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Davy, 2 seats from Larnaca please? thanks Craig

Aye, plenty of ATMs in Astana and currency exchanges too if you need them. Even 'expensive', western-frequented restaurants aren't that expensive by UK standards and you can easy find places where it's 1-1.50 GBP a pint and 5 or 6 quid for a main course.

wow. I visited and posted on here yesterday for the first time in 2 or 3 years. Wasn't expecting the lights to go out imminently. Then again, I used to visit every day after transferring across to the new site after the night of the long knives, so if my experience is typical then maybe not so much of a surprise that the TAMB is on its way to the Dignitas clinic. I didn't exactly decide not to visit as much, it was more that many of the good points about it - most posters seemed to be generally good-natured, fun, positive, well-informed about the team, it was enjoyable to read - didn't seem to apply as much. Too much petty abuse, negativity, threads often dominated by a handful of folk having an argument. Still good to see some top drawer posters on this thread though! Thanks for the memories...

Fair play, I was wrong on that point. I had misread the below from the FIFA regulations. It's only if there's a dead heat on just about everything else that the head-to-head comes in to it. "6. In the league format, the ranking in each group is determined as follows: a) greatest number of points obtained in all group matches; (b) goal difference in all group matches; c) greatest number of goals scored in all group matches. If two or more teams are equal on the basis of the above three criteria, their rankings shall be determined as follows: d) greatest number of points obtained in the group matches between the teams concerned; e) goal difference resulting from the group matches between the teams concerned [...]"

Goal difference is very unlikely to matter if we end up on the same points as Slovakia. The teams are separated by the head-to-head results first. Unless we beat them 3-0, goal difference won't come in to consideration. It's why we need to win both games. A win vs Slovakia and a draw vs Slovenia will put us on 18pts, which is where Slovakia will finish after beating Malta in their last game. In that scenario we would also have the worry of missing out as the worst runner-up, even if we had somehow managed to beat Slovakia 4-0 to finish second, for example. Now, even by our usual standards that really would be a kick in the baws...

aye it's usually about £225-£250 per head. Depending on match and timing. They offer a small discount if you are feeling very flush and want to buy packages for every game in the qualifiers!!

I can highly recommend it - have done it twice, and was a brilliant day each time. Get there about 2h 30 before k/o as I recall. Food surprisingly good and beer and wine flowing liberally. Waiter appointed to your table to look after you all day. Great service, friendly and very efficient. Pie and a cup of tea or coffee at half time. An hour or so of the free bar afterwards for another couple of beers whilst the crowds die down outside. Programme, team sheet etc. They used to have a little kiosk taking bets as well wi coupons on the table but don't know if that's still going! Obviously you can't turn up in jeans, trainers and a fitba top, but it isn't too formal or stuffy either. No jacket or tie required, nothing like that. A normal shirt, trousers, pair of shoes. Only drawback is that although seats are obviously very good, the atmosphere sitting in the South Stand just isn't the same, so I would not do it for a big game with an intense atmosphere like Ireland, Germany, Poland etc. But for a Gibraltar or Lithuania, excellent. A really good day for a special occasion.

I have finally got round to looking at travel plans for the tickets I got in the first ballot, and to decide whether there's any games I should give up in the interests of saving a few quid for the Scotland autumn campaign. And of course I find that I have just missed the closure of the resale portal. Agh! Anyway, if there is any interest in the below tickets, please let me know. - Iceland v Austria, Paris, Wed 22 June at 1800 - 2 x Category 2 tickets. Face value Euro 210 the pair. - 2nd round game, Paris, Mon 27 June at 1800 (winner E v runner-up D - 2 x Category 2 tickets. Face value Euro 210 the pair.

It's Jaco Peyper for the Italy game. Reffed us when we won 9-6 in Australia. Maybe a good omen although he should have given us a penalty for the winning kick one scrum before he did!

Looking at that list of ref, assistant ref and TMO appointments, it is striking that of the 60 available places across 15 matches, there is not one SRU referee appointment. Zero. Even our refereeing is sub-standard these days! When was the last time a Scottish ref was appointed for a 5 or 6N match (even as an assistant?) I honestly can't remember one.

If rugby matches lasted 40 minutes we would be sensational. Even last season at Twickenham we were winning at half time. I think the phrase '80 minute performance' must have been used in every Scotland press conference for the last 5 years. Or longer. It looked like we came out in the second half and decided to start playing percentages, ie kicking it away every time until they finally got a hold of it and did some damage. As has happened before, when we started to think we might be able to win this, we stopped doing what had put us in that position and froze up. Crap refereeing aside (Clancy - must be getting paid by the word), it was difficult to escape the conclusion that our line-out cost us the game. That and our painful lack of strength in depth, particularly in the front row. In the world cup and so far this time we have been relatively lucky wi injuries, but if that changes we will be exposed still further. On the bright side, two cracking tries and what a difference to see Seymour completely dominating the kick reception, both defensively and going forward. That has been such an area of weakness recently. The bookies have us 4/9 to win in Rome which seems to rate us incredibly highly to me. Although of course wi the usual daft optimism that always prevails I am already thinking not of the seemingly inevitable 1/4 or 0/5 record, but that we can win against Italy, and surely we're looking better than France to win the next home game, and then well of course Ireland are suffering badly wi injuries for the match in Dublin...

Poor from us, reminds me of when we lost 6-13 at home to them a few years ago when they were in another rebuilding phase. A great chance wasted. As noted above, whilst we have some excellent backs they are either out of form or recovering from injury. Having watched Glasgow struggle consistently this season, with a handful of bright spots, