How many times do you wish players would just practice crossing the ball? Set aside the low balls across the face of goal. A good aerial cross needs enough pace to make it difficult for the keeper to pluck it out of the air, but not too much, it also needs to drop to allow an attacker to make contact.
Most of the poor crosses you see fail the test of pace, more often than not, they are blasted beyond control. Notwithstanding Josip Juranovic’s waywardness last night, a failure to direct the ball carefully enough is less common.
When Tom Rogic crossed the ball as the clock hit 96 minutes last night, including the keeper, there were nine Ross County players in the box. They had to contend with only three Celtic players: Liel Abada, Cameron Carter-Vickers and Anthony Ralston.
For the first time since our first away win of the campaign, at Aberdeen on 3 October, I watched those closing moments thinking the season was about to pivot. Devastated by injuries and with a cup final to plan for, the manager rested Rogic, his remaining creative force, as well as left back, Greg Taylor.
If Ange Postecoglou wins his first trophy in Scotland on Sunday, his gamble will have paid off brilliantly, but goodness, what a gamble.
I doubt Tom practices crossing any more than the rest of them, his talent appears God given. If so, a Divine Hand lifted the ball into an area for Anthony Ralston to attack. Heavily outnumbered, it should have been a no contest.
What happened next is the stuff of legend. Anthony’s leap was astonishing. His head met the ball 8’ off the ground. Up early, he used his shoulders and neck to keep his head where it needed to be, for an instant, giving the impression he could levitate. No Hindu divinity here, just athleticism.
Add your own adjective to this team: winners, fighters, determined, indefatigable. On nights like this, they are all true. Enjoy your Celtic.
Today’s earlier blog on Poor SFA governance.
244 Comments- Pages:
- «
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
Rarely watch the news (Channel 4 if I must)
What channel is the emergency press conference on please?
Bbc Scotland or Bbc news? Can’t see it listed. Thanks in advance
Issue that has been exercising my mind for a couple of weeks …
The efforts of Team TFOD2.1 / SMSM to de-legitimise our results.
Full court press to develop the narrative that we have been lucky / we do not deserve to be winning.
Every goal is either questionable / lucky / down to an opposition mistake.
The smallest anomaly / glitch / faux pas — even 5 minutes before is highlighted.
To develop a narrative that we don’t deserve our goals / our victories.
At its worse there is an element of dehumanisation involved.
We are not worthy of the results were are getting and our league position is false.
You can guess where this is going in these pandemic times.
Biggest takeaway from all this is the comprehensive nature of the efforts.
Everything and everyone is involved.
The moon howlers start the ball rolling and the SMSM have to respond to that narrative.
Some respond all to easily and run willingly with the ball.
Not sure where this is all going to end.
But we have the paradox of the SMSM efforts surrounding our games.
Our goals are gone over with a fine tooth comb / hugely energetic media analysis including MIB real time analysis from a selection of SKY commentators.
Our injuries / opposition tackling / the assaults on our players are glossed over and forgotten about.
Not a great place to be — either for us / the SPL / the media / the country.
All of this reminds me of what happened in the US after the elections of 2008 / 2012.
GOP diehards / closet racists could not / would not accept that BO had won.
2008 — BO couldn’t have won because he was not US born / The Birther movement was born.
2012 — BO only won because of the votes of illegal immigrants / he lost with real Americans.
To me there are parallels with us today.
Just the start
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/59698537
Then they came for the “anti vac nut jobs”
Is that a wish?
As long as posters are civil and obey the site rules then surely the subject is up to them from toasted cheese to antivax.
However what happens is that discussions turn into full blown personal attacks.
Scrolling past is always an option.
SCULLYBHOY on 17TH DECEMBER 2021 11:11 AM
If you trouble to read the article it’s not suggesting that the Tory Party is a cult.
It’s suggesting that the Europhobes within the Tory party are a cult (actually a specific type of cult, ‘a cargo cult’).
But there are lots of Tories, and Tory MPs who were against Brexit and who publicly campaigned to stay in the EU. That isn’t the hallmark of a cult.
I hope you appreciate my efforts in trying to correct your no doubt innocent misrepresentation.
