forameus

I like to think it was a sort of emergency contact deal, and the SFA put St Mirren down because they couldn't think of anything else.

You really see what broadcasters are really about when stuff like this happens. Viaplay are showing they're amateur with lots of confused pauses as they run out of ways to say "aye...it's wet".

Has there ever been a major international game called off for weather? Seems like it'd be a bit of a ballache to get reorganised in the limited window, can't remember it ever happening. EDIT: Not to suggest this will, just curious.

There's very few nations now we should expect to be "pummeling". It's that attitude that leads to such wild swings in judgement when a well-organised and technically better side gets a deserved result against us. We should be beating Georgia but they're hardly some diddy no-mark like San Marino. We should be putting out the best team we have available and getting the win no matter how it comes. f**k "experimenting".

I think the Hendry one on the half-way line was never more than a booking. Haaland probably did us a favour making absolutely no attempt to go for the ball, and as soon as he'd turned Hendry he was reversing himself to make sure Hendry had little choice about what to do. Clear booking, but no more than that. The second one was right as well, I think, although again Haaland probably did us a slight favour by not going down (unlike later) and giving the referee a chance to doubt himself. The fact that even as his teammates were complaining he didn't seem bothered suggested there wasn't much in it.

I thought Collision was a bit shit to be honest. Just seemed like there was something off about the whole thing, from the moment big Elton starts banging out the intro. The commentary was pretty awful all night, with all the chemistry and bantz of Taz/Excalibur being replaced by Kevin Kelly seemingly coming into the thing completely cold, and McGuinness just doing his own brand of screechy but monotone beside him. Then bringing in JR late on sounding like he was about to have an episode just topped it off. Oh aye, and their ring announcer shouting out a WWE trademark in Buddy Murphy was an unexpected touch. Outside of all that, the show was fine I guess, but it continued AEW's insistence on just putting out good wrestling without adding much in the way of stakes. Nothing they did really mattered for what was supposed to be this big debut. I can see this really tanking once the novelty wears off and they have to try filling arenas on a Saturday night. And then Charlie M Punk...I'm not really sure what they're trying to do with him. I think he came across awfully in the promo, but then was that the intention? Are they still trying to dance the line between heel and face or at least not decide yet? He came across like a spoilt, grumpy dick - which admittedly is basically his default setting - and utterly unrepentant for something that was pretty much all of his own doing. And when it came to the match, he looked well off it at times, particularly that part where he was just cowered in the corner of the ring after the tag as FTR tried to work around him. Granted after being out so long, that was bound to happen, but if he starts struggling in-ring, all the other baggage he brings is going to grow. Going to be fascinating to watch.

I was thinking that first goal was a bit of a sclaff, but even though the buildup was, that is actually a cracking wee finish from Dykes. Second one was absolutely brilliant. Hang that in whatever fucking whale carcass passes for a museum in Oslo.

Dundee United to struggle a wee bit initially, then pull away as the season goes on, winning the league a few rounds early. Playoff places end up being pretty tight between the usual suspects. I think Thistle will have a better season than some are expecting and make them, but come nowhere near the levels of this season. Premiership side wins the playoff. Again.

I quite liked the Cole/MJF finish, although not sure it was necessary. I don't really like the idea of the eliminator matches in general really, sort of dilutes the impact of beating the champion for the belt if you've already beaten him before. Almost feels like you have to resort to screwy stuff just to avoid that. Main event sure was something. Another largely heatless Elite/BCC match, then they decided to throw all their booking chips at the wall to see what stuck. I can't work out whether it was great or awful. Interesting little promo video for CM Punk. Started out awful along the usual lines of battling back from an injury and conveniently ignoring everything else about him being away. But the ending brought it back. Makes it seem like they haven't fully decided how he's coming back. If it's as a pure face, they've properly fucked it.

Are the two black stripes different or is it just the light in the above picture? The sponsor is not too distracting for a change, but still not a fan. Looks like they were on a tight deadline, and with 5 minutes to go all they had on a piece of paper was red, black and yellow.

It's really heartening to see that pretty much no-one learned their lesson with regards to CDPR and Cyberpunk. DLC gets announced and the hype machine goes into overdrive, just a few years after they royally shat the bed in similar circumstances. They do have a really good history with DLC for games (the two main ones for Witcher 3 were near faultless) but given how different things were once they were creating their own property, rather than adapting the book, I wouldn't have any faith in them not having at least a few issues come release. Having said that, we'll see. I played through the game and thought it was alright, albeit a massive missed opportunity. If this ends up not being a complete dumpster fire, I'll probably give it another shot.

Unfortunately, that's probably exactly the reason why International football will only get weaker. There's a growing number of people that see it as an unwelcome disruption for club football, and I expect that'll only get worse as club football continues to head down this path. Those staunch Premier League fans in Ohio, Accra, Mumbai etc probably aren't going to be interested in anything other than their collection of highly-paid show-ponies muddling about in The Best League In The World. I agree with you, by the way. There's still something quite special about international games, even when we were shite. I hope it always stays that way.

