Double whammy of bad news

It's turning out to be a right old bad news day after all. first up comes the news that Alex McLeish is giving up the Scotland manager position in order to become Manager of Birmingham bloody city - something I was confidently predicting that he would not do last night.

Second up is BNFL announcing that Hunterston in Ayrshire is one of their potential sites for next generation nuclear reactors. The site at Hunterston is 14 miles from my front door and has had nuclear power stations there for as long as I can remember. The fact that reactor A is done with and reactor B is coming to the end of it's natural life meant that we could look forward to life in Ayrshire without the threat of a nuclear accident hanging over us. BNFL's announcement this afternoon has kicked that idea into touch unless we get campaigning against it pretty dammed soon. You can be sure that I'll be writing a lot more about this in the future!

Another glorious failure

Sick as the proverbial parrot! Scotland didn't make it to next year's Euro Championships in Austria and Switzerland. I'm sure you all know we lost 1-2 to Italy. However we can take great pride in the way our lads fought to the last in this group and fought with pride, passion and increasing skill. There may be no superstars in our team but the "team spirit" and unity made up for that.

Another upside of this campaign is that we will be 2nd seeds for the World Cup qualifying contest. No one in Scotland need be ashamed of our team any more and I look forward to Scotland getting out of the group stages in South Africa in 2010.

Two better results to note though:
i. Scotland Under 21s beat Slovenia 4-0 away
ii. Irvine Meadow won 4-2 away to Beith in the West of Scotland Premier League

Jings! SFA make another correct decision

I'm not normally much impressed by the blazers who run the Scottish Football Association but much to my surprise they have today made their second correct call in as many weeks.

Last week they announced that the Rangers and Celtic matches scheduled a few days before the all or nothing qualifier with Italy had been postponed. first time I can recall them so doing and, in the circumstances, an excellent plan.

Today they announced that they are still opposed to a UK team participating in the 2012 Olympic games. This is also a correct call. Why? Well, quite simply a UK team would put us on the slippery slope to UEFA & FIFA saying that there should only be one UK team in the World Cup and European Championships. This would mean the loss of places for Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland & England. I'm quite sure that fans of the four nations involved would not back a British team to the exclusion of there home nations and, quite frankly, this sort of thing gives the Scottish & Welsh Gnats another stick with which to beat the union.

See you in Austria & Switzerland (unless you're English)

Just what we Scots love - backs against the wall and having to win against all the odds! I believe firmly that we will hammer, thrash and monster Italy 1-0 at Hampden next month and qualify for next year's Euro tourney. We have a national characteristic that likes making things difficult for ourselves which is why I was not in the least surprised that we lost to Georgia last night. what did surprise me was the feckless way our lads went about it. How many shots on goal??????

At least we have our fate in our own hands, well at our own feet to be precise. I would hate to be in the situation which England fans find themselves whereby their fate depends on other results. I wonder how long Steve McClaren will last if they don't qualify, especially as the boss of the FA has been on giving him his backing already today.

Message to the SFA - get rid of those horrendous claret shirts NOW!