Do Hibs feel the hand of Scottish Cup history on their shoulder? Or does it have them by the throat, threatening to throttle them once again?
They head to Hampden as favourites to beat Falkirk in the semi final - 1.6 to win at Unibet to Falkirk's 5.5 - but demons lurk in every corner.
What do we chew on at the betting online feast? Back the SPL side against a team 20 points off the pace in the First Division?
But what if the SPL side haven't won this cup for 111 years, are attempting to reach back to back finals for the first time since 1924 and haven't played at Hampden since suffering their most traumatic defeat there last May?
What if the SPL team is Hibs?
A third Scottish Cup trip to Hampden for Pat Fenlon in less than two seasons in charge.
He might wish it was only the second but, as I said before last year's final "incident," his record in reaching finals in Ireland proved attractive to the Hibs board when they gave him the job. The limited evidence to hand suggests he might struggle to convert finals into trophies but, still, he got us there.
That Fenlon has brought Hibs to consecutive semi finals in the Scottish Cup belies his league record. While Fenlon inherited a mess from Colin Calderwood, just 15 wins from over 50 SPL games shows how difficult he's found it to wade through the rubbish.
The league form includes a run of just 16 points from the last 60 available, just one more than Dundee. A season of progress?
So Hibs, being Hibs, battle not just history this weekend but also fling a dollop of dreadful form into the mix.
What's gone wrong?
It seems a long time ago that they were topping the table in the autumn, putting together an early run of results that looked like making a top six place little more than a formality.
Players have lost form, an over reliance on Leigh Griffiths - who has so often sparkled on the pitch and covered a myriad of his team's sins - has been exacerbated by a roster of senior strikers that includes only the departing Eoin Doyle and the never-quite-here Shefki Kuqi.
Injuries and loss of form have highlighted a lack of cover in defence and if the signing of midfielders - extending beyond the transfer window with the reintroduction of Kevin Thomson - has become a fetish, it's not always led to satisfaction in the middle of the park.
At times inept, occasionally overly cautious and often just devoid of ideas, the promise of an Easter Road resurrection has been replaced by hints of insurrection.
Rod Petrie's towering 'tache might not yet be twitching but there are many in the support now convinced that a Petrie board has yet again picked the wrong manager.
Despite it all, just like they did last year, Hibs have carried on regardless in the Scottish Cup.
A mildly cathartic deflection in the Edinburgh derby, a hen's tooth of a stotter from Gary Deegan against Aberdeen, a Griffiths hat-trick at Kilmarnock.
And now just another 90 minutes away from a chance to laugh at 111 years of history while curing a little of the post traumatic stress suffered in Leith since last year.
Better to forget all that. Hibs have suffered at Hampden as underdogs and as favourites, Falkirk have upset the odds against better teams than this.
A semi final win is the only thing that can energise this comatose season at Easter Road.
Why wouldn't Falkirk revel in the chance to deny Hibs even an outside shot at redemption? Nothing sweetens an upset like the sight of suffering on the other side.
Hibs must find focus where too often they've looked detached, leaders must rediscover their qualities, players who have spent too many games coasting must find a spark.
Defeating 111 years of misery can wait, this semi final is about throwing off the pain of another wasted season.
What's gone before will show itself in empty terraces but there will be passion there.
Passion too from Falkirk. Will the Hibs players match it?
I'll troop loyally to Hampden once again, joining the rest of the victims returning to the scene of the crime.
All too often I've been mugged by own team.
Not this time, boys. Please, not this time.
Friday, April 12, 2013
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Reconstruction: Yes? No? Who cares?
Another week closer to the reconstruction that will save Scottish football.
Or another week further away from the reconstruction that will save Scottish football.
On Monday St Mirren poked their head out from under Neil Doncaster's blanket of SPL unanimity to confirm that actually they wouldn't be voting "yes" to the 12+12+18 structure after all:
"The concept of playing 22 games prior to breaking into three leagues of eight, including the middle eight losing their points gained in the first series of games, is not a system we see as taking the game forward in the long term. You will be aware that other countries have tried this system and have since rejected such a set up.
"We also feel that this system is not fair to fans who buy into their club by way of a season ticket, who are then unsure of what they are purchasing. It is also against the basic wishes of the fans for larger leagues as highlighted in all recent fan surveys."
Ross County are rumoured to be planning to join St Mirren on the naughty step, which led East Fife chairman, Sid Collumbine, to warn County's Roy MacGregor about the pressure he'll face:
"It is bullying, there is no question about that."
The "aye" camp roared to the defence of the proposals.
Stewart Milne called them "absolutely vital" for Scottish football:
"We believe it’s the right thing for Scottish football. We’ve been working on this for nearly three years now.
"We worked on the initial option of a 10-12 [structure] which we believed delivered all the things that would help Scottish football move forward.
"Unfortunately we couldn’t get enough support for that. We worked on this revised proposal over the last eight month along with reviewing all the other options."
Neil Doncaster, fresh from making a hash of releasing the SPL's post-split fixtures, wasn't for mincing his words:
"It’s really important that we don’t decide against all the benefits that can be delivered with a positive vote. At the moment, we have a scenario where, every season, any number of teams are playing Russian roulette because we have one team relegated from 12 into the financial abyss. I do not see that is in the best interests of the game.
"The money that is distributed to clubs in the Premier League, you get a tiny fraction of that within the SFL First Division. We need to solve that."
Armageddon in an abyss?
Kenny Cameron spoke with forked tongue in Inverness:
"The numbers just don't add up, so a vote against 12-12-18 this time round would be a vote for the same again. That's also true as far as SFL clubs are concerned. This is not a 'pick and mix' offer that is on the table but one requiring a straight yes or no.”
"The majority of these requests are delivered by the new proposals, a larger top league being the only omission, he said
"Some 85 percent of what fans asked for is being offered. But defeat for the new proposals could mean defeat for all the elements of change, which is surely a step backwards.
"If the SPL gets its fingers burned this time, having come such a long way, then my fear is that it may be years before we come so close again."
Threats, half truths, a certain willingess to play fast and loose with what the fans think.
A new dawn indeed.
"85 percent of what fans asked for." Really?
Watching your team in a league structure that you want, a league structure that you actually understand, only accounts for 15 percent of what you want when you buy a ticket?
I must be doing it wrong.
We're five games from the end of the season. Can nobody find the handbrake and just ca' canny?
Why are the proposals not "pick and mix?"
Why not push ahead where there is consensus and take time to reflect on the one issue that is really not convincing the paying public?
Why can't we disband the SPL and the SFL, create a new organisation and agree on a model for redistribution within the current set up for just one more season?