‘In South Africa in 1856, the spirits of three ancestors visited a 15-year-old Xhosa girl called Nongqawuse. According to her uncle, who spoke for her, the spirits wanted the Xhosa to destroy their crops and cattle. The tribe’s ancestors would then return and drive the white settlers into the ocean. New, beautiful cattle would appear. The sun would turn red. The Xhosa duly began killing cattle and burning crops. This type of self-destructive quest for riches and freedom is now known as a “cargo cult”. (The word “cargo” denotes the western goods the tribe hopes to obtain.)
Brexit voters come in endless varieties. However, the particular sect now steering Brexit — the Europhobe wing of the Conservative party — is turning into a cargo cult.
At the heart of it is ancestor worship. There’s a widespread belief in Britain that “the past is the real us”, says Catherine Fieschi, head of the Counterpoint think-tank. Perhaps no other country has as happy a relationship with its chequered history. And the self-appointed guardian of this relationship is the Conservative party.
Hardly any of today’s Tories actually remember Britain’s golden age of ruling India and winning the second world war. Even the party’s ageing members are merely the children of the Dunkirk generation. Economically, they have been the luckiest cohort in British history. But they and many other Tory MPs feel the shame of late birth. They disdain the UK’s tame, vegetarian, low-stakes, Brussels-based, post-imperial incarnation, which in 70 years offered nothing more glorious than the Falklands war. Now they have their own heroic project: Brexit.
Cargo cults typically start when the tribe feels it is in decline, surpassed by foreigners. In Melanesia, the Pacific region with a tradition of cargo cults, locals came to feel like “rubbish men” (the phrase is pidgin English) in comparison with rich Europeans. “A recurring feature of these cults is a belief that Europeans in some past age tricked Melanesians and are withholding from them their rightful share of material goods,” writes Paul Sillitoe, an anthropologist at Durham University.
To get these goods, the tribe has to mimic modern rituals that seem to have made advanced societies rich. Melanesians built airfields to receive the ancestors’ cargo. The Brexiter flies around signing trade deals. Meanwhile, the inferior goods of today’s “rubbish men” must be destroyed. Hence the eagerness in this Tory sect (but not among the British population at large) to shut off trade with Europe. If the correct rituals are followed, the ancestors will return. The sect leader, Boris Johnson, in his biography of Winston Churchill, sometimes seems to cast himself as the reincarnation of the great “glory-chasing, goalmouth-hanging opportunist”.
But the cargo cult is threatened by non-believers. They can ruin things by angering the ancestors. For 15 months, Nongqawuse blamed the failure of her prophecy on the few Xhosa — amagogotya, or “stingy ones” — who refused to kill their cattle.
Now, leading Conservatives are hunting British amagogotya. Chris Heaton-Harris seeks to out Remainer university teachers, Jacob Rees-Mogg castigates the BBC and the Bank of England’s governor Mark Carney as “enemies of Brexit”, while John Redwood urges the Treasury “to have more realistic, optimistic forecasts”. The sect also suspects Theresa May and Brexit secretary David Davis of being closet amagogotya. That is probably accurate: as Britain’s point-people in the negotiations, these two sense that cattle-killing might not be a winning strategy.
Sillitoe says it’s wrong to dismiss cargo cultists as “irrational and deluded people”. In fact, he writes, “Cargo cults are a rational indigenous response to traumatic culture contact with western society.” Comical as the participants might seem, “they are neither illogical nor stupid”.
Certainly the Conservative cult follows its own logic. The aim isn’t simply to reduce immigration or boost the economy. Rather, Brexit reaffirms the tribe’s ancestral values against a disappointing modernity. The difficulty of Brexiting is part of the appeal: only a great tribe can renew itself through sacrifice. The stalling of talks with the EU is welcomed as a ritual re-enactment of Britain’s past glorious conflicts. Hence the ovations for any speaker at last month’s Conservative conference who urged walking out with no deal.
A recent blog by Pete North, a founder of the Leave Alliance, beautifully sums up many of these attitudes. North, who favoured staying in the European single market, predicts Brexit will send Britain into “a 10-year recession”. He writes: “After years of the left bleating about austerity, they are about to find out what it actually means.” And yet, he continues, “My gut instinct tells me that culturally it will be a vast improvement on the status quo.” He says modern Britons have become “spoiled and self-indulgent . . . in the absence of any real challenges or imperatives to grow as a people”. As the psychiatrist says of the TV character Basil Fawlty, there’s enough material here for an entire conference.
