Ray Patterson

The TV games should always be near the end IMO. But aye this is really poor. Is it just me or the cameras used for some of the games looked a bit off? The St Mirren vs QoS one didn't seem to be white balanced correctly and the Livingston vs Raith camera was on the wrong side (which I prefer) For the Sunday show they'll have sent a reporter to film a "feature" on one of the lesser games on Saturday. Think they did one for us vs Stirling Uni last season.

The Scottish Cup Sportscene's are produced by a different production company - I think it's Sunset+Vine - that used to do BT's SPFL coverage. While the run of the mill Sportscene is a BBC Scotland production.

Interesting interview that Channel 4 had with Zelenskyy this evening. I think he knows how important it is to make significant ground in the next 12 months, before Trump or a MAGA Republican-controlled Congress comes in.

Hamilton vs Inverness was a Wednesday 3pm kick-off in 2015 I think? 1,555 in attendance.

After 40 turgid minutes it very much sparked into life that one, probably been one of the best 45s of football so far in the second half.

Aye Wilson's top notch, Ekoku less so.

BBC or Sky?

Having a Heads Gone there - why even try that on a yellow?

I doubt it's the Hockey Centre you'll be getting, it feels far more likely that Scottish Hockey and local Clubs like Kelburne will receive sportscotland funding to re-open it. Plus the optics of it would be awful with it being the 2014 Commies venue - especially since Scotland are rumoured to take on the Games again. What seems more likely is that you'll get a plot of land from the football centre next door.

Not really surprising, most of those are tiny, South Sudan has only been a country for a decade and at war for most of that and the CAR and Somalia are failed states, and Eritrea makes North Korea look like Disneyland. I'm still not convinced that 24 teams every two years is the best format - I think maybe 24 every four and a AFCON Super Cup every two with maybe the best 8 teams would be better.

Strong Scotsport: Football First vibes that

If you'll allow me a slightly late vote The Thick of It Chernobyl Game of Thrones Firefly The Simpsons Line of Duty Yes, Minister Farscape Seinfeld How I Met Your Mother

Ted Kaczynski Dennis Rodman Rob Burrow Margathe II (VC) Dick Van Dyke Ehud Olmert Jimmy Carter Ali Khamenei Jimmy Carter (C) Esther Rantzen Alexei Navalny Buzz Aldrin Sam Bankman-Fried Teodoro Obiang Gerard Depardieu

11:45 is absolutely ridiculous from the SFA - people with slower connections/email servers might only receive their codes at 11:55

Always found it a bit annoying that BBC Sport don't use any of the Sport Scotland staff for their network production - other than Sutherland doing the interviews it was all freelancers that came in - McLean on comms was a brutal choice - especially when you have Lamont and McLeod in-house, who are far better. The women's game the other night was quite interesting (production wise - not the shambles on the pitch) and I suspect Barbour will be on Scotland's games for the Beeb, which while she's a good presenter, I imagine might rub the PQ staff up the wrong way. Although weirdly they were promoting Sportscene and SWPL Highlights - which I haven't seen from a network production recently. With STV/ITV - I really hope they combine their coverage - but make sure it's fully Scottish - like have the STV team come in and use the ITV resources - rather than have the likes of Pougatch or Jaswal on Scotland's games. Rory Hamilton is a no-brainer for them surely. Suppose the likes of Stewart will have free choice.

Terrace is quite good, don't listen as much as I used to. Football Cliches is also a personal favourite.

So there were: Qatar 8-1 Afghanistan - Afghanistan had to play U21 players as their senior team was on strike after unpaid wages. Australia 7-0 Bangladesh - Harry Souttar opened the scoring with Jamie Maclaren sniping a hat-trick Japan 5-0 Burma South Korea 5-0 Singapore Iran 4-0 Hong Kong - 6,000 turning up to their 78k national stadium for that one - tells you how popular the current regime is there. Iraq 5-1 Indonesia - How can a country of 250 million be so bad at football (same with China and India) Saudi Arabia 4-0 Pakistan Couple of other results Malaysia 4-3 Kyrgyzstan - A last minute winner for Malaysia Syria 1-0 North Korea - Played in Saudi Arabia - yikes. There was a start for Han Kwang-song - former Juventus player - who hasn't been seen since moving back to North Korea two years ago.

Gammon is fine when used correctly, but like most things is overused. Should be reserved for fat, bald racists.

Yeah big fan of it - would like to see us introduce it here. Suppose the SFA's issue is what counts as a Scotland cap - didn't they just retrospectively give a cap to eight players a few years ago - could make the numbering very confusing should they do that again.

The Boyce one was a penalty. The VAR thought it was a penalty and that's why they called the referee over to change his mind. Even if he didn't make contact (which he did), it's still a high boot that should be an-indirect free-kick just inside the box, so why the referee didn't give that at the very least in real-time is baffling. Is this the first time this season that a referee has been called over and not changed his decision? Happens very rarely.

It's one TV game from Rounds 1 to 3, but the BBC have shown a second in previous years but that's usually been down to Covid or something.

It's QTV that do it - the same people that do the production for Premiership games, but it's quite a lot of work to get it cut down.

They'll be uploaded to the Scottish Cup YouTube channel tomorrow afternoon. They might also be posted on Twitter too.

Probably a bunch of copium but what do we reckon on the reports of Putin's health, there was the Heart Attack story over the weekend and now there's the rumour over Telegram and Twitter that's he kicked the bucket. Most likely just the usual rumours - mind we had to put up with with the Queen for the past 10 years until it eventually happened. What do the Russia watchers on here think?

Adam Something on YouTube did a really interesting video on why modern builds look crap.