Why can't we let that new organisation decide on the new structure, rather than lumbering it with a both a fix and a muddle bequeathed by the dying SPL?
This is Scotland, current world champions of the 'interminably long navel gazing over a simple yes/no question' division.
What's the rush?
"We’ve been working on this for nearly three years now," says Stewart Milne.
They've been talking about it, stalling and enraging fans for far longer.
It's never been suggested before that a "yes" vote is required weeks before the end of a season.
Is 12+12+18 going to persuade sponsors to fling money at the game, the irresistible lure of a failed Swiss model run by an organisation that doesn't yet exist?
Kenny Cameron indicates that if we don't do what the SPL wants right here, right now they're going to pick up their ball and go home.
Maybe that passes for constructive debate in the SPL, an organisation so addled it can still use Neil Doncaster as its spokesperson.
It's not healthy that St Mirren and Ross County can dictate the future to every Scottish club. It's not healthy for any two clubs to be able to do that.
St Mirren and Ross County didn't create that system.
It's a difficult decision though: stop 12+12+18 and everything is off the table and the SPL, perhaps after ushering in hand selected teams for SPL2, will raise the drawbridge.
A new start in a house divided by SPL's intransigence? Or the SPL going it alone and let them eat cake?
Bullying? It looks like it. Bullied by the SPL, the failed experiment that was going to "save" Scottish football in 1998.
What will happen on Monday?
I don't know. But whatever way the vote goes don't hold your breath for a brave new world.
Or another week further away from the reconstruction that will save Scottish football.
On Monday St Mirren poked their head out from under Neil Doncaster's blanket of SPL unanimity to confirm that actually they wouldn't be voting "yes" to the 12+12+18 structure after all:
"The concept of playing 22 games prior to breaking into three leagues of eight, including the middle eight losing their points gained in the first series of games, is not a system we see as taking the game forward in the long term. You will be aware that other countries have tried this system and have since rejected such a set up.
"We also feel that this system is not fair to fans who buy into their club by way of a season ticket, who are then unsure of what they are purchasing. It is also against the basic wishes of the fans for larger leagues as highlighted in all recent fan surveys."
Ross County are rumoured to be planning to join St Mirren on the naughty step, which led East Fife chairman, Sid Collumbine, to warn County's Roy MacGregor about the pressure he'll face:
"It is bullying, there is no question about that."
The "aye" camp roared to the defence of the proposals.
Stewart Milne called them "absolutely vital" for Scottish football:
"We believe it’s the right thing for Scottish football. We’ve been working on this for nearly three years now.
"We worked on the initial option of a 10-12 [structure] which we believed delivered all the things that would help Scottish football move forward.
"Unfortunately we couldn’t get enough support for that. We worked on this revised proposal over the last eight month along with reviewing all the other options."
Neil Doncaster, fresh from making a hash of releasing the SPL's post-split fixtures, wasn't for mincing his words:
"It’s really important that we don’t decide against all the benefits that can be delivered with a positive vote. At the moment, we have a scenario where, every season, any number of teams are playing Russian roulette because we have one team relegated from 12 into the financial abyss. I do not see that is in the best interests of the game.
"The money that is distributed to clubs in the Premier League, you get a tiny fraction of that within the SFL First Division. We need to solve that."
Armageddon in an abyss?
Kenny Cameron spoke with forked tongue in Inverness:
"The numbers just don't add up, so a vote against 12-12-18 this time round would be a vote for the same again. That's also true as far as SFL clubs are concerned. This is not a 'pick and mix' offer that is on the table but one requiring a straight yes or no.”
"The majority of these requests are delivered by the new proposals, a larger top league being the only omission, he said
"Some 85 percent of what fans asked for is being offered. But defeat for the new proposals could mean defeat for all the elements of change, which is surely a step backwards.
"If the SPL gets its fingers burned this time, having come such a long way, then my fear is that it may be years before we come so close again."
Threats, half truths, a certain willingess to play fast and loose with what the fans think.
A new dawn indeed.
"85 percent of what fans asked for." Really?
Watching your team in a league structure that you want, a league structure that you actually understand, only accounts for 15 percent of what you want when you buy a ticket?
I must be doing it wrong.
We're five games from the end of the season. Can nobody find the handbrake and just ca' canny?
Why are the proposals not "pick and mix?"
Why not push ahead where there is consensus and take time to reflect on the one issue that is really not convincing the paying public?
Why can't we disband the SPL and the SFL, create a new organisation and agree on a model for redistribution within the current set up for just one more season?
Why can't we let that new organisation decide on the new structure, rather than lumbering it with a both a fix and a muddle bequeathed by the dying SPL?
This is Scotland, current world champions of the 'interminably long navel gazing over a simple yes/no question' division.
What's the rush?
"We’ve been working on this for nearly three years now," says Stewart Milne.
They've been talking about it, stalling and enraging fans for far longer.
It's never been suggested before that a "yes" vote is required weeks before the end of a season.
Is 12+12+18 going to persuade sponsors to fling money at the game, the irresistible lure of a failed Swiss model run by an organisation that doesn't yet exist?
Kenny Cameron indicates that if we don't do what the SPL wants right here, right now they're going to pick up their ball and go home.
Maybe that passes for constructive debate in the SPL, an organisation so addled it can still use Neil Doncaster as its spokesperson.
It's not healthy that St Mirren and Ross County can dictate the future to every Scottish club. It's not healthy for any two clubs to be able to do that.
St Mirren and Ross County didn't create that system.
It's a difficult decision though: stop 12+12+18 and everything is off the table and the SPL, perhaps after ushering in hand selected teams for SPL2, will raise the drawbridge.
A new start in a house divided by SPL's intransigence? Or the SPL going it alone and let them eat cake?
Bullying? It looks like it. Bullied by the SPL, the failed experiment that was going to "save" Scottish football in 1998.
What will happen on Monday?
I don't know. But whatever way the vote goes don't hold your breath for a brave new world.
Tweet
Wednesday, April 03, 2013
I'm a muppet and other tales of reconstruction
I've been a little neglectful of the blog of late.
Real life stomped through the door uninvited, turned 2013 into a big bundle of rubbish and left even a little light blogging a stretch too far.
Beyond turning up at Easter Road and groaning quite a lot at what I've been watching, Scottish football has been a care too much.
I have, however, found the time to sign up for a season ticket renewal.
Which makes me a muppet.
Muppetry, some will say, is a particular requirement for life on what nobody should ever call the Hibee highway.
But there we are. On that score muppetry courses through my veins.
I'm well beyond the stage of buying a season ticket with high hopes for a summer of constructive, yet prudent, spending that lays the foundation for a season of thrilling accomplishment.
