Marten

Surprising development in The Netherlands. Mark Rutte, who is the longest serving Dutch PM in history having started in 2010, has announced he will NOT stand for re-election and leave politics. I wasn't expecting that tbh, it will be interesting to see who will become the new VVD leader, and with that the most likely next PM. His deputy Sophie Hermans is seen as favourite, if she becomes the leader she could become the first femal PM in The Netherlands.

Amstel is owned by Heineken so they aren't competition. Oranjeboom disappearing is a good thing though. I have noticed a number of former Heineken pubs in my hometown and other towns/cities in the area have changed away from Heineken. Especially Grolsch and Jupiler, both much better than Heineken (although that isn't hard), have replaced them.

I haven't lived in the country for 14 years now so what I said about seeing Oranjeboom at events might be somewhat dated, since then I've only been to a handful of football games in The Netherlands and no other big events, but Oranjeboom wasn't really served at football when I lived there either.

Yep, although obviously it's still early days. The election will probably be in November so some time to go. I get a postal vote so I'll need to think who I want to vote for, which isn't an easy decision for me to be honest, but anything to stop the far-right mob!

The worst party on the far right seem, FVD (Forum for Democracy) seem to be getting pretty much wiped out. That is good news, as they are properly mental conspiracy nutters. Fully bought into the antivax rubbish, completely adore Putin and so on. The far-right freedom party (PVV) seem to lose slightly as well. Those votes do stay on the right, as the relatively newly formed Farmer Citizens Movement (BBB) seem to sweep up a lot of votes from the far-right. They aren't my favourites either but in fairness, they are nowhere near as extreme as FVD/PVV, so rather BBB than the other 2.

Yeah, North End would be roughly that standard I'd say. Decent side.

Basically, the largest party in the coalition, VVD (right of centre liberal party) felt pressure from the far-right and wanted to re-negotiate the coalition deal in terms of immigration. D'66 (basically the Dutch LibDems) and ChristianUnion (left of centre, socially somewhat conservative) were having none of that. ChristianUnion is the most open on immigration and said they are not re-opening a debate that they saw as settled in the coalition negotiations, when they already had to settle on a difficult compromise. They made very clear at the time that this was a line they wouldn't cross and if others would cross it, they'd step out of the coalition. They kept their word, resulting in the government collapsing. I don't agree with ChristianUnion on everything, but I do respect that they are consistent, the most consistent Dutch party when excluding really small minor parties. They are principled and with them it's "what you see is what you get", which I definitely respect.

Oranjeboom is awful, in the Netherlands nobody ever buys it in shops, it's only seen as the cheap event beer that organisers get to save money. The only worse "beer" is Heineken, that is just absolutely shite.

Drymen United 3-3 Deanston, a.e.t., Drymen win 4-2 on penalties The final of the MacGregor Ferguson Cup, for clubs in the Forth and Endrick League, was played last night. This is the only final that isn't at a neutral venue but one team is drawn as the home team. It happened to be at the usual final venue for this league as Drymen generally gets used for most finals due to the excellent facilities they have. This ground wouldn't look out of place in the West of Scotland League for example. The game itself was excellent, Drymen had a quick start and took an early 2-0 lead. Deanston got one back, both had plenty of chances the rest of the first half but it was 2-1 at HT. In the second half Drymen scored around the hour mark and looked to wrap it up, but Deanston pulled one back again and equalised right at the death, taking the game into extra time. Late in the first half of extra time Drymen looked like they hit the self-destruct button. First one of their strikers got a straight red for swearing at the referee. Just a minute or so later their other striker got booked for kicking the ball away (something he done several times and already had a warning for so his own fault entirely), he then kept on moaning at the referee for so long that he got his second and they had to play the 2nd half of extra time with 9 men. As expected, Deanston had most of the play for the rest of extra time but they didn't manage to get through the hosts' well-organised defence. The game had to be decided on penalties, all Drymen's penalties were excellent, their goalkeeper also made one brilliant save and one Deanston player hit the post, meaning Drymen won the cup. The Stirling University (LL side) manager Chris Geddes played for Deanston. His fitness isn't the greatest anymore, but it was clearly visible he played at a high level based on his technique and skills to read the game. Good day out, I also had a great chat with the league's chairman, he loved it that 2 Dutchmen (I've done all these grounds with a Dutch mate of mine who also lives in Scotland) been to every ground in their league.

