forkboy

Yes

The problem with letting Grant go is that McLean inspires next to no confidence in him. But best of luck to him at Brora, has been a really good player for us since joining, even if it does seem he's maybe a bit past it at the SPL level now.

With that sort of luck I'm sure you'll always be made to feel welcome in Dingwall!

Boukraa, Escalon & who? Oikonomou seems too good to be a cult hero.

What a nostalgia trip this is, right back to the guff at the start of the season we got promoted from the First. Good times Of course the big difference between the team that Falkirk had when they got relegated as opposed to our squad (well, other than the fact our team is better than that Falkirk team) is that most of them are on one year deals, so worst come to the worst, we won't be saddled with the likes of Burton O'Brien in the First Division.

Well, that's sure some team United are bringing to Victoria Park! Bebe, Macheda & Petrucci were about the only names I recognise. Squad: Sam Johnstone, Joel Castro Pereira; Liam Grimshaw, Tom Thorpe, Scott Wootton, Marnick Vermijl; Larnell Cole, Ryan Tunnicliffe, Andreas Pereira, Charni Ekangamene, Ben Pearson, Davide Petrucci; James Wilson, Tom Lawrence, Bebe, Federico Macheda, Jack Barmby.

Aye, I still haven't fully gotten over the loss of the terracing, & it's been a full season now I'm going to be an auld fuddy moaning about the good old days before I'm 30...

It's alright, all is forgiven, we can go back to being, if not pals then at least "not adversaries".

Yeah, it's a good question to ask where he'll play. Can't see him beating out Kova for the job anyway.

...That was the question I was asking. Is it possible? I presume it is because didn't Jalabert get busted recently on a decade old sample? In which case you'd hope it'd happen more often. But I guess the UCI don't want it for obvious reasons, & WADA probably feel they have enough to go on with with keeping up with current samples. But I can't speak to that.

I wasn't referring to News Corp though. It's the people involved in the team like Brailsford who are also closely linked to British Cycling who would have lots to lose. Not to mention British Cycling itself would probably be fucked by association. Eh. sorry but I need more that just assuming that everyone is guilty. Take it you can't answer the question about WADA etc holding on to blood samples then?

Getting sent off in a meaningless friendly, punching someone, what a total tit.

Do WADA or whomever does the tests keep hold of samples so that they can be tested in the future for previously undetectable things? I ask because I'm far from an expert on doping, but presumably Sky can't have been riding like this the past 2 years on EPO because they'd have been caught. So if they are doping then they are using some sort of new & currently undetectable drug, or at least a new masking agent, you'd presume. So will it be possible to detect such things in the future from older samples? I haven't a clue how long the authorities hold on to samples. Or of course they aren't doping at all, though I grant you that that does seem an outside bet at the moment. Though I do wonder if they would risk doing it considering the inevitability of being caught down the line, as it would totally taint the achievements of British Cycling over the past 2 decades due to how closely they are linked to the Sky team. They haven't been anywhere near as transparent as they claimed they would be when they started up,. & obviously they look light years ahead of their rivals at times, so I do understand the scepticism about them (& share it to some extent, though less passionately than most I think). It's just after seeing Armstrong's house of cards crumble, & other top riders like Contador & Schleck (perhaps I'm stretching the definition of "top riders" here with Frank) test positive & have their achievements stripped, I have to ask myself "if I was in Sky's position would I really risk it?" And it just seems to me like the damage that could be done with a positive test for a guy like Wiggins, Froome or Porte would not be worth the short term rewards from winning a couple of Tour's & some other things along the way. But then I'm not really much of a gambler, maybe Brailsford & co are. Anyway, exciting stage I thought. Enjoyed it. Contador really doesn't look near up to speed.

Such a terrific guy to watch ride

Good luck to Barry. Thought he was hard done by last season as relegation was always likely to be on the cards. Good to have him at the club & I hope he can help the youngsters come on.

Sounds like he's been cleared to race today, which is a surprise

Utterly shambolic from the race organisers.

If it's any consolation, they'll probably never equal to the place Lawson & the like hold in our hearts

Pretty sure we're there now. Blimey. So the interesting question is what's the Dutch connection that's suddenly crept up? Have we brought in a Dutch based scout? Is Jimmy Calderwood doing some scouting on the side for us?

He's posted that Letheren is signing for every other SPL club purely because he's been linked to St Mirren. It's nonsense.

I must admit, I thought the BBC would show it. I mean they don't usually bother giving road cycling a second though, but the woman's race had several Olympic track medallists involved, as did the men's. But nothing. Was a bit disappointing.

I'd forgotten we originally had a green playing surface, that looks great!

I think I heard something at the end of the season that Hainault was feeling homesick, but then my memory is crap so I may have made that up. Not a clue about Oikonomou though.

I'm distraught at losing Evangelos & Hainault, who I was convinced would be a terrific defender for us this season. Got to admit, there's still loads of time to go but it's hard not to be feeling a bit pessimistic right now.

The suggestion is that they take guys who were not exactly promising neo-pros & turn them into GT winners. Which raises eyebrows, fairly or not. And the whole idea of "marginal gains" is a hard one for people to really take seriously. A lot of it is (justifiable) cynicism that cycling will ever be clean & so whoever is strongest And there's the fact that the Sky train looks quite a lot like something we've seen before, the US Postal Service team in the Lance Armstrong era, & we know how often they claimed they didn't dope ever at all. Personally, I try to look at it in a way that could be seen as a bit naive. Doping happens, I'd like them to work harder to catch the people who dope & at least minimise it as much as possible, but the richest dopers will probably always be ahead of the antidopers. So I enjoy cycling for what it is, an incredible act of physical endurance, doping or not riding 180km finishing on a Cat 1 climb is going past the pain threshold of most normal human beings. So I assume that everyone is clean until they get caught. Because the alternatives are either being jaded & doubting everyone, which I just find a bit depressing, & trying to guess who doped after every performance, which is just uninformed guesswork which eventually turns into suspecting everyone. So if Froome or Wiggins tested positive I'd not be surprised, but I guess I hope they are clean, & Nibali & Contador & Valverde & everyone else is clean. Even though the chances of that are fucking slim.