We had our 11th annual CQN Charity Golf Open at Aberdour in Fife yesterday and it was another brilliant occasion. £2000 was raised for good causes, including a local Aberdour need, Tommy Burns’ Charity and the Celtic Foundation.
My thanks to the Joe Miller, who regaled us with tales of Maradona, Jinky and Sugar Roy Aitken. The buzz he got from playing for Celtic is clear. The day wouldn’t be possible without Taggsybhoy and BlantyreKev, but it takes an entire crowd to make special nights like this, so thanks to each of you.
This afternoon’s game against Rennes is an important step towards getting the players fully fit but the 90 minutes have to be balanced against the Champions League qualifier on Wednesday. I expect Ronny will ask the players the burn the flame brightly for a short period, before making lots of changes.
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BSR
I have my receipt from ole TO
Daughters,eh.8))
TR
☺️
Dallas Dallas
Spot the crowd yesterday? – I could ver near have gave there names and addresses ;-)
My weather app is permanently on lower EK available as the Baldie app
Dallas Dallas
Was It Ian Foote or Tiny Wharton that was a travelling sales rep back in the day,I think,for one of the drink companies?.
I remember one of them visiting my grannies shop on the west coast and getting stick from her,especially after a game against them!!
DELANEYSDUNKY
The Golden Ghirls have a lodger anytime,joooost a smashing day.
M6bhoy
I must have known you at that time? Or you me?
———————————————————————————————————————
I was a mere whipper-snapper at the time not long left St. Margaret Mary’s. My bar wages helped supplement my student grant (remember them?). I obviously knew the names of the bar staff and managers (one was an Irish feller called Tommy who went on to manage the much missed Mitre Bar) but not the committee men and women.
All the bar staff (including me) were sacked because the books wouldn’t balance. This was decided by the management committee that included local councillors. So much for workers rights – a right shower of two-faced bar-stewards. Yes, a few staff helped themselves to a couple of haufs/beers at the end of their shifts (happens in every pub) but bottles of spirits and crates of beer were being “liberated” in the middle of the night by people who had keys to get into the club. They were seen by folk who lived in the flats opposite who saw stuff loaded into a pram. This whole sorry episode was in the local press at the time.
My dearly parted Ma and Da and their pals were regulars in the club from the day it opened till the early noughties. They loved the club which was a great centre for the community and put on some fun stuff for local weans which was brilliant. However, like everything else, it only takes a few bad eggs to spoil for everybody else.
Pocket dialing (also known as pocket calling or butt dialing) refers to the accidental placement of a phone call while a person’s mobile phone or cordless phone is in the owner’s pocket or handbag. The recipient of the call typically hears random background noise when answering the phone.
@wiki
everydayaschoolday csc
winning captains
if you are on the blog I’m getting trouble recently with CQN getting a message about a shock wave plugin that is stopping working is this a CQN issue as it freezes CQN on my laptop?
It does seem to be an issue on other sites
does not seem to be an issue on other sites
Brian and Nigel Clough
HH
Jmccormick
The Dublin Waterford game is quite good. 12 points all just half time
Make that 13 12 for Dublin as half time whistle goes
sipsini
13:52 on
26 July, 2015
m6bhoy…
Do you remember auld Jimmy (ginger) that took the money at the door during that period?
He was my granda, a cantankerous old git ;)
A shark at the dominoes.
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Like I said to TD, I was still in the full flush of adolescence so most old people running the club were auld and cantankerous old gits to me. I do, however, have a hazy memory of the guy who sat at the top of the stairs and there was no way you were getting in unless you flashed your membership card or got signed in by a member.
John and Kevin Bond…………
TBM
tricoloured ribbon
14:15 on 26 July, 2015
bournesouprecipe
14:10 on 26 July, 2015
Daughter No;2 just phoned……”sorry Dad……….. pocket dialled you”
This means I assume, she didn’t mean to phone me
………..
You sure she’s not looking for a sub? ;-)
————————————————
I’ve heard that wan afore ….: )
Nothing personal canamalar. I rarely Post. It just so happens you have came out with 3 statements presented as fact. Theyre not. Theyre your opinion & your entitled to them no matter how warped they are. Lesson learned. Will leave you to your own self indulgence
Woowho
Derek and Barry Ferguson :O)
Here is a post from SFM by a Hearts supporter about an article in Scotland on Sunday that might be of interest to CQN readers too.
