craigkillie

Ayr played St Mirren at Dam Park in the League Cup in August 1972, and McLean was in the team, so this seems entirely possible.

ES Clydebank played in the league in 1964/65, before the takeover was reversed the following year. Clydebank then entered the league in 1966.

Why are queues for McDonalds related to exercise?

If it's BCD anyway you're welcome to pay the going rate for Rugby Park.

The other difference is that we're not in France.

Well they're not "history deniers" for one thing, are they? The literal reason they've taken that statue for a nice cold bath is because they accept and understand the history.

They perhaps teach it in some schools, but it's certainly not everywhere. I finished school in 2007 and have no recollection of ever learning about the slave trade or any other aspect of British colonialism at any point. We studied US civil rights in modern studies, but it was very much from a modern perspective and didn't really go into a great deal of depth about the historical reasons why these racial differences were entrenched. I feel as though it should be central to the curriculum, not some optional topic which schools can choose to cover. If the Scottish government can (quite rightly) embed LGBTI issues into the curriculum then I think it is reasonable to ask them to do the same for topics surrounding racism. My hypothesis here is that people who grew up in more working class and/or less ethnically diverse areas are much less likely to have this as part of their education. I haven't necessarily got any evidence for this, but I think it stands to reason.

Would guess they will add the PPG approach explicitly into the rules from next season onwards.

There's nothing at all appealing about it to bottom six Premiership clubs - less prize money for no tangible benefit.

There is a difference between removing buildings paid for by the slave trade (or even built by slaves) and removing statues or other objects commemorating these slave traders. The GOMA has utility, it serves a purpose as a building, and therefore its value extends beyond its questionable history. A reasonable way to reconcile this history would be a plaque of some sort which explains the past of the building. A statue serves no useful function and merely exists as a monument to the person or event represented by it, and therefore if the object represented in it has a similar questionable history then it no longer has any value. A reasonable way to reconcile this would be to tear it down and break it into tiny little pieces. I know that you understand this and are just being obtuse and doing a "just asking questions" act to cover up your underlying right-wing views, but this again needs to be said regardless.

Which part of history is being rewritten here? People aren't going to suddenly go "ah, I see that there are no longer statues of slave traders, it must not have happened", are they? You can't change your past, but what you can change is the decision about which parts of your past you think deserve to be commemorated and which parts you think don't. You're correct that the erection of this statue, and many others like it, was entirely undemocratic and didn't represent the will of the people living there. Why do we need public will to get rid of them, but not public will to erect them? It seems as though the public will was there in Bristol anyway, based on the previous discussion about the Colston Hall.

The people of Bristol repeatedly campaign for various things associated with Colston to be renamed or removed, and they successfully lobbied for a change of the name of the "Colston Hall" in the city. It's not like this came out of the blue. Were the people living in the city asked their opinion before the statue was erected?

We can start learning about Britain's role in ending it as soon as we actually start learning about Britain's role in doing it in the first place. Neither of these things are part of our current curriculum in any meaningful way and therefore don't register in the national psyche. It seems a little bit churlish to celebrate your own role in stopping slavery when you were complicit in the process for decades before that, and built your own country off the back of the profits. Even when we stopped it, we paid reparations to the poor little slave traders who ended up out of pocket, not the countries and communities which we ravaged for years.

Other people were doing it too is never going to be a valid defence.

Bates was a Raith Rovers youth player who actually played several games in their first team before being allowed to move to Rangers for free (they probably overpaid).

The murder of yet another black person by the police in America last week led to an long-overdue discussion of the ways in which systemic racism is perpetuated in many Western countries. The United Kingdom is absolutely one such place, indeed our history with the slave trade makes us as a country directly responsible for a great deal of the continued inequalities which persist in places like the USA, which was the ultimate destination for many of the millions of people who these slave traders kidnapped from their homes. Therefore, people across the UK are protesting against this systemic racism in our country, as well as showing solidarity with the even more oppressed black people in the USA. I realise you already know this and are just posting a pithy wee remark to show yourself up, but it's still worth saying anyway.

