Scotland Weekend Review

This is all you need to know about the weekend:
It's almost as if the country needs to take a winter break. But that would just be stupid, wouldn't it?

Actually, the pitches weren't snow-covered, but were frozen solid, so 8 out of 16 Scottish Cup matches were delayed. Half of those that were played ended in draws, leading to necessary replays. Let's take a gander at the four ties that were actually decided.

Celtic 3-0 Stirling Albion Celtic saw off the First Division bottom dwellers with relative ease, getting goals from Vennegoor of Hesselink, McDonald and Nakamura. You know a game wasn't expected to be close when the BBC writes that the "first attempt on goal did not arrive until the sixth minute". The biggest news here is that Nakamura returned from injury to score in his first game back.

Hibernian 3-0 Inverness CT In his first game in charge of Hibernian, manager Mixu Paatelainen watched Dean Shiels, the one-eyed wonder, score a hat trick. The game ended with some shenanigans when Phil McGuire and Filipe Morais both received their second yellow-card of the game for squaring up to each other off the ball. Enjoy your one game suspension fellas!

St Mirren 3-0 Dumbarton St Mirren eased past Third Division strugglers Dumbarton. This game featured the rare and dreaded non-injury keeper change as Dumbarton boss Jim Chapman pulled David Crawford after he fumbled the third goal into his own net. Perhaps The Sons can pick up the supremely out of favor Paul Robinson at a discount rate.

Queen of the South 4-0 Linlithgow Rose No more wonder run for the Junior outfit. Linlithgow was run off the park early, conceding three first half goals. They started well, but once the first goal came in the 17th minute, they really did not challenge any more. Still, their website had undoubtedly picked up some more hits as the run went on.

Rangers did not play again this weekend, leading some to speculate that their fixture list will become too crowded in the next three months. I wonder where someone opined on that before?