From AJ on TSFM
Andrew Smith writes, in Scotland on Sunday, his take on next season’s Scottish Premiership. Guess which club he mentions, by my quick count, no less than nine times! You’ve got it!
It’s a bit like that advertising ploy, I think they call it ‘placement’, where bottles of coke, or pepsi, or some other products are slipped into movies to put the thought of the product into the viewers’ minds without them realising it. It’s the kind of thing a ‘journalist’ might receive ‘payment in kind’ for, such as access to stories, from some PR agency on behalf of some impoverished, but high profile, client!
We are about to enter the fourth year without the name ‘Rangers’ appearing in the top flight of Scottish football. Time enough, one might think, for the press to have discarded the need to discuss the ‘effect’ no ‘Rangers’ might have amongst the elite of our game! It is, after all, exactly the same as the preceding three years – uplifting!
But, Scotland on Sunday publishes…
“Andrew Smith: Business as usual in top flight
Last seasons champions Celtic are almost certain to lift another title this season. Picture: PA
Last seasons champions Celtic are almost certain to lift another title this season. Picture: PA
by
ANDREW SMITH
published 00:39 Sunday 26 July 2015
13 comments
Have your say
THERE will be plenty of positives on show this coming season in top division still without the Rangers brand, writes Andrew Smith
Picture the scene. It is the early years of this millennium and a would-be auteur is pitching his idea for a film about Scottish football’s top flight as it would stand on the eve of a fourth consecutive campaign devoid of the Rangers brand. Of course, he tells producers, the cinematic offering would require to be of the post-apocalyptic genre, set in a bleak and barren landscape.
That very Premiership campaign is now only days away. And apart from Rangers, and Hibernian, not featuring in it, business appears altogether usual, with light and life in all corners. There is a title sponsor for the first time in three years. In Ladbrokes, the much derided Scottish Professional Football League has attracted a decent name. Television deals have been extended with the forthcoming exposure in China. Admittedly, that deal will bring in bawbees. A familiar tale. Yet while all commercial contracts in Scottish football are pretty paltry, they are no worse than those signed in a supposedly prosperous past… And on top of all this, by crikey, thanks to Aberdeen we even have a team capable of putting in some sort of title challenge to Celtic.Alright, so there is no doubt that this season Ronny Deila will claim his second championship with the Glasgow club. However, just as the Norwegian’s remodelling of Celtic has proved a source of great interest and entertainment, so that is what the Pittodrie men provided in spades with their exceptional league form under the admirably shrewd Derek McInnes.
Celtic had three games left to play when, only in May, they were crowned champions for the fourth consecutive season. That meant the title remained a live issue longer than was true in six of the past seven seasons Celtic ran out winners of a top flight with Rangers in it.
In adding to their squad without taking away, there is no reason why Aberdeen cannot keep Celtic on their toes for the next ten months. Indeed, if the Pittodrie side can find a way to stop losing against Deila’s team – they were defeated in all four meetings last season – then we could perhaps even be treated to a compelling run-in. Mind you, the manner in which Celtic hit their stride in the second half of Delia’s first season might mean that is still asking too much.
What also excites about Aberdeen’s filling of the void created by Rangers’ liquidation in 2012 is that this could extend to the continental arena. McInnes’s team, and Celtic, face hazardous European qualifiers this week. Yet the pair are also presented with possibilities in these winnable encounters. The trek to Kazakhstan to face Almaty for Aberdeen and Celtic’s hosting of Azerbaijan side Qarabag could effectively move them to within one tie of the Europa League and Champions League group stages respectively. If both were playing in continental competition until Christmas this season, that really would be transformative for the game in this country.
Aberdeen’s remarkable 5-2 aggregate defeat of a good Croatian side in HNK Rijeka means they have now recorded more notable wins in Europe in these past two years – Groningen were defeated on their own patch last year – than Rangers did in their last four years in the domain. Their efforts were instrumental in the country’s coefficient points total last season being the second highest in seven years.