Far easier to expect a summer of underwhelming transfer market dealings, a panicked spate of loan signings and a season of distinct underachievement. It deadens the heart to the disappointments that follow.
That's the strange thing about season tickets. If you're not just buying out of habit, you're leaping before you have a chance to look at the squad that might break the pain of your fall.
"Here's my money Mr Petrie, I'd like you to spend it on a decent squad but I've noticed your jacket buttons are a bit strained of late so if you want to fire up to Slaters and blow the lot on suits then go for it, nowt I can do about it anyway."
That's usual.
As my justification for getting a season ticket is "it keeps me out of the pub" I can hardly complain.
Except this year I probably can. And so can fans of any other club in the country who have taken delivery of their club's annual begging brochure.
Because this year they really are doing little more than mug fans.
"Renew your season ticket. And we're offering a special deal for all our loyal fans this year.
"For the same price, or more, as last season you can watch an as yet unsigned team play in an as yet undecided league structure under the auspices of an as yet unconfirmed organisation.
"And if you sign up before 1st April you'll get a fiver off our as yet unreleased new fifth shirt."
Bargain.
(I should say that my season ticket renewal cost the same as last year but this time I've got a "cup top up" as well.
Obviously the cup top up might be worthless. But still - it's the same price as I paid for the dull, run of the mill league games this season.
Is £405 for a seat at Easter Road value for money?
The answer is both entirely subjective and completely obvious.
Of course it's not value for money.
But think of the cost of the pints I might drink, the legal fees that I might run up during my short descent into alcoholism if I wasn't at the football every fifth Saturday and every third Friday/Sunday/Monday.
It's an expenditure on the bigger picture.)
I used to tune into Watchdog to see Lynn Faulds Wood feign sympathy as daft folk looked mournful because the hotel they stayed at in Benidorm didn't look like it did in the brochure.
Then they'd hold up the brochure and show a lovely drawing of a nice hotel.
"It's a drawing," I'd think. "What did you expect?"
Now I've joined them. I've bought a season ticket to watch an artist's impression of a league structure.
Or, as we're dealing with Neil Doncaster, David Longmuir and their parcel of rogues, a piss artist's impression.
It might be that we're moving closer to knowing what we're going to be watching.
The current options seem to extend to the status quo and the little heralded 12+12+18 format, the Hampden zinger that was the only method they could devise that would leave fans feeling nostalgic for the "race for the top six."
I don't know how many clubs are already selling season tickets.
I hear that sales at Easter Road are going well, although I think that particular barometer will be a better gauge when the current interest free payment offer runs out and the real extent of Pat Fenlon's underachievement becomes clearer.
But something really stinks here.
When we're not being kept in the dark we're being told that we have to accept the medicine proscribed by a vacuous leadership that insists we don't know what's good for us.
Maybe I don't know what's good for me. But if football needs fans and football keeps treating fans with contempt then football is fooling itself.
I chuckled on Sunday when a tabloid reported that David Cameron was ready to force the issue of the Old Firm moving to England.
Not only had the paper run with such an obvious howler but they'd alighted on one of the few high profile leaders whose current form matches Scottish football's heid bummers for donkey-ness.
Where there is dischord they bring more dischord. Or apathy, which threatens to be even more damaging.
"We need you fans. Ignore the fans. We need the fans. We don't care what the fans want."
It's an odd attitude to adopt. Sometimes I think George Orwell could have done a job on Scottish football. Then I remember that the pigs of Manor Farm at least started out with good intentions.
Maybe we'll be surprised. 12+12+18 will be agreed this week, the benefits will become clearer, the excitement will return. The dreams of the suits will become a fanfare for the common fan.
Or maybe it will be another failure on the road to ruin.
And my muppetry is partly to blame. For the price of a week in an unfinished hotel in Benidorm I've legitimised the idiocy of the men who are failing to save the game.
There's no hope for me, undisputed muppet of the West Stand.
Hopefully Scottish football isn't such a lost cause.
Real life stomped through the door uninvited, turned 2013 into a big bundle of rubbish and left even a little light blogging a stretch too far.
Beyond turning up at Easter Road and groaning quite a lot at what I've been watching, Scottish football has been a care too much.
I have, however, found the time to sign up for a season ticket renewal.
Which makes me a muppet.
Muppetry, some will say, is a particular requirement for life on what nobody should ever call the Hibee highway.
But there we are. On that score muppetry courses through my veins.
I'm well beyond the stage of buying a season ticket with high hopes for a summer of constructive, yet prudent, spending that lays the foundation for a season of thrilling accomplishment.
Far easier to expect a summer of underwhelming transfer market dealings, a panicked spate of loan signings and a season of distinct underachievement. It deadens the heart to the disappointments that follow.
That's the strange thing about season tickets. If you're not just buying out of habit, you're leaping before you have a chance to look at the squad that might break the pain of your fall.
"Here's my money Mr Petrie, I'd like you to spend it on a decent squad but I've noticed your jacket buttons are a bit strained of late so if you want to fire up to Slaters and blow the lot on suits then go for it, nowt I can do about it anyway."
That's usual.
As my justification for getting a season ticket is "it keeps me out of the pub" I can hardly complain.
Except this year I probably can. And so can fans of any other club in the country who have taken delivery of their club's annual begging brochure.
Because this year they really are doing little more than mug fans.
"Renew your season ticket. And we're offering a special deal for all our loyal fans this year.
"For the same price, or more, as last season you can watch an as yet unsigned team play in an as yet undecided league structure under the auspices of an as yet unconfirmed organisation.
"And if you sign up before 1st April you'll get a fiver off our as yet unreleased new fifth shirt."
Bargain.
(I should say that my season ticket renewal cost the same as last year but this time I've got a "cup top up" as well.
Obviously the cup top up might be worthless. But still - it's the same price as I paid for the dull, run of the mill league games this season.
Is £405 for a seat at Easter Road value for money?
The answer is both entirely subjective and completely obvious.
Of course it's not value for money.
But think of the cost of the pints I might drink, the legal fees that I might run up during my short descent into alcoholism if I wasn't at the football every fifth Saturday and every third Friday/Sunday/Monday.
It's an expenditure on the bigger picture.)
I used to tune into Watchdog to see Lynn Faulds Wood feign sympathy as daft folk looked mournful because the hotel they stayed at in Benidorm didn't look like it did in the brochure.
Then they'd hold up the brochure and show a lovely drawing of a nice hotel.
"It's a drawing," I'd think. "What did you expect?"
Now I've joined them. I've bought a season ticket to watch an artist's impression of a league structure.