Yep, fully agreed. I'm not the kind of person to now rub it in, although obviously personally I'm delighted. Scotland were great this tournament and in all honesty, it's a travesty that this World Cup is so restricted as both nations (and also Zimbabwe imo) would have deserved to be there. Thankfully this is the last one with only 10 nations but in all honesty, biased as I am admittedly, I believe Scotland and The Netherlands have both more than shown over a long enough period that we should become full members. We're no weaker (and both stronger now imo) than Ireland who are full members! Good luck to Scotland in the T20 qualifying tournament that follows in 2 weeks, I've just bought a ticket to head down to Edinburgh, this time I will be rooting for Scotland!

Having grown up in The Netherlands, I know all about getting piss in a can, in our case it was usually called Heineken.

If Scotland bat first, The Netherlands will have approximately 44 overs to chase Scotland's total. If The Netherlands bat first and say reach 300, Scotland need to score 268 to qualify.

Yep, that's the best thing of this all. ICC make FIFA look competent, they really don't give a sh!t about any country outside the big ones. First The Netherlands auto qualification for the 2024 T20 WC and now either us or Scotland through, in both cases ahead of a number of full members shows how fucking wrong ICC are.

I had to search quite a bit to find where they stranded in the qualifying to get to this tournament. They finished 4th in the Challenge League, of which only the winners qualified for the World Cup Qualifying play-off, which was the stage before this tournament (where Scotland started their campaign). So from regular appearances at the world stage they've gone to not even getting close to making the qualifying tournament for the main qualifying tournament. Bizarre indeed.

Good luck to Scotland today. Obviously I also say this out of self-interest as our only chance to qualify is if Scotland win today. However, with how the ICC have been treating associates, the more of "us" who perform well the more they will have to take notice of the associates. Both the ODI & T20 world cups have had structures aimed at keeping associates out. With the amount of times both Scotland and ourselves have impressed against the "big" nations (like us beating South Africa at the T20 World Cup), both have more than showed that we can compete with the lesser full members. Thankfully both world cups will be opened up more but there is still some way to go. That's reason enough to hope any associate will make it.

We can do without the support of the OO muppets, thank you.

There are a few well supported sides in our league. I'm not saying we're the only well supported team at our level. But with the changes in the league, it didn't make it more interesting imo. Effectively, several big sides have been replaced by relatively small local sides. Edit: I don't mean that disrespectful to the smaller sides, but from a fan's perspective I miss journeys outside of Tayside.

Always difficult to read into these results, not all new players were there yet (Linn was playing a testimonial with Arbroath for example) and obviously players still need to gel. However, despite the scoreline especially the second half looked very decent. Hermes looked a very decent side to be fair. Time will tell for us obviously but a good first run out. We've got 2 more new players. Jaden Ferguson, who was with us for just a few weeks in the second half of the 21/22 season and scored for fun (11 in his first 3 games!) before he signed for Hearts, has returned and signed for us for the whole season now. We've got left defender Jack Neave from Coupar Angus who looked good today.

I really hope so! No disrespect to the clubs in this league, but the change from the old East Superleague with trips to the likes of Bo'ness, Linlithgow & Bonnyrigg to a really local league hasn't been the greatest. The Highland League would definitely be a great challenge and would give us some cracking away trips.

Here is hoping! Still nothing be taken for granted though.

Cheers mate. We were in need of a new goalkeeper, I get the idea that we've got a really good one for our level.

The next signing, another good one.

He is a young talent who has been rumoured to make a step up. I can't recall that much about him in games we played against Blairgowrie, but I believe he was one of their best players in the past season.

La version française aussie, très bien!

Merging the South Challenge Cup & Junior cup, inviting clubs in the Highland League & North Caledonian League (up to them whether or not they will take it but can at least offer them) & re-name it SFA Challenge Trophy or so, with the SFA running it, showpiece final at Hampden & a decent payment for travel costs would be great & doable. But the old divide is an issue, not to mention the fact that the SFA doesn't give a f*ck about this level of football...