Five members of the Terrace Podcast team recall their favourite moment from an entertaining and very high scoring Scottish football weekend.
Craig Cairns (@craigcairns001)
After a log overnight flight and three hours sleep, I emerged from my bed, as far as my couch, and slumped there catching up on and digitally conversing about the day’s events. For two fuzzy Saturday morning hours I remained there, taking an age to read any one article and being constantly frustrated by autocorrect, before I finally made some coffee.
Then the fun started. Team news rolled in. Lopez and Christie had been dropped from Caley’s line up at Celtic Park, their opponents going with what will , more or less, be their side versus Malmö on Wednesday. Loy was again missing from the Dundee line up, while Hearts benched their two goalscorers from their comfortable midweek victory.
Come 3pm I had Soccer Saturday muted on the TV, the Celtic game streaming – also muted – and Open All Mics on the radio. Then the goals started pouring in. I could barely keep up. Marvin Johnson got the first Premiership goal of the afternoon after five minutes, Griffiths then gave Celtic an early lead before Doolan fired Thistle ahead.
By the 19th minute we had a goal in every game, by half-time we had at least two in each and 14 in total in the top division. By full-time the total was 23 and every team had scored except for Dundee United, meaning we have now had 63 top flight goals this season – an average of 2.7 per game.
The lower leagues also produced its fair share of goals and one or two eye-catching results. Dumbarton defeated St Mirren – their second scalp in as many weeks – Dunfermline won the Fife derby 7-1 and there were 2-0, 3-0, 4-0 and 5-0 scorlines in League Two.
Scottish football is back and it’s been a whacky, high-scoring start to the season. Long may it continue.
Kris Jack (@krisjack85)
Four games in to the new season and we’ve already lowered expectations when it comes to Sportscene, but over on BT Sport, the use of Stuart McCall as colour commentator is almost as bad.
By now, the BT Sport viewership is well aware of his familiarity with the Rangers squad, but the constant usage and correction of the word “we” and the nicknames chucked in throughout his former sides 5-1 win over Alloa and in last week’s game versus St Mirren (Thommo, Walshy, Foddy and the bile-inducing Lawsy) makes the commentary sound less like a national broadcast and more like a club’s own audio output. (Not that there’s anything wrong with those, of course).
His quiet and monotoned, almost snooker-like interjections did very little to add the colour to Derek Rae’s consistently upbeat and informed play-by-play work. To the point where Rae was feeding McCall ad-libbed quips about ice poles, an air-glider, and some “Taps Aff” fans, which seemed to choke Stuarty’s ability to liven up proceedings, instead of him feasting on the impromptu moments of levity.
When Stephen Craigan’s belt reaches higher levels than your input, you know you need to change it up and add a bit of pizazz to proceedings.
It also seemed like he could not wait for the game to be over, mentioning as often as he could that he was off to play FootGolf as soon as he was done. That would be the same hybrid game that his Motherwell squad spent a fair bit of time playing last pre-season, before their atrocious Europa League exit.
If BT want to go down the route of having ex-Rangers stalwarts covering their games, there are bound to be better and more listenable chaps than McCall available. McCoist, for instance, would be a fantastic alternative.
Duncan McKay (DuncMcKay)
The most disingenuous moment in a football match is when two players come together and a melee ensues. You’ll hear a commentator, perhaps with a pundit chiming in, denigrating what we are witnessing. Utter, utter nonsense. Aside from goals, rammies are one of the best things about football.
Goalkeepers going up for set pieces are great. I’m a massive, massive fan of these incongruous moments in football.
Another great footballing motif, although rarer in the modern age, is a goalkeeping meltdown.
So imagine my utter delight on Saturday to hear about an incident that combined all three at once.
Regular podcast listeners may be aware that I’m currently housebound due to a broken foot. This meant following Saturday’s action via Twitter and Open All Mics. When news of Brechin’s Graeme Smith’s red card broke, I was in heaven. Ever since his time at Hibs, and specifically his involvement in our 6-6 draw with Motherwell, I’ve taken to having a dislike of the man.