Or, as we're dealing with Neil Doncaster, David Longmuir and their parcel of rogues, a piss artist's impression.
It might be that we're moving closer to knowing what we're going to be watching.
The current options seem to extend to the status quo and the little heralded 12+12+18 format, the Hampden zinger that was the only method they could devise that would leave fans feeling nostalgic for the "race for the top six."
I don't know how many clubs are already selling season tickets.
I hear that sales at Easter Road are going well, although I think that particular barometer will be a better gauge when the current interest free payment offer runs out and the real extent of Pat Fenlon's underachievement becomes clearer.
But something really stinks here.
When we're not being kept in the dark we're being told that we have to accept the medicine proscribed by a vacuous leadership that insists we don't know what's good for us.
Maybe I don't know what's good for me. But if football needs fans and football keeps treating fans with contempt then football is fooling itself.
I chuckled on Sunday when a tabloid reported that David Cameron was ready to force the issue of the Old Firm moving to England.
Not only had the paper run with such an obvious howler but they'd alighted on one of the few high profile leaders whose current form matches Scottish football's heid bummers for donkey-ness.
Where there is dischord they bring more dischord. Or apathy, which threatens to be even more damaging.
"We need you fans. Ignore the fans. We need the fans. We don't care what the fans want."
It's an odd attitude to adopt. Sometimes I think George Orwell could have done a job on Scottish football. Then I remember that the pigs of Manor Farm at least started out with good intentions.
Maybe we'll be surprised. 12+12+18 will be agreed this week, the benefits will become clearer, the excitement will return. The dreams of the suits will become a fanfare for the common fan.
Or maybe it will be another failure on the road to ruin.
And my muppetry is partly to blame. For the price of a week in an unfinished hotel in Benidorm I've legitimised the idiocy of the men who are failing to save the game.
There's no hope for me, undisputed muppet of the West Stand.
Hopefully Scottish football isn't such a lost cause.
Tweet
Monday, April 01, 2013
Five go mad in Lille
When I heard the news that my good friend Scott Johnston, of thefootyblog.net "fame", was walking to Lille with his longtime guy pal and French football fanatique, Andrew Gibney, I thought they'd set themselves a bizarre test of their bromance strength.
That might well be the case.
But they're also challenging themselves for the greater good: 127 miles across England, Belgium and France to raise funds for the MS Society.
Joining them are the apparently sane Chris Mayer, Lewis Skinner and Nick Crookes, the five of them raising funds to fight a neurological condition that affects around 100,000 people in the UK.
The trip was inspired by Andrew's father-in-law who suffers from multiple sclerosis. It's a condition I hear about regularly but, I suspect like many people, don't take a lot of notice of.
It was only after Scott started speaking about this fundraising idea that I realised that most people are diagnosed between the ages of 20 and 40. Which, perhaps selfishly, rammed home the relevance of what the guys are doing.
A worthwhile cause and a unique way to fundraise, with clubs from Sheffield to Brugge via Rotherham helping out along the way.
The famous five set off on Friday and will arrive in Lille the following week, having clocked up 20 miles a day.
My advice to the walkers - take plenty of suitable swaddling for the blisters and insist Scott tends to his own chafing injuries.
My advice to everyone else - give generously for a great cause.
And you can do that on JustGiving.com
But they're also challenging themselves for the greater good: 127 miles across England, Belgium and France to raise funds for the MS Society.
Joining them are the apparently sane Chris Mayer, Lewis Skinner and Nick Crookes, the five of them raising funds to fight a neurological condition that affects around 100,000 people in the UK.
The trip was inspired by Andrew's father-in-law who suffers from multiple sclerosis. It's a condition I hear about regularly but, I suspect like many people, don't take a lot of notice of.
It was only after Scott started speaking about this fundraising idea that I realised that most people are diagnosed between the ages of 20 and 40. Which, perhaps selfishly, rammed home the relevance of what the guys are doing.
A worthwhile cause and a unique way to fundraise, with clubs from Sheffield to Brugge via Rotherham helping out along the way.
The famous five set off on Friday and will arrive in Lille the following week, having clocked up 20 miles a day.
My advice to the walkers - take plenty of suitable swaddling for the blisters and insist Scott tends to his own chafing injuries.
My advice to everyone else - give generously for a great cause.
And you can do that on JustGiving.com
Tweet
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
He's not sexist, but...
Snippets from a day's football news.
In England, semi-professional footballer Daniel Ailey calls the treatment of his deafness "the same as racism."
In Italy, Inter Milan are fined €50,000 after their fans directed racist chants at Mario Balotelli. Balotelli was himself fined €10,000 for gesturing to those same fans.
Elsewhere column inches are still being devoted to Robbie Rogers, the gay footballer who came out and then retired from the game.
Football, the people's game, remains as confused as ever about embracing all of the people.
Meanwhile in Scotland Gordon Parks took to the pages of the Daily Record to rage against the monstrous regiment.
Too much money is going to women and girls who want to play football and it's all because of the politically correct brigade and these daft modern ideas about equality, snarled sexism's unabashed proselytiser.
(Like a retired major from Tunbridge Wells who's cut loose on the G&Ts before heckling Shami Chakrabarti on Question Time, he did actually use the phrase "politically correct brigade.")
It's tempting but churlish to say that even in our discrimination Scottish football lags a decade or so behind more enlightened nations.
Gordon's war on equality might not stretch to people with disabilities, people with different skin colours or people with different sexual preferences. I don't know.
Chivalrously he only targets women. It would be nothing more than speculation to suggest that if you're against opening the game up to one section of society, you're hardly likely to take to the streets and rip down the barriers that football still throws in the way of any of the other sections of society that it sees fit to ignore or exclude.
£1.2 million, argues Gordon, spent by the SFA "and its partners" on women's football is a spectacular waste of money.
A theft actually. Daylight robbery of funds that would be better spent on grassroots football. Grassroots football for boys.
The consequences are plain for all to see. Letting women out of the kitchen and onto the pitch means Scotland will not play in a major men's finals again.
Stone me! So simple.
Never mind that, while £1.2 million would hardly wipe the nose of a mediocre SPL squad, it doesn't leave women's football in Scotland awash with cash.
Nor would £1.2 million put right the wrongs of an approach to the grassroots that has been cackhanded and blighted by short termism for too long.
What that £1.2 million can do, however, is build an ecosystem that attracts more diverse sections of our communities to the game.
It can encourage girls to play the game, build a love for the game that too many people are losing, it can support a senior women's game that can begin to make strides in catching up with countries that have already thrown off the shackles of sexism.