I'd prefer a country where we have statues of the good guys and talk about the bad guys in history classes. A statue to me says "this person is important and cherished by this city or place". If Killie were building a statue outside Rugby Park it would be for one of our trophy winning captains, not Liam Millar who did OK in a few games on loan for us last year. That's not erasing Millar out of our history, it's just prioritising those who actually earned a statue.

That was during Michael Johnston's reign of terror. No such issues with the current regime.

I'm just going to limit it to appearances for the Celtic or Rangers first teams, since I assumed that's what you meant. Several of the players have gone on to play for other teams. I've also excluded the overage players for obvious reasons, but have included non-Scottish U20/21 players in italics. Celtic 129 - Kristoffer Ajer 49 - Mikey Johnston 19 - Tony Ralston 9 - Ewan Henderson 5 - Calvin Miller 3 - Jack Aitchison 1 - Jamie McCart 1 - Aidan Nesbitt 1 - Scott Robertson 1 - Joe Thomson 1 - Stephen Welsh Rangers 55 - Ross McCrorie 27 - Glenn Middleton 18 - Ryan Hardie 9 - Jamie Barjonas 8 - Myles Beerman 3 - Liam Burt 3 - Jordan Thompson 3 - Aidan Wilson 1 - Serge Atakayi 1 - Jordan Houston 1 - Kai Kennedy 1 - Josh McPake 1 - Dapo Mebude 1 - Nathan Patterson

Do you have any evidence that we even had a nominated penalty taker at Euro 96? A lot of different players took penalties for Scotland around that period. As far as I can see, McAllister only ever took four penalties for us - against Canada in a friendly in 1992, CIS at Euro 92, England at Euro 96 and away to Belarus in 1997. In the qualifiers for Euro 92, John Robertson and Gordon Strachan both took penalties - McAllister was on the pitch both times. So it's entirely possible that McAllister was never the nominated taker, but just happened to be the guy willing to hit one in that CIS game (when we were already 2-0 up and cruising). We then only had one penalty in the entire period between Euro 92 and Euro 96, and it was scored by Pat Nevin against Estonia in WC94 qualifying. So this idea that McAllister was some long-running penalty taker doesn't really have much evidence behind it. McCoist was never really a penalty taker though - he never took one for Scotland as far as I can see.

Do Ayr have enough players to name an 18 man matchday squad on a Saturday (plus maybe a couple on standby if there are injuries) and also at least 14 for a Reserve team? I doubt Killie do.

Hearts absolutely were a subsidiary of FBK Kaunas, or at the very least both were subsidiary clubs of the same owner. They were bought over by the Kaunas owner and signed dozens of players on loan from them. Some of those loans were to put Lithuanian players in the shop window, many more were to allow the club to dodge tax. Neither of these seem like things that a supporter should be happy about their club doing. Your managers were forced to play tripe like Linus Pilibaitis, Ricardas Beniusis or Eduardas Kurskis, something which I certainly can't imagine anyone could think was beneficial to Hearts in any way. Hearts didn't have a choice of players, they were given players. Coaches were installed in exactly the same way. I'm not sure how that is any different to Stenhousemuir being chucked six Hibs youngsters and a youth team coach - if anything Stenhousemuir have more agency in that situation. I think this concept of subsidiary clubs and shared ownership is insidious, whether it's what is described here or the City football group enterprise which is essentially setting up franchises across the world. Hearts were involved in one of the very first schemes along these lines, and I think it would be reasonable for you to recognise that rather than throwing your hands up in the air and saying "but how could Stenhousemuir want something like this?".

Tony Watt came through at Airdrie.

Anyone wanting to dodge the abomination that is the crowd noise can chuck it over to BT Sport Ultimate if you have that channel.

Worth noting that all of those were played on midweeks/weekends where the first team didn't have any matches on. They also played a game at Forthbank for some reason in 2017, which attracted 168 fans.