After the cattle-killing, many Xhosa starved to death, while flocks of vultures reportedly watched from above. Refugees who fled to the British Cape Colony were forced into serf-like labour contracts. But Nongqawuse lived on for another 40 years, albeit in exile, under a changed name.’
Just jumping in on the Covid debate
The only way to stop the spread of Covid is for every person to take a Lateral test every day
If clear go about your business – if you are positive stay home for 10 days
Job done
But there lies the problem – not everyone takes a test
So people wander about with Covid and they do not know they have it
3 jabbs and you can still get it and still spread it
I understand people avoiding testing
There are only 2 outcomes
1) There you go – you are fine enjoy yourself
2) Get in the house you and don’t come out for 10 days
if you need work and you have rent/mortgage it’s a bit tough to sit in the house for 10 days and get in debt
It can split society
I think we are in for a difficult few months
67ECW
GREENPINATA on 17TH DECEMBER 2021 11:12 AM
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the “anti vac nut jobs”
And I did not speak out.
Because I was not an anti vaccine person.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me..
==================
Gp.
The blog has been riddled with racism of the kind inspiring your famous verse.
By jhb and the merry band of galloway racists.
Did you casually ignore a poster being asked to call out racism during last weekends shennanigans?
Do you recall?
We had multi posters who have no interest in our club vomiting posts in support of those harassing rnli rescue services as they went to save life of refugees.
The chibheids,jhb and his crowd of multimonikers forwarded a loo roll of unsourced drivel when asked to call it out.
And the racist vermin post freely on what was the finest Celtic blog.they are crippled inside.
Racism is racism.regardless of political hue.
It is not my type or your type my friend
It is racism.
Catch a beer sometime.
Refugees are welcome,170 years ago our forefathers had rocks thrown at them coming up the Clyde on what John Kelly calls “the boats of faces”,boats tightly packed with human cargo.Those throwing the stones,are on this blog,be it in a crass,stupid and with layered repitition(the opposite of how they perceive their erudite racism). We continue to go on and and get better.
Racism has no place at Celtic
Refugees are welcome
HH
At the end of day 2 Australia declared on 473 for 9 and England are 17 for 2 – not looking good for Root and co.
Cricket Quick News is back
GREENPINTA @ 11:12
——
I don’t think anyone is coming for the anti-vaccine people. However there is strong empirical evidence that suggests that unvaccinated people get much sicker with Omicron, and that the vast majority of new hospital admissions are unvaccinated individuals.
When you are fighting a war, and I submit we are now in the midst of the first biological world war, all strategic decisions have to be based on available evidence, evidence that will change incrementally over time.
“Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play. All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason”. IK
We have almost two years experience of this plague, We are understanding more each day and able to form reasoned responses to it. Vaccination is a reasoned and now proven response. Human behaviour is another. It would be utterly irresponsible for any government, scientist, or, health professional, to ignore what medical & scientific data is revealing.
During wartime there are restrictions placed on individuals to protect society as a whole. An example could be ‘blackout’ restrictions during the Blitz in WW2. People still had a need & right to light, but showing it could be guide to enemy bombers and put an entire community, hundreds, or, thousands of people at risk – therefore individual rights had to bow to the greater good.
There has been no public ‘witchhunt’ against anti-vaccine campaigners, however their stance is being overwhelmed with evidence & reason. I sincerely hope that they will take this on board… for all our sakes.
GENE on 17TH DECEMBER 2021 11:38 AM
Just the start
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/59698537
=======
Gene,I think Dundee United closed their ground yesterday,friend up there last night was suggesting game v ’12fc 😊 on Saturday may be in doubt.
Middleton of livi on suggesting circuit breaker as players are dropping all over place.
HH
Play and win the league cup final, then a circuit breaker, wouldn’t be the worst idea for us, would it ?
New players in.
Hamstrings healed
Avoid playing this manic December schedule
HH
Biggest test since Crawford Allan re-refereeing games regime
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2020/06/how-cult-jacob-rees-mogg-unravelled
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/10/like-all-cults-borisology-is-detached-from-reality-and-destined-to-end-badly
The new article is up