It can create role models that inspire more of our youngsters to get off their arses and do something as simple as chase a ball about a strip of land.
It can help make football a more attractive place for more people. It can help more people share in the fun and frustrations of the game. And it can create some decent players into the bargain.
£1.2 million is nowhere near enough.
We're in danger of becoming a nation that only takes sport seriously when we can moan about how bad a select group of grown men are at playing football.
The future has to lie in widening the audience for the game, putting clubs at the heart of their communities. Football for all.
"A ladies’ version of a game played in men’s shorts," moaned Gordon, choosing not to elaborate on what "men's games" are actually taking place in his own shorts.
Gordon Parks is clearly a dafty.
But we can't hide from the fact that sexism still exists in the game.
The same game where this weekend there was a very public return to chants about religion, where songs about this player or that player being gay roll from the terraces, where racism isn't yet dead, where sex crimes become a cause for gloating, where fans can take a death and turn it into a ditty to attack another team.
I don't know if I get a commission in the politically correct brigade for finding that wrong.
I do know that spouting sexist nonsense on the pages of a national paper makes you a whopping great part of the problem.
The only footballing World Cup winner in the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame is a woman.
Rose Reilly had to leave Scotland to achieve that. Gordon Parks - if he's ever heard of her - probably thinks that's exactly what she deserved.
Let's hope he increasingly finds himself in the minority.
In England, semi-professional footballer Daniel Ailey calls the treatment of his deafness "the same as racism."
In Italy, Inter Milan are fined €50,000 after their fans directed racist chants at Mario Balotelli. Balotelli was himself fined €10,000 for gesturing to those same fans.
Elsewhere column inches are still being devoted to Robbie Rogers, the gay footballer who came out and then retired from the game.
Football, the people's game, remains as confused as ever about embracing all of the people.
Meanwhile in Scotland Gordon Parks took to the pages of the Daily Record to rage against the monstrous regiment.
Too much money is going to women and girls who want to play football and it's all because of the politically correct brigade and these daft modern ideas about equality, snarled sexism's unabashed proselytiser.
(Like a retired major from Tunbridge Wells who's cut loose on the G&Ts before heckling Shami Chakrabarti on Question Time, he did actually use the phrase "politically correct brigade.")
It's tempting but churlish to say that even in our discrimination Scottish football lags a decade or so behind more enlightened nations.
Gordon's war on equality might not stretch to people with disabilities, people with different skin colours or people with different sexual preferences. I don't know.
Chivalrously he only targets women. It would be nothing more than speculation to suggest that if you're against opening the game up to one section of society, you're hardly likely to take to the streets and rip down the barriers that football still throws in the way of any of the other sections of society that it sees fit to ignore or exclude.
£1.2 million, argues Gordon, spent by the SFA "and its partners" on women's football is a spectacular waste of money.
A theft actually. Daylight robbery of funds that would be better spent on grassroots football. Grassroots football for boys.
The consequences are plain for all to see. Letting women out of the kitchen and onto the pitch means Scotland will not play in a major men's finals again.
Stone me! So simple.
Never mind that, while £1.2 million would hardly wipe the nose of a mediocre SPL squad, it doesn't leave women's football in Scotland awash with cash.
Nor would £1.2 million put right the wrongs of an approach to the grassroots that has been cackhanded and blighted by short termism for too long.
What that £1.2 million can do, however, is build an ecosystem that attracts more diverse sections of our communities to the game.
It can encourage girls to play the game, build a love for the game that too many people are losing, it can support a senior women's game that can begin to make strides in catching up with countries that have already thrown off the shackles of sexism.
It can create role models that inspire more of our youngsters to get off their arses and do something as simple as chase a ball about a strip of land.
It can help make football a more attractive place for more people. It can help more people share in the fun and frustrations of the game. And it can create some decent players into the bargain.
£1.2 million is nowhere near enough.
We're in danger of becoming a nation that only takes sport seriously when we can moan about how bad a select group of grown men are at playing football.
The future has to lie in widening the audience for the game, putting clubs at the heart of their communities. Football for all.
"A ladies’ version of a game played in men’s shorts," moaned Gordon, choosing not to elaborate on what "men's games" are actually taking place in his own shorts.
Gordon Parks is clearly a dafty.
But we can't hide from the fact that sexism still exists in the game.
The same game where this weekend there was a very public return to chants about religion, where songs about this player or that player being gay roll from the terraces, where racism isn't yet dead, where sex crimes become a cause for gloating, where fans can take a death and turn it into a ditty to attack another team.
I don't know if I get a commission in the politically correct brigade for finding that wrong.
I do know that spouting sexist nonsense on the pages of a national paper makes you a whopping great part of the problem.
The only footballing World Cup winner in the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame is a woman.
Rose Reilly had to leave Scotland to achieve that. Gordon Parks - if he's ever heard of her - probably thinks that's exactly what she deserved.
Let's hope he increasingly finds himself in the minority.
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Sunday, February 24, 2013
The Oscar goes to Tannadice
Scottish football's great cinematic triumph?
Perhaps not Ally McCoist's turn in A Shot at Glory, the underwhelming dénouement of Robert Duvall's odd fitba' flirtation.
What of John Wark's monosyllabic scene stealing in Escape to Victory?
Or the sainted Gordon Smith's experience of being an extra as Hitchcock directed Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief?
Maybe not. Better, perhaps, to travel back to 1930s Dundee.
Then, as now, a two team town. But in the 1930s Dundee United toiled in the Second Division and in the shadow of their city rivals.
In 1936-37 Dundee finished ninth in the First Division while United were a rather listless 14th in the second tier.
So far, so unremarkable. But even in the interwar years it was unheard of for clubs to be led by an amateur.
A player's vote, however, had decided that United's captain for the season would be a 21 year old amateur from Greenock who had studied law at the University of Edinburgh.
Neil Paterson played 25 games that season, his nine goals including a hat trick. But, perhaps like Willo Flood after him, here was a United player with a hinterland to explore.
The first amateur to captain a professional club in Britain, Paterson decided the pen was mightier than the football boot and left Tannadice to take a job with DC Thomson.
War service intervened but by 1947 he was an award winning writer and his 1948 fictional biography The China Run was anointed "book of the year" by Somerset Maugham in the New York Times.
1950's Behold Thy Daughter became an international best seller and grabbed another "book of the year" nod, this time from the Evening Standard.
The Kidnappers, an adaptation of a Paterson short story, tasted Oscars success in 1953 and his "taut and tense" writing - "the "the best story-teller Scotland has produced since Stevenson" - seemed a perfect fit for the cinema.
And it was as a screenwriter that he became the first and, with the future career of David Goodwillie still undecided, so far the only former Dundee United player to win an Oscar.
