This may be a little old, but we're a little slow out of the gates today, and the video just showed up online yesterday.
Last week, Kilmarnock hosted lower-league derby rival Ayr United in a SFA Cup replay match. You may remember that the first attempt ended in a 2-2 draw when, in extra time, Ayr's Alex Williams knotted the score. He then ran around hugging everyone, including the ref. Good times.
This time, the result went to Kilmarnock 3-1. The Ayr goal, though, was something special. Bryan Prunty runs on to a long ball, gets caught between a defender and the keeper, misses his attempt to head the ball, then slaps the ball into the net. The best part is that no one saw it. The referee and his assistant definitely missed it, but then, apparently, so did Killie. Unlike England in '86, no Kilmarnock player or coach even questioned the goal.
Be honest. You didn't see it until you got the replay, did you? I certainly did not. Now, Killie fans will tell you they saw it in the stands. Don't trust them. They're drunks.
Thanks to 101 Great Goals for doing the legwork to find the video.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
The invisible hand of football
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Homecoming Scottish Cup 4th Round
The Fourth Round of the SFA Cup is much like the Third Round of the English FA Cup, but without some of the magic. It is the round where the big boys (such as they are) enter the competition with their smaller counterparts. This post is slightly premature, as three Fourth Round games have yet to kick off, but, since the Fifth Round draw is done, and I have a cool link, I'm going to run with it anyway.
First off, the matches that have yet to be played. All kickoff later today:
Brechin-St. Mirren
Forfar-Forres Mechanics
St. Johnstone-Rangers
Rangers, Forfar and St. Mirren should move on, but the fun is watching them fail, right? On to the results so far.
Airdrie United 2-1 Spartans
Airdrie took out the non-leaguers from Edinburgh, though the result was shaky. Spartans advanced to the Fourth Round after a defeat to Elgin City. On review, it seems Elgin had used an ineligible player, so a replay was hastily scheduled. Spartans won 2-1, and got yet another away fixture. Airdrie welcomed the travelling fans and treated them with two first half goals. For Airdrie, not Spartans. Spartans pulled one back early in the second and put one more in the net, but that one was disallowed for a foul on the keeper.
Alloa Athletic 1-2 Aberdeen
Aberdeen also snuck through, playing on the plastic pitch at Recreation Park. Lee Miller scored early, redirecting a Chris Maguire shot into the net. Alloa equalized in the 43rd, scoring on a penalty after Scott Severin fouled in the box. Sone Aluko spared Aberdeen embarrassment in the 57th with a tap in.
Ayr United 2-2 Kilmarnock
The Southwest derby was poised to go to the SPL side until Ayr's Alex Williams volleyed home in extra time. That produced a wild celebration from the goal scorer where he took of his shirt, hugged the ref, accepted a yellow card, then hugged the ref again. There is poor quality video of the whole deal here. The replay is scheduled for January 20.
Celtic 2-1 Dundee
Artur Boruc produced a Gomes-esque display in allowing Dundee to go up early when Colin McMenamin put away Boruc's spilled cross. Aiden McGeady, fresh off his first-team ban by the club, was Celtic's hero, scoring the team's second just before halftime. Celtic squandered multiple chances on the day, but go through nonetheless.
Dunfermline Athletic 2-0 Clyde
I can't be expected to write up all of these can I?
Falkirk 4-2 Queen of the South
Take that, Euro failures. Two goals in the last 20 minutes sent the SPL club through. No more worries for Aberdeen, then.
Inverness Caley Thistle 3-0 Partick Thistle
There is no way this wasn't a faked draw, right? The two thistle squads meeting up and all. ICT was never threatened in this name-derby match.
Peterhead 2-2 Queen's Park
See Dunfermline-Clyde. Replay January 20.
Ross County 0-1 Hamilton Accies
Celtic loanee Paul McGowan sent in the corner that Chris Swailes headed home halfway through the first half. Other than that, well, this was a long road trip.
Stenhousemuir 0-1 East Fife
Pass.
East Stirlingshire 0-4 Dundee United
East Stirlingshire may no longer be the worst team in the SFL, but they didn't look very good against the visiting Tangerines. 0-3 at the half, and the scoring was completed after a 55th minute penalty. Unsurprisingly, the last half hour was written up to be rather dull.
Hibernian 0-2 Hearts
According to Hibs' manager Mixu Paatelanien, Hibs were done in by overzealous refereeing. According to all write-ups I've seen, Hibs were done in by an overzealous and clumsy tackle by Steven Fletcher in the 31st, which brought him a red card. Fletcher had started out brightly for the home side, but when he was sent off, the game changed entirely. Hearts scored seven minutes after the sending off, but waited until the 90th to ice the game with a second.
Inverurie Locos P-P Motherwell
Icy Pitch. Rescheduled for January 21.
Fifth Round Draw
To be played week of February 7.
