed the Ukraine.
A defeat and we'd been as well chucking it. A draw was better - just - but pretty much meant we'd kiss goodbye, once again, to the prospect of qualification.
Enter Stephen McManus.
It's strange; every logical thought in your mind was telling you that a winner was not to be celebrated in these circumstances. It was worthy of polite applause at very, very best.
But when, in the seventh minute of stoppage time, the big central defender bulleted a header into the bottom corner . . .
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/scotland/8978554.stm
Funny things, football does to you.
Friday, 10 September 2010
Monday, 6 September 2010
A return to the fray
The new university year begins next week, so I thought I better dust down the cobwebs that have been forming on this particular URL over the past six months.
It's not so much that I don't enjoy writing this - on the contrary, the false sense of self-importance you can get is practically addictive - but when exams are bearing down upon you and your football team are marching towards promotion, life seems to hold time for little else.
And during the summer - well, don't be daft . . .
Nonetheless, time to get back into the habit - I've got a journalism career to chip away at here and no time to lose; I'll be hacking mobile phones before you can say 'senior political resignation at Number 10' - or, I dunno, something like that.
Indeed, as a bit of an aside, this new government's been in place at Westminster for some time now, and funnily enough, we still don't really know just how painful it's going to be when these economic 'tough choices' that David Cameron spent hours going on about are made. It seems the toughest choice of all is whether to actually tell us - the electorate - about the option that's been picked.
In fact, every time I see the PM he's got the look of a man who's sold the family car to pay for a motorbike and hasn't yet had the heart to tell the missus - the only problem for us being if we don't much like it, any 'divorce' is a good four years away at least.
And Tony Blair's back. With his new book. Hoorah. The most relevant line of the lot, for me, is when he decides to let us know he often thought of President Bush: "Don't just say it George; explain it" - and there was me thinking you couldn't sum up an entire eight year presidency in seven words.
One quick mention of the Edinburgh Festival and Fringe which was, as always, superb. Kevin Bridges and Chris Addison's could not have been more different from one another - a lengthy conversation between the two would be stand-up gold - but both were very, very funny. See them if you ever get the chance.
No doubt something will grab my overly-analytical mind very soon, but until then check out this guy. He's quite good too . . .
http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/clips/p009lq81/edinburgh_2010_the_boy_with_tape_on_his_face/
. . . in fact, stick him into my Bridges-Addison get-together and we really could be onto something.
It's not so much that I don't enjoy writing this - on the contrary, the false sense of self-importance you can get is practically addictive - but when exams are bearing down upon you and your football team are marching towards promotion, life seems to hold time for little else.
And during the summer - well, don't be daft . . .
Nonetheless, time to get back into the habit - I've got a journalism career to chip away at here and no time to lose; I'll be hacking mobile phones before you can say 'senior political resignation at Number 10' - or, I dunno, something like that.
Indeed, as a bit of an aside, this new government's been in place at Westminster for some time now, and funnily enough, we still don't really know just how painful it's going to be when these economic 'tough choices' that David Cameron spent hours going on about are made. It seems the toughest choice of all is whether to actually tell us - the electorate - about the option that's been picked.
In fact, every time I see the PM he's got the look of a man who's sold the family car to pay for a motorbike and hasn't yet had the heart to tell the missus - the only problem for us being if we don't much like it, any 'divorce' is a good four years away at least.
And Tony Blair's back. With his new book. Hoorah. The most relevant line of the lot, for me, is when he decides to let us know he often thought of President Bush: "Don't just say it George; explain it" - and there was me thinking you couldn't sum up an entire eight year presidency in seven words.
One quick mention of the Edinburgh Festival and Fringe which was, as always, superb. Kevin Bridges and Chris Addison's could not have been more different from one another - a lengthy conversation between the two would be stand-up gold - but both were very, very funny. See them if you ever get the chance.
No doubt something will grab my overly-analytical mind very soon, but until then check out this guy. He's quite good too . . .
http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/clips/p009lq81/edinburgh_2010_the_boy_with_tape_on_his_face/
. . . in fact, stick him into my Bridges-Addison get-together and we really could be onto something.
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