1960 was the year of Ben-Hur. A film so long that many Academy members agreed to vote for it simply to make good their escape from the picture house as Charlton Heston led the charge to an unprecedented 11 Oscars.
But not 12.
Neil Paterson stood firm between the rise of Christianity and a glorious dozen.
His adaption of John Braine's Room at the Top snatched the Best Adapted Screenplay award, beating both Ben-Hur's Karl Tunberg and Billy Wilder for Some Like it Hot.
It also spearheaded the growth of British New Wave cinema, bringing a different Britain to cinema screens.
Realistic, gritty, uncompromising, often harsh. It might not have been far removed from a 1930s Second Division game at Tannadice.
Paterson himself didn't move far, eschewing Hollywood for Perthshire where he retired to golf and serving the Scottish arts community.
A Scottish Oscar winner is rare. An Oscar winning amateur captain of Dundee United will be forever unique.
Neil Paterson died in 1995, sadly too early to avenge Dundee's dominance of the 1930s by giving a cinematic sweep to their managerial farce of the last few days.
Sources
Perhaps not Ally McCoist's turn in A Shot at Glory, the underwhelming dénouement of Robert Duvall's odd fitba' flirtation.
What of John Wark's monosyllabic scene stealing in Escape to Victory?
Maybe not. Better, perhaps, to travel back to 1930s Dundee.
Then, as now, a two team town. But in the 1930s Dundee United toiled in the Second Division and in the shadow of their city rivals.
In 1936-37 Dundee finished ninth in the First Division while United were a rather listless 14th in the second tier.
So far, so unremarkable. But even in the interwar years it was unheard of for clubs to be led by an amateur.
A player's vote, however, had decided that United's captain for the season would be a 21 year old amateur from Greenock who had studied law at the University of Edinburgh.
Neil Paterson played 25 games that season, his nine goals including a hat trick. But, perhaps like Willo Flood after him, here was a United player with a hinterland to explore.
The first amateur to captain a professional club in Britain, Paterson decided the pen was mightier than the football boot and left Tannadice to take a job with DC Thomson.
War service intervened but by 1947 he was an award winning writer and his 1948 fictional biography The China Run was anointed "book of the year" by Somerset Maugham in the New York Times.
1950's Behold Thy Daughter became an international best seller and grabbed another "book of the year" nod, this time from the Evening Standard.
The Kidnappers, an adaptation of a Paterson short story, tasted Oscars success in 1953 and his "taut and tense" writing - "the "the best story-teller Scotland has produced since Stevenson" - seemed a perfect fit for the cinema.
And it was as a screenwriter that he became the first and, with the future career of David Goodwillie still undecided, so far the only former Dundee United player to win an Oscar.
1960 was the year of Ben-Hur. A film so long that many Academy members agreed to vote for it simply to make good their escape from the picture house as Charlton Heston led the charge to an unprecedented 11 Oscars.
But not 12.
Neil Paterson stood firm between the rise of Christianity and a glorious dozen.
His adaption of John Braine's Room at the Top snatched the Best Adapted Screenplay award, beating both Ben-Hur's Karl Tunberg and Billy Wilder for Some Like it Hot.
It also spearheaded the growth of British New Wave cinema, bringing a different Britain to cinema screens.
Realistic, gritty, uncompromising, often harsh. It might not have been far removed from a 1930s Second Division game at Tannadice.
Paterson himself didn't move far, eschewing Hollywood for Perthshire where he retired to golf and serving the Scottish arts community.
A Scottish Oscar winner is rare. An Oscar winning amateur captain of Dundee United will be forever unique.
Neil Paterson died in 1995, sadly too early to avenge Dundee's dominance of the 1930s by giving a cinematic sweep to their managerial farce of the last few days.
Sources
- I was completely unaware of Paterson's singular achievements until I read Brian Ferguson's tale of Scotland at the Oscars in this week's Scotsman
- The Independent
- The Daily Record
- The Herald
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Friday, February 15, 2013
SPL: Stuttering Hibs
Fifth in the league, a point better off after 26 games of this season than they were after the SPL had run it's course last season.
Hibs fans, punch drunk from their annus horribilis, heard promises in the summer of a rebuilt side capable of making progress.
A top six berth after two-thirds of the season does indeed point to progress. But statistics, as students of the number crunching Craig Brown know only too well, can hide a multitude of sins.
Hibs have clung grimly to their league position despite a run of just seven points in ten games.
They slipped from fourth following Monday's meek capitulation to St Johnstone at Easter Road. It's not impossible that the SPL's unpredictable middle ten could throw up a combination of results that condemn them to ninth place by the middle of next week.
Fans could be forgiven for not travelling to tomorrow's match with St Mirren - whose last seven points have been garnered from just three games - with songs of joy in their hearts.
Hibs (2.8 at https://sports.bwin.com/en/sports/4/betting/football) remain five points ahead of their opponents - in the SPL's flabby midrift they are separated by five teams - but St Mirren (2.3) just edge ahead as favourites.
Home advantage counts. But so to must the laboured way Hibs have gone about their business of late.
After shipping three goals in successive games against Inverness and Motherwell in December, Pat Fenlon did successfully stop the flow of goals.
Just four were conceded in the next eight games. Unfortunately only four were scored.
The impression was of a team that couldn't confidently attack if they were to remain competent in defence. On Monday they could do neither and St Johnstone filled their boots.
Leigh Griffiths has too often been isolated up front, sometimes alone and sometimes partnered with the willing but profligate Eoin Doyle.
The younger alternatives in attack seem to have been deemed too raw to start. The moribund Shefki Kuqi's experience is rendered impotent by immobility.
The midfield often looks too flat footed to help out, David Wotherspoon's early season rejuvenation replaced by a hesitant anonymity while others are happy to graft but unwilling, unable or simply not encouraged to play a meaningful offensive role.
Where Paul Cairney offered sparks of creativity into the autumn, he's now slipping to the periphery, a tendency to embonpoint looking more like a problematic heavy arsedness on deteriorating pitches.
Ben Williams impresses in goal behind a defence that often sits too deep, especially on those occasions - and there have been a few of late - when James McPake is preoccupied by finding his own form. Tim Clancy's ongoing injury problems necessitate a starting back four that is susceptible to individual errors.
Yet Fenlon can rightly point to progress at the back. 34 goals conceded in 26 games compares favourably with the 50 conceded at the same stage last year. A goal difference of -1 is nothing to write home about but it knocks last season's -26 into a cocked hat.
So is this wintry malaise a blip and nothing more?
This supporter hopes so.