Is that them removing the U16s go free thing they used to have or am I reading wrong?

I did worry had we gone up that Doolan would go from looking like a very impressive young manager that could really build something with us, to a useless no-hoper with calls for him to go from the fickle elements of our support. Another year in the Championship could have given him a chance to get a couple of transfer windows under his belt, build his team rather than just adapting McCall's, and really settle into the role. That was before we learned how fucked the finances were. I'd have obviously taken promotion and immediate relegation to pocket the money in that case.

I think probably 90% of the 100% run is pretty enjoyable. I saw bits of the game I'd never seen before and really felt like I was getting a full view of something put together with a lot of care and love. But the remaining 10% was utterly fucking miserable and I never want to see it ever again.

I think Bannigan's been a net positive this year, although that may just be rose-tinted given what he's been through. I think having one of him and Docherty in there is probably the best option, and I'd be inclined to pick Bannigan. However, having him involved at all after his injury has proved to be a terrible decision. He didn't look at it at all when he came on in the home leg, and the team definitely fell away in general at that point. Maybe he's not fully fit, maybe he just didn't fit in with how we started to play after he got injured, or maybe it's both. Or neither. But in any case, I can't see them releasing him, nor can I see him really wanting out (can't imagine there'll be clubs in a better position queueing up). Docherty I'd be more inclined to let go. I've never really seen him do anything that sets him apart from your standard comfortable, "safe" midfielder.

You'd like to think there's at least some work already done behind the scenes for either eventuality rather than starting fresh this morning. Obviously you're not going to have approached anyone seriously, but you can still draw up plans. Ha. Planning.

Sitting after the Raith game, I said we'd probably get to the final and lose to the Premiership team. Unfortunately, I didn't imagine us doing it in this way. Massive missed opportunity to have a near-perfect 340 minutes of playoff football, only to f**k up the final 20 minutes, and then not manage to turn it around in the extra 30 plus penalties. There's no excuses for today. Certain things went against us seemingly, but we should have scored more on Thursday, we should have taken chances today, we shouldn't have turned into complete shitebags, and we certainly shouldn't have allowed certain ones of those shitebags take penalties. We got what we deserved. Very interesting summer ahead. I think we've seen really good signs under Doolan that can give hope going forward. If we'd gone up, we'd have a higher budget obviously, but would it have been too early? But at the same time, a year in the Championship might be less challenging and give more opportunities, but what budget is out there, what players are sticking around, and - the old problem - what is our recruitment going to be like? If Doolan can nail that, then for me there's just one more thing he needs to address, and that's how to stop us from absolutely falling apart when we come up against any kind of adversity.

The Dundee/Queens Park title decider was pretty good on the BBC. And if we're talking about two teams of absolute diddies using their combined diddy-ness to serve up something good, the Rangers/Celtic youth cup game was absolutely tremendous entertainment. In an ideal world, BBC get allowed to show more games, have really enjoyed their Championship offerings this season. And at least we'll be involved again. Silver linings and all that.

Is that not kind of what the police are there for though, to anticipate stuff like that and make sure it doesn't happen, rather than hand a massive advantage just because they can't be arsed? But I'm beginning to sound all "aye, but". We didn't lose because the penalties were at the wrong end. We'd likely have lost anyway.

Believe me, I'd agree. That was a stupid thing had we gone up, let alone how it looks now we're staying there. But then Graham does seem like that kind of guy.

I'm not going down some Old Firm conspiracy hole, but the f**k was up with the police deciding they couldn't use one end? What the f**k was happening in there?

Getting all kinds of "the graphics don't matter" comments around this. Which is...true, I guess, but it does look pretty ropey for a new game. Looks even worse in motion. Going to have to really go some with the gameplay to make up for that if it's absolutely perfect in terms of bugs, which no game really is nowadays.

I think he's definitely not what he once was in the ring, but of course he isn't, he's been away for a very long time. It's noticeable that he isn't quite at the level of a lot of others in an industry that now values work rate so highly. But the charisma he holds is always going to push him higher than his pure inring ability can. Even when he was (at the time seemingly) torching his own career in the scrum, he was putting out perfect promo soundbites. I'd still be very interested in watching his feuds because I value actually having a story amongst matches rather than just "these two guys are good, let's wrestle" I think the decision to have him come back is a face is fucking moronic though. He should come out in Chicago to an ovation and then spend 30 minutes being a complete c**t. Having him come back as a face now will be at complete odds with...well, absolutely everything we know about the guy.

Everyone's favourite miserable c**t back to lead his very own show with zero real punishment for his transgressions. Top work. Very interesting reaction too. Big pop and a lot of people clearly happy, but brief shots of people very much the opposite that were quickly cut away from. Guy needs to come back as a proper heel, otherwise I can see it all going sour very, very quickly.