Celtic and Aberdeen have distanced themselves from the rest of the top flight, but plenty feel that the next team on their heels will be a Hearts metamorphosised. Their obliterating of all opposition in the Championship has had their supporters genuflecting at the feet of the trinity of owner Ann Budge, head coach Robbie Neilson and director of football Craig Levein.
A first season back in the top flight could catapult them straight back into Europe for twofold reasons. Practically selling out Tynecastle every week affords them a resource base that gives them better buying power than the other teams likely to be vying for third – Inverness Caledonian Thistle, Dundee United, Dundee and St Johnstone likely to be in that cluster.
Having retreated from accenting youth – and that means we really ought to desist from the gushing over the Gorgie club’s player production line – they clearly mean business. Budge patently wants them to barge their way back to their former status without a bedding-in period. As one of the Scottish game’s grandees, it is a delight to have the Tynecastle club back in the top flight. What could potentially hamper Hearts in their rush to reassert themselves is what could prove problematic for the other clubs in their orbit: the absence of a real predator.
It is slightly concerning that so many teams have lost or lack goalscorers. Inverness, following their unforgettable Scottish Cup-snaring, third-place claiming season, no longer have their three main attacking threats from last season with Billy McKay, Marley Watkins and Edward Ofere gone. McKay could yet front up at United, who seem to have had the heart ripped out of them as a result of selling Stuart Armstrong, Nadir Ciftci and Gary Mackay-Steven to Celtic. However, as with natural-finisher bereft St Johnstone, there has been a durability about the Tannadice men that may not yet have been lost. That said, Dundee will scent blood in the pursuit of local bragging rights.
Ross County have their backers when it comes to pushing for the top six. The major surgery that Jim McIntyre performed, both to extricate the Highlanders from a seemingly hopeless position at Christmas and give them a British identity, made him seem like Scottish football’s answer to pioneering heart transplant surgeon Christiaan Barnard. McIntyre’s tremendous efforts provided another indication that, whatever else may be lacking at the top level of Scottish football, the coaching is almost universally of a commendable standard.
We have witnessed this with John Hughes following Tommy Wright in making Inverness and St Johnstone major trophy winners. Meanwhile, Dundee neighbours Paul Hartley and Jackie McNamara have produced attractive football teams for little outlay. Further down the pecking order, Alan Archibald at Partick Thistle continues to squeeze more out of a collection of ordinary players than seems plausible. How long that can continue must remain a doubt. The influence of a commanding coach was never better evidenced than the nose-diving of early pacesetters Hamilton Accies – the very idea still astonishes – once the prodigiously talented Alex Neil had left for Norwich City in January. Mercifully, the Lanarkshire club did eventually stabilise under Neil’s successor Martin Canning. Around about the time that Kilmarnock started to fall to pieces under Gary Locke.
The Ayrshire club, as with Partick and Accies, could find the going heavy this season and it is hard to look beyond that trio for a team that will be consigned to the Championship next season. Motherwell endured that near-demotion experience before whipping Rangers in the play-offs but in those games they demonstrated their position was perhaps false.
The monumental profile of those matches illustrated the clear downsides of having no Rangers in the top flight. Certain supporters, especially those of Celtic, attempt to deny there are any negatives to there being no team from Ibrox in the upper tier. In doing so, they seem to pay little heed to their icon Jock Stein’s mantra that “football without fans is nothing”.
Brutally, it must be stated that last season also demonstrated just what a disaster a 16-team top league would be for the credibility of the Scottish game. At times last season, four of the six games could attract fewer than 4,000 spectators apiece. In the case of Hamilton, who just don’t have a support, the figure was far lower. And that was when they were playing top-of-the-table encounters. It was a similar story at Inverness, if not quite as pronounced. Were these teams, and others such as Partick, to be scrapping it out for ninth or tenth place in a 16-team set-up, crowds of 1,500 could become standard across half the programme.
A certain nothingness, to borrow from Stein, can settle on games which are watched by so few spectators. Were Rangers in the top flight, by contrast, 700,000 more fans would be added to top-flight attendance totals. Throw Hibs into the mix, and if we had an elite ten, or the two 12s splitting into three eights that will be pushed for next summer, you could have any one of four Premiership games playing host to more people than a total of four matches might do in the coming season. The Scottish Premiership is a fine set-up as it stands, but that doesn’t mean to say that bigger clubs wouldn’t make it better.”