Scott Robertson and Matt Done arrived in January to provide more incisive options in midfield. Both started on Monday. Both will hope to quickly make amends.
The feeling persists, however, that the transfer window was not used to address gaps in the squad. Too often of late Fenlon's changes look like so much fiddling while Easter Road gurns.
Let us be sanguine and say that in the travails of recent years enduring a mid season blip while remaining in the top half of the table with a Scottish Cup quarter final to come would have been considered a position of some luxury.
But my reading of the mood suggests patience is becoming frayed.
Taking the same number of points in two games against Celtic as they have from three against an adrift Dundee suggests Fenlon hasn't cracked what we might romantically call the Hibs enigma or more prosaically label the destructive inconsistency of the club.
To hear a manager say he's "embarrassed" by a performance 26 games into a season, a performance indicative of "the last few weeks [when] we haven't shown the desire to win football matches" is about as depressing as spending Valentine's Day writing about the travails of your team.
The potential remains for this season to be one of positive progress.
But Fenlon needs to find a higher gear soon to avoid yet another year of broken promises. He could do worse than start in Paisley this weekend.
St Mirren v Hibs prediction: If I must, based on the perhaps forlorn hope that a reaction to Monday night should be inevitable, Hibs to win 2-1 (10.5.)
Hibs fans, punch drunk from their annus horribilis, heard promises in the summer of a rebuilt side capable of making progress.
Hibs have clung grimly to their league position despite a run of just seven points in ten games.
They slipped from fourth following Monday's meek capitulation to St Johnstone at Easter Road. It's not impossible that the SPL's unpredictable middle ten could throw up a combination of results that condemn them to ninth place by the middle of next week.
Fans could be forgiven for not travelling to tomorrow's match with St Mirren - whose last seven points have been garnered from just three games - with songs of joy in their hearts.
Hibs (2.8 at https://sports.bwin.com/en/sports/4/betting/football) remain five points ahead of their opponents - in the SPL's flabby midrift they are separated by five teams - but St Mirren (2.3) just edge ahead as favourites.
Home advantage counts. But so to must the laboured way Hibs have gone about their business of late.
After shipping three goals in successive games against Inverness and Motherwell in December, Pat Fenlon did successfully stop the flow of goals.
Just four were conceded in the next eight games. Unfortunately only four were scored.
The impression was of a team that couldn't confidently attack if they were to remain competent in defence. On Monday they could do neither and St Johnstone filled their boots.
Leigh Griffiths has too often been isolated up front, sometimes alone and sometimes partnered with the willing but profligate Eoin Doyle.
The younger alternatives in attack seem to have been deemed too raw to start. The moribund Shefki Kuqi's experience is rendered impotent by immobility.
The midfield often looks too flat footed to help out, David Wotherspoon's early season rejuvenation replaced by a hesitant anonymity while others are happy to graft but unwilling, unable or simply not encouraged to play a meaningful offensive role.
Where Paul Cairney offered sparks of creativity into the autumn, he's now slipping to the periphery, a tendency to embonpoint looking more like a problematic heavy arsedness on deteriorating pitches.
Ben Williams impresses in goal behind a defence that often sits too deep, especially on those occasions - and there have been a few of late - when James McPake is preoccupied by finding his own form. Tim Clancy's ongoing injury problems necessitate a starting back four that is susceptible to individual errors.
Yet Fenlon can rightly point to progress at the back. 34 goals conceded in 26 games compares favourably with the 50 conceded at the same stage last year. A goal difference of -1 is nothing to write home about but it knocks last season's -26 into a cocked hat.
So is this wintry malaise a blip and nothing more?
This supporter hopes so.
Scott Robertson and Matt Done arrived in January to provide more incisive options in midfield. Both started on Monday. Both will hope to quickly make amends.
The feeling persists, however, that the transfer window was not used to address gaps in the squad. Too often of late Fenlon's changes look like so much fiddling while Easter Road gurns.
Let us be sanguine and say that in the travails of recent years enduring a mid season blip while remaining in the top half of the table with a Scottish Cup quarter final to come would have been considered a position of some luxury.
But my reading of the mood suggests patience is becoming frayed.
Taking the same number of points in two games against Celtic as they have from three against an adrift Dundee suggests Fenlon hasn't cracked what we might romantically call the Hibs enigma or more prosaically label the destructive inconsistency of the club.
To hear a manager say he's "embarrassed" by a performance 26 games into a season, a performance indicative of "the last few weeks [when] we haven't shown the desire to win football matches" is about as depressing as spending Valentine's Day writing about the travails of your team.
The potential remains for this season to be one of positive progress.
But Fenlon needs to find a higher gear soon to avoid yet another year of broken promises. He could do worse than start in Paisley this weekend.
St Mirren v Hibs prediction: If I must, based on the perhaps forlorn hope that a reaction to Monday night should be inevitable, Hibs to win 2-1 (10.5.)
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Thursday, January 17, 2013
Fun in Funchal
Madeira in January.
Sunshine, spectacular scenery, cheap beer, good food and British pensioners of every shape, size and accent swarming like a plague of mildly arthritic locusts, more plastic joints than bling crowding round the casino tables.
Football too. The island's 273,000 residents can boast of two teams in Portugal's top flight, both based in the main city of Funchal. The trip away teams must negotiate from the mainland would surely leave Danny Lennon apoplectic.
Extensive research - Wikipedia detained me for all of five minutes - suggests that Maritimo have often enjoyed the island upper hand and a degree of populist political patronage while Nacional have traditionally attracted support from Funchal's more well to do citizens.
Loathe as I am to forget a childhood spent on the mean, if lovingly manicured, streets of commuter belt East Lothian, a quirk of the fixture list meant it would be the toffs of Nacional graced with my patronage.
With both teams having endured financial challenges in recent years it could be that their respective support is now less divided by class or wealth.
Nacional though have preserved the air of the haughty aristoratic thanks to their stadium, modern and modest but perched high in the hills overlooking Funchal.
The Cristiano Ronaldo Academy - he was a Nacional player before Sporting Lisbon swooped when he was just ten years old - adds glamour in the mountains, the perfect spot for looking down on the masses as they look up to you.
Modern out of town stadiums often seem designed to depress. The Estádio da Madeira - a name that might well irk Maritimo - at least offers a bar and a bolo do caco stall churning out freshly made doughy bread with garlic butter and chorizo for all of €2.
(Not only is this an improvement on the "street food" of Scottish football it's also well worth seeking out in down town Funchal where most restaurants pitched at tourists think lunch should be a three course affair beginning with soup. Whether this is dictated by tradition or the dental capabilities of much of their winter clientele is unclear.)
