Joel Sked (@sked21)
Finishing work at 1pm on Saturday before jumping in the car on a hot summer’s day to get to Hamilton. Stupidity at its highest level, especially when your first gear is going the same way as Hibs’ promotion chances.
But ploughed on I did, even if before I had turned on the engine my friend accused my car of smelling of BO when it was coming from him – one level below on the evolutionary scale that he is. Any lane discipline went out the window on approach to Hamilton before it was nose to tail looking for a car park. Great day already. Self-loathing was beginning to reach its crescendo.
Then the game happened. We don’t need to go back over it in any great details. Main summary:
Hamilton led
Hearts led
Willie Collum
Hamilton won
Trudging out the game. I hated myself. I hated Hearts. But most importantly I hated the fans. A severe distaste. The kind you get at the pit of your stomach, all you can do is show the contempt dripping from your face. We had barely walked 20 yards when young Hearts fans were having to be calmed down by Police because a steward allegedly pushed over a kid. I say ‘way to go Steward’. Knight him, shower him with hookers and cocaine, give him the keys to the city of Edinburgh.
But then that moment came. Further up the road which nearly made it all worthwhile. Spending my Saturday’s surrounded by people that just make me hate everything and want to scream ‘I HATE YOUR FACE’. A Hearts fan. A grown man of a Hearts fan. A grown man of a Hearts fan who has grey hair. A grown man of a Hearts fan who has grey hair who was literally on the verge of tears. He was screaming at anyone who would listen that Hearts had been cheated and that Willie Collum had been paid. Pull up a chair, folks, we have a live one. A real live mouth breather.
All the key phrases were being ticked off. My checklist was complete. ‘Agenda’, ‘paid-off’, ‘cheat’, ‘cheating Celtic . . ‘. Use your imagination to complete the last one.
He finished by having to wipe his nose for snot as he looked to the ground trying to hide the fact he was LITERALLY on the verge of tears.
Did I mention he was a grown man of a Hearts fan with grey hair?
Craig Cairns (@craigcairns001)
Watching Rangers. Who would have thought it just a year ago? I used to dread watching their matches, trying to stay away from less irritating ventures like chewing tinfoil as I trudged through another ninety minutes purely as research for the show. Then, ashamed at what I’d been watching, I’d delete them from my Sky Planner as promptly as I would my search history after being asked by a new woman in my life if she could borrow my laptop.
Now they are perhaps my favourite team to watch. No more aiming balls at Jon Daly’s head, now they have Martyn Waghorn dropping deep and able to pick out those running beyond him with quick, clever passes. No more of an overabundance of grit and bite in the centre of the park. Now Andy Halliday, previously a winger, protects the back four while creating from deep and bursting forward to join in attacks. Jason Holt has left some Hearts fans wondering why he wasn’t retained, while Barrie McKay’s directness is a danger from one side and a revitalised Kenny Miller is scoring goals from the other. Then, at right-back they have James Tavernier taking up positions akin to that of Dani Alves when Barcelona were at their peak a few years back.
And all of them are getting involved in the goals. In saying that, they are still playing at Championship level and have been exposed defensively on occasion but rarely punished. Their cup matches, as well as the other encounters versus Hibernian, should tell us more about their strength in this area as the season progresses. Nonetheless, I am no longer pissed off that Rangers are on TV a disproportionate amount of the time.
Kris Jack (@krisjack85)
Scottish football has had it’s fair share of colourful, weird and wonderful characters over the years, but there seems to be nothing more colourful and weird (maybe not wonderful right enough) than the sight of all of the Scottish Premiership mascots lining up to outrun one another, as happened on Friday.
Looking like the very bottom of the Reject Bin that the Raggy Dolls sang about in the classic kids cartoon, the race was a veritable shitstorm of Sadsacks, as the Premiership’s finest oversized gonks battled it out for supremacy, only to be beaten by the Hamilton Racecourse’s own mascot! After all of the palaver of banning footballers and Ian Black for betting on games that the SPFL went through, they not only had the audacity to seek Ladbrokes to sponsor the league, but they then fixed it for the hosts to win their promotional event. Bravo, sirs!
Having been inside a club mascot myself (that sounds wrong), playing the part of Braehead Clan’s highly worshipped highland cow crowd antagoniser ‘Clangus”, I take my hat off to the folks who ran the race, as those things are all kinds of heavy and awkward to walk in, let a lone sprint.
What it may have lacked in competition, it more than made up for in what-the-fuckery, as those in attendance and on social media tried to fathom what the majority of the matchday annoyances were supposed to be. Some were easy enough to decipher; Claret and Amber, the Motherwell bears, who took silver and bronze, Kilmarnock’s big blue squirrel who brought up the rear, and of course, everybody’s favourite Crayola nightmare, Kingsley of Partick Thistle.
All of the other mascots looked just about the same as one another, but for their kits and then there was St Johnstone’s penile super-hero thing. Possibly the second most poorly designed mascot in the race after Partick’s drug addled baby from Teletubbies, The Saintees’ masked boaby would be the last mascot I’d let my child take a selfie with.
Also, if Hibs’ and Rangers’ mascots were allowed in, why was there no invite for Dunfermline’s Sammy The Tammy? Surely the nondescript bunneted generic brown animal deserved an outing with all of his other pals?
Craig Fowler (@craigfowler86)
Stunning goals always bring immense pleasure. However, they are a little bit more joyous when they come from a completely unexpected source.
If you were to challenge me to draw up a list of SPFL Premiership players least likely to smash one in from 30 yards, Sean Dillon would definitely feature in the top ten. He’d only netted five times in 244 appearances for United prior to their match with Ross County on Saturday, but that didn’t dissuade him from letting fly and sending an absurdly good strike dipping and diving through the air before it crashed into the back of the net past Scott Fox.
In retrospect, Dillon was probably just acting out in frustration at the ineptitude of his United team-mates as the dismal run continued despite his stunner. If you listen carefully, you can almost hear him saying ‘ah, f*** this’ in a charming Irish drawl before pulling his foot back. Most of the time such efforts disappear into the back of the stand. Thankfully, this one didn’t.
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