Surely, however, the highlights would be a disappointment.
Not this time. Smith loses the rag with the referee to earn himself a yellow for dissent as Brechin conceded a penalty to the Honest Men. But then the glory happens. Smith goes forward (looking like Barney the Dinosaur after gastric band surgery) for a corner, the ball breaks away and he commits a foul, a melee ensues and he cracks a Ayr player with a solid swinging elbow. Amazingly he seems shocked to receive his marching orders.
It’s wasn’t big, it wasn’t clever, but it was pretty damn entertaining. More of this please!
John Callan (@JohnLCallan)
One of the best things about football is that there are so many different types of goal which can be equally satisfying, regardless of the skill or intention which led to them. As mentioned on the pod last week, forty-yard shellacks are all well and good, but the depth of enjoyment is often in the variety, or in an unusual build-up of anticipation.
In that vein, Kris Doolan’s opener for Thistle against Kilmarnock at the weekend had just the right amount of slapstick and curious glitches to merit a goal at the end of it, to make sure such an ungainly passage of play isn’t forgotten forever. This certainly isn’t intended to be cruel to Killie – to whom I bear no ill-will – more a bumbling succession which would’ve been amusing were it to happen to any side. Except our own.
It was a little like listening to a new song from a favourite artist; you devote your attention to it, tap your foot to the intro, give a wee half-chuckle at a couple of nicely-observed lyrics then bang – the pay-off in the chorus is an absolute belter. The opener at Firhill had enough of those wee moments that make you nearly grin, before sealing the deal with a goal.
First, a nothingy throw-in is left to bounce. Reliable favourites Josh Magennis and Jamie Hamill exchange attempted headers which neatly encapsulate their playing styles – energetic yet counter-productive, then weary and misplaced. Like a sitcom simultaneously backing up a good joke with some decent character re-enforcement.
Then, a neatly improvised, yet somehow jarring flick leads to a desperate diving header from Lee Ashcroft, the angle of which calls into question where exactly he intended the ball to go had he connected. Undeterred, Mark Connolly steams in with an all-or-nothing slide tackle with his wrong foot. And gets nothing. Doolan pokes home. Kingsley joins in celebrations. I love football sometimes.
Gary Cocker (@gary_cocker)
At the start of this season, I made the momentous decision to switch my season ticket seat at Dens from the South Enclosure (also known as ‘The Derry’ or ‘that pile of rubble at the side of the pitch’) to the Bobby Cox stand. It was partly to do with seating availability for friends given the popularity of the Derry but also to make it easier for me to dispassionately observe and analyse the game in front of me from up high.
What I didn’t expect was that my seat switch would treat me to seeing all six goals scored in our two home fixtures so far at close range. The poor away fans housed in the Shankly have yet to witness the net bulge at their end, while the sweetie-wrapper rustlers of the Cox have been up and down like yo-yos. Of course, Juanma’s brace and Steven McLean’s close-range finish on Saturday provoked quite different reactions than the goals tucked away by those in Dark Blue, but I’ve certainly got my money’s worth so far.
However much I enjoyed James McPake’s acrobatic left-footed volley to open the scoring (yes, really), Low’s interception and wicked cross for Hemmings’ gloriously cushioned header for Dundee’s second goal and Scott Bain’s terrific save from a looping, inch-perfect volley by Graham Cummins up at the other end of the pitch, my moment of the week was witnessing Michael O’Halloran weave some magic.
I’ve often bemoaned St Johnstone’s lack of flair and attacking élan, but his pace terrorised our defence until Hartley reshuffled the team to stifle him out of the game. If he can continue to supply McLean and John Sutton and if Tommy Wright is able to get their famously settled defence back on point then they could – somehow – defy the odds and sneak into the top six yet again, despite their god-awful start to the year.
Watching him run at our back-line at close range and spotting the tactical switch deployed to shut down what was, in all honesty, the only joker in their pack added to my enjoyment of what was (by St Johnstone’s standards) a fairly entertaining game. I think I’m going to quite enjoy my new perch behind the goal.
Oh, and it’s still not a local derby, lads. Sorry.
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