A rather sparse club shop hints at a certain difficulty in parting the locals from their cash. Maybe not just locals, a pile of "half and half" scarves marking a European game with Birmingham a couple of years ago suggests either overly ambitious ordering or reluctant Brummies preferring to leave their money behind the bar.
Most dramatically the stadium escapes humdrum modernity thanks to its location. Windows in the newer of the two stands offer views across Funchal and give the feeling of a modern stadium that is at once apart from and a part of its city.
There was also a match to be played. Nacional, at the wrong end of the table, entertaining Braga, three wins on the trot and lying third behind Porto and Benfica.
Politeness might always have led me to root for the home team but a run in with Braga's team bus, displaying what I considered some reckless reversing in a crowded car park, the day before the game sealed the deal.
Which is why at half time I found myself sitting in a stadium that was two thirds empty, having watched "my side" look enthusiastically uninspired as visitors doing no more than go through the motions had taken a 1-0 lead.
I can cross the road to see that most weeks in Scotland.
A couple of non-alcoholic beers (€1 and pointless) and a couple of gut wrenchingly strong coffees (€0.70 and invigorating) later and I was ready for more.
And so were Nacional. Finding more point to their energy they began to threaten as Braga went from not really trying to really quite narked that things weren't going their way.
1-1 on 58 minutes, 2-1 on 60 minutes. Having broken with no real purpose to squander decent opportunities in the first half Nacional were now breaking with real purpose to make the most of half chances.
78 minutes and it was 3-1, an own goal giving the home side a cushion.
Braga rallied. In the 83rd minute Eder pulled one back, his third in three games and ninth in eleven league games since joining in the summer. The goal was a product of an urgency that hadn't been there as they went 1-0 up or even when they found themselves 2-1 down.
It might actually have taken 75 minutes before their captain, Alan, managed to find it in himself to lift the pace above holiday dawdle.
Too late though. And definitely too late when Hugo Viana got himself sent off with five minutes to go.
Nacional closed it out. Braga missed the chance to gain on the top two, Nacional moved up the league and sneaked past Maritimo on goal difference.
The taxi driver who took us up the mountain was waiting at full time to take us back down.
We were back in the centre of Funchal to catch the hotel crooner finishing off his set with a rousing My Way. Walking sticks were tapped on the dancefloor in approval, the walking dead shuffled riotously towards a live casino dreaming dreams of Euro riches.
There are, I think, worse ways to watch football.
Casino gaming is the latest step in the development of many online casino games. Roulette, blackjack and slots are all games with a rich history and their move into the online casino realm is a just a natural progression for them.
Football too. The island's 273,000 residents can boast of two teams in Portugal's top flight, both based in the main city of Funchal. The trip away teams must negotiate from the mainland would surely leave Danny Lennon apoplectic.
Extensive research - Wikipedia detained me for all of five minutes - suggests that Maritimo have often enjoyed the island upper hand and a degree of populist political patronage while Nacional have traditionally attracted support from Funchal's more well to do citizens.
Loathe as I am to forget a childhood spent on the mean, if lovingly manicured, streets of commuter belt East Lothian, a quirk of the fixture list meant it would be the toffs of Nacional graced with my patronage.
With both teams having endured financial challenges in recent years it could be that their respective support is now less divided by class or wealth.
Nacional though have preserved the air of the haughty aristoratic thanks to their stadium, modern and modest but perched high in the hills overlooking Funchal.
The Cristiano Ronaldo Academy - he was a Nacional player before Sporting Lisbon swooped when he was just ten years old - adds glamour in the mountains, the perfect spot for looking down on the masses as they look up to you.
Modern out of town stadiums often seem designed to depress. The Estádio da Madeira - a name that might well irk Maritimo - at least offers a bar and a bolo do caco stall churning out freshly made doughy bread with garlic butter and chorizo for all of €2.
(Not only is this an improvement on the "street food" of Scottish football it's also well worth seeking out in down town Funchal where most restaurants pitched at tourists think lunch should be a three course affair beginning with soup. Whether this is dictated by tradition or the dental capabilities of much of their winter clientele is unclear.)
A rather sparse club shop hints at a certain difficulty in parting the locals from their cash. Maybe not just locals, a pile of "half and half" scarves marking a European game with Birmingham a couple of years ago suggests either overly ambitious ordering or reluctant Brummies preferring to leave their money behind the bar.
Most dramatically the stadium escapes humdrum modernity thanks to its location. Windows in the newer of the two stands offer views across Funchal and give the feeling of a modern stadium that is at once apart from and a part of its city.
There was also a match to be played. Nacional, at the wrong end of the table, entertaining Braga, three wins on the trot and lying third behind Porto and Benfica.
Politeness might always have led me to root for the home team but a run in with Braga's team bus, displaying what I considered some reckless reversing in a crowded car park, the day before the game sealed the deal.
Which is why at half time I found myself sitting in a stadium that was two thirds empty, having watched "my side" look enthusiastically uninspired as visitors doing no more than go through the motions had taken a 1-0 lead.
I can cross the road to see that most weeks in Scotland.
A couple of non-alcoholic beers (€1 and pointless) and a couple of gut wrenchingly strong coffees (€0.70 and invigorating) later and I was ready for more.
And so were Nacional. Finding more point to their energy they began to threaten as Braga went from not really trying to really quite narked that things weren't going their way.
1-1 on 58 minutes, 2-1 on 60 minutes. Having broken with no real purpose to squander decent opportunities in the first half Nacional were now breaking with real purpose to make the most of half chances.
78 minutes and it was 3-1, an own goal giving the home side a cushion.
Braga rallied. In the 83rd minute Eder pulled one back, his third in three games and ninth in eleven league games since joining in the summer. The goal was a product of an urgency that hadn't been there as they went 1-0 up or even when they found themselves 2-1 down.
It might actually have taken 75 minutes before their captain, Alan, managed to find it in himself to lift the pace above holiday dawdle.
Too late though. And definitely too late when Hugo Viana got himself sent off with five minutes to go.
Nacional closed it out. Braga missed the chance to gain on the top two, Nacional moved up the league and sneaked past Maritimo on goal difference.
The taxi driver who took us up the mountain was waiting at full time to take us back down.
We were back in the centre of Funchal to catch the hotel crooner finishing off his set with a rousing My Way. Walking sticks were tapped on the dancefloor in approval, the walking dead shuffled riotously towards a live casino dreaming dreams of Euro riches.
There are, I think, worse ways to watch football.
Casino gaming is the latest step in the development of many online casino games. Roulette, blackjack and slots are all games with a rich history and their move into the online casino realm is a just a natural progression for them.
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