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This pic just turned up on my Facebook page. Not only was Rob Rensenbrink (second from left) a great player for both Anderlecht and the Netherlands, he also had a keen eye for spotting and coaching 37 year old talent from works leagues. What a guy!

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/mar/19/its-been-unimaginable-san-marinos-20-year-wait-for-win-may-soon-be-over

He's an attention seeking fanny.

What I'd further add, regarding the SNP's corrupt implosion, is that this seems to be a well-trodden path for small, homogenous countries with a dominant party. Machiavelli wasn't wrong; corruption is a property of an embedded oligarchy, and to excise it requires a return to first principles. This played out in Ireland, Mexico, all kinds of third world countries like that, and Scotland is no exception to the pattern. But I don't regret my SNP support. It was a necessary condition of ending Labour's own corrupt one-party state regime - and the SNP managed it with an overwhelming mandate, one that defied the proportional representation deliberately put in place to stop it from governing. I'm glad the SNP had its time in the sun and despite this ignominious ending I think they did far more good than harm. What happens next is the greater question and it's one that I won't be paying much attention to answering.

All very fair points, and I do agree with you. I think asking for questions in advance, and leaving a little time for Q&A at the end, is probably the happy medium for events like this.

It could be. Might be. Might also be a way to: - answer common themes of questions - keep a nice running order of those themes (rather than bouncing around subjects) - keep the session timely while getting through all the questions - allow the panel to construct their answers properly (hopefully not in a politician-type way, but answering questions properly without the pressure of thinking off the top of their head in front of a live crowd) - avoid the inevitable, awkward scenario of people not being particularly articulate with their questions There’s pros to opening it up for questions on the night as well but given the above I’m not being totally cynical about their decision.

Bit of a back story. The last games before Belgian Jupiler league split were played last weekend. My local team were sitting 4th from bottom, in a relegation group place. To leapfrog Charleroi on goal difference and into safety, Charleroi had to lose and Leuven had to win their respective final games. While Charleroi were being routinely pumped 5-0 at Gent, Leuven were still deadlocked 0-0 at home to Mechelen, deep into the 2 minutes of added time. With only 10 seconds left on the clock, the keeper launched a counter attack from which Nsingi scores a wonder goal that hits the back of the net on exactly 92:00. Cue absolute scenes!

MITC engage with over 500 kids through their football teams, community sessions and holiday camps. Seems like the club and the community could be missing a trick there.

Is that DOT turning up for training wearing a suit?

We should be dropping tickets in every school in the town, get the players in. Get the parents to take them along, even if another 500 people are getting in for free but spending money on food etc, it'll add up. It's a small but feasible solution and a way to try and bring in the next generation.

Big game for San Marino against St. Kitts and Nevis in Serravalle this evening. Tonight’s the night.

Unless you've lived abroad as long as I have (28 years, or 30 years if you include the 2 years I lived in England), it's difficult to explain why I no longer feel Scottish. I've already given the reasons for the growing feeling of detachment since the 2014 independence referendum, followed by the subsequent political events in the UK. Other factors are simply the passage of time and the weakening of family ties with the deaths of close relatives. So when you add all that up, pretty much all of my sense 'Scottishness' has now dissipated. Nowadays, when asked where I'm from, I say I'm Belgian. Unlike TRVMP it's not because of any sense of national pride, but simply because it's factually correct as I'm a Belgian citizen and it's been home for the last 17 years. I guess it's down to a feeling of belonging, and because both myself and Scotland have changed so much since I left in 1996, I no longer have any feelings of belonging. On the increasingly rare occasions I do visit Scotland (typically nowadays it's only for funerals and the occasional Ton match), I now see it through the eyes of a detached foreigner. Like TRVMP I still follow the Scottish football team and will also be rooting for them in Euro 2024, but that and of course the Ton are really the only emotional attachments I have left. So while the football may still be in my blood, Scotland the country no longer is.

For me the bleakness isn't in the architecture or the climate - I'd take a Scottish summer over a Texan one - and nor is it even really with governance. I do think an independent Scotland within the EU would be better - economically, socially - than it is now, absolutely. But I think that would be marginal. Overall I think that living in a place with greater individual freedom just suits me better and even those positive aspects of Scotland's relative social harmony and homogeneity just hit different now. What I will say - and it gives me absolutely no pleasure (in fact it gives me some pause, given my largely anti-immigrant politics in the US) to say it - is that I feel more comfortable when I go to London than I do when I go to a Morton away game. I don't feel I belong in Kirkcaldy or Govan (the last two away games I was at) and I feel alien to the place. To be clear, this is my hangup and not a failing on their part. But outside of Greenock - and that's entirely and totally due to the family and Morton connection - Scotland just doesn't feel like a place I belong anymore, and that would arguably be even more true if it was in an independent Scotland. I've gone native. I pledge allegiance to the US flag and I honor the Texas flag*. And although I'll be right behind Scotland at the Euros this summer, if in some incredible, alternate universe event, I was asked to pick up arms for Texas against the UK, I'd almost certainly do it. *Texas has its own off-brand pledge of allegiance and it is adhered to at old-fashioned public events. "Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible." As you can see, it's a bit rubbish, but I say it and mean it.

Sign him up. Immediately

He was a wee cunt with a stinking attitude and still is. Fuck him.

Hardly surprising given that Oakley was born in 1995, while Tam Cowan lives permanently trapped in 1974.