Pele and the Derry Pele
HH
m6bhoy
“They were seen by folk who lived in the flats opposite who saw stuff loaded into a pram”
Generally referred to amongst the Glasgow underworld as the ‘Castlemilk Heist’!
AULDHEID
Scottish football is all about the gers. And don’t you forget it.
Curly 13.18
Thanks for info on the CQN Open.
44 points is indeed banditry of the highest order but fair play 4 birdies on the bounce is quite exceptional. What handicap does he play off and more to the point what handicap was he given ha ?? !!!!
Mike and Ian Walker………..
TBM
cigaprfavor, I don’t know what Wharton’s and Ian Foote’s full time jobs were but I know them and their ilk’s part time job was to annoy us as much as possible.
AULDHEID and Gary Caldwell :-)………………
TBM
TCR
Couple of new boys in don’t know anything about them tho – haven’t been over yet & still haven’t sorted a season book !!
Bourne, the crowd looked more like that at the end of game, at kick off yesterday.
Even some of the guys who never normally miss a game who sit around us, weren’t there.
I quite enjoyed the game and liked the look of Janko and Joe Thompson in the second half.
Efe being captain in the second half was nice to see.
Auldheid
Managed to get through the Gabby Marcotti article. As proposed seems more than a little complicated, with four different kick-offs on a Saturday alone. Not sure how much protection the three o clock match gets given that an SPL or EPL game could finish around 14.45, or who or what is getting the benefit of whatever protection there might still be, not the minnows I’ll venture. Does showing tennis/golf/rugby live have a negative effect?
Just read the Scotland on Sunday’s match report from yesterday.
The picture they have at the top of the article, unsurpisingly, is Nadir Ciftci’s incident with the Rennes players.
No photos of Leigh or Gary scoring as their intro to the article. Somethings will never change.
Indulge me eh!
Let’s play join the dots……………..
Peter Lawell………….. Joe Hanson………….Ronnie Deila……………..Johan Mjallby……………. Joe Ledley………….. Neil Francis Lennon………….Georgios Samaras…………………John Collins……….
Regards & Hail Hail
TBM
It’s going to be a weak league without The Rangers? How many points ahead of them did Hearts finish – 20+ wasn’t it?
Celtic Mac
15:12 on
26 July, 2015
Marcotti’s solution might not be workable but even airing the issue at his level might open minds.
My thinking is the reason for the 3 to 5 blackout is no longer relevant so no reason why Celtic games need to avoid that time to be televised, which suits both viewers and match day goers. It is one less reason to reschedule a kick off.
THEBARCAMOLE
Disappointed in you yesterday,old bean.
Only 7/1. Shocker
Still,more money to your account.
I picked that one too,plus a 9/1. Good return,but frittered it away on having fun wi emdy who would put up wi me.
Goodwood?
Dallas Dallas where the heck is Dallas
Thanks for the heads up re the Celtic Underground podcast with Billy Stark. A great listen.
HH
Roy Croppie, the podcast deserves a bigger audience.
Billy Stark is one of my favourite players and a good guy.
I love the fact he’s still in contact with Tommy’s family and meets up with Rosemary for a chat.
The emotion in his voice when talking of Tommy’s illness and passing away showed how much Tommy meant to him.
BOBBY MURDOCH’S CURLED-UP WINKLEPICKERS
15:22 on 26 July, 2015
THEBARCAMOLE
Disappointed in you yesterday,old bean.
Only 7/1. Shocker Still,more money to your account.
I picked that one too,plus a 9/1. Good return,but frittered it away on having fun wi emdy who would put up wi me.
Goodwood?
…………………………………………………………………..
Thanks M and well done you on your winning double but that feckugger Fahey turned the tables on me (again) with Heaven’s Quest………. Five in the race……….
Anyway pal, thanks, and the pot is building nicely in time for the good ground, I hope…….
Good to hear that you had a grand day with DD and his family. God Bless…….
Goodwood; love the meeting but winners really hard to find. We’ll see mmmmaybe!!!!
Regards & Hail Hail
TBM
Good game of hurling, Waterford deserved to win
Time I think, to get Henke’s bhoy signed up and maybe let him stay in Sweden on loan.
Sounds good to me!!
KINGLuBO