Aberdeen-East Fife--the matchup of the two teams I am most drawn to in Scotland. Kind of like this year's DC United-Charleston Battery US Open Cup final.
Airdrie United-Dunfermline
Celtic-Peterhead/Queens Park
Forfar/Forres Mechanics-Rangers/St Johnstone
Hamilton-Dundee United
Hearts-Falkirk
ICT-Ayr/Killie
Inverurie Locos/Motherwell-Brechin/St Mirren
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Government bailouts abound!
Yeah, not so much.
On the surface, though, it would appear that the Scottish FA Cup has been taken over by the government. What with the governmental sloganeering and the government controlling the branding and naming rights of the Scottish Cup for the next two years. In reality, it seems the cup and the government got a bailout on the matter from a certain businessman.
A former Celtic director ponied up the cash himself for the naming rights to the cup for the next two years. He then passed passed along those rights to the Scottish Government. They will use the rights to promote the 250th birthday of Robert Burns, a poet so bad, he never even learned to write English correctly (I kid).
There are two other things to take out of this article. One, Homecoming Scottish Cup is better, if only slightly, than City Refrigeration Scottish Cup. City Refrigeration is the business that Willie Haughey, the man who put up the cash, owns. Secondly, get used to those colors on the trophy for the next two years. I mean, a former director of Celtic doesn't just cede the rights to what he paid for without some guarantees, right?
Monday, April 14, 2008
ü75's *NEW* Most Hated Team of the Moment: Queen of the South
Sorry, Liverpool. Your reign lasted only a couple of days. There is a new team that draws my ire, having beaten a team I follow in a game I expected my team to win. Usually this occurs in a knockout tournament, though sometimes a costly loss in league can trigger it. Some teams are exempt from being a MHTotM since they are always hated, like Chelsea, Manchester United, Rangers and some others. Still, until 9.30 AM on Sunday, I never thought I'd have to drop Liverpool to add Queen of the South as my Most Hated Team of the Moment.
Part of the reason a team becomes a MHTotM is because I am paying attention to the match. If I had no knowledge of Saturday's game until mid-afternoon (my time), I would just shrug it off and say, "oh well". Unfortunately for me on Saturday, that was not the case.
Saturday's game was a 12.15 kickoff Glasgow time, or 7.15 AM EDT. Since I had no expectations of being up at that time, I made no plans to follow the game. My son had a different idea of what time was appropriate for weekend wakeup, though, and chose 7.20 to start fussing. Seeing as I go to sleep around 2 and young'uns normal wake time is around 9, this was a tad early for me. I got him up, got a bottle ready, and plopped us both in my recliner.
Early morning Saturday TV is unfit for adults, even those with child-like tendencies. I flipped around for a bit before realizing there was not a damn thing on. I pulled up the menu to see if there was anything on the DVR that I could watch. Nope, just my wife's recording of Secret Life of a Soccer Mom. Then it dawned on me, Aberdeen is playing, and in a game they should easily win. I fired up my laptop.
By the time I got logged on, about 20 minutes had passed. I pulled up BBC's play by play, which always runs a few minutes behind. In another window, I pulled up SkySports live ScoreCentre. Uh oh, Queen of the South scored. Well, it was still early so I wasn't panicked. I refreshed the BBC page to get the writeup of how they scored. When I digested that, I went back to the ScoreCentre and saw Aberdeen tie the match up within 15 minutes. Alright, now we'll score a few more and get to the final. Halftime came, my son finished his bottle, and Aberdeen were said to be in control of the tie.
With my son playing around me, I settled in for the second half. I didn't have much time to settle because a goal came almost immediately. As you can probably guess, QotS scored it. I cursed (don't tell my wife). Four minutes later, Aberdeen leveled again 2-2. Three minutes after that QotS scored again. Jebus! Aberdeen then notched a third comeback goal six minutes after. Before the BBC liveblog could catch up, the dagger came. John Stewart, who started his career at Aberdeen and played there until 2006, scored QotS's fourth goal one minute after Aberdeen got their third. Despite Aberdeen hitting the crossbar and post in quick succession two minutes later, the SPL squad could not score again. 4-3 was the final, with five of the goals coming in the first 15 minutes of the second half.
This is the first ever cup final for Queen of the South who had previously only been to the semis once, 58 years ago. This season, they are mid-table in the First Division, safe from relegation, but almost 30 points behind the promotion challengers. Now, like Gretna two years before them, if the right team makes the final opposite them (Rangers in this case), QotS will be a lower division club playing in Europe. Bastards.
Yesterday, in my Google alerts, I came across a short blog post by an American who just moved to London. He caught the game, and was "thoroughly unimpressed" by it. He cites that it seemed like Scottish soccer was like Arena Football in that there was too much scoring. And here I thought Jim Rome told us Americans don't like soccer because there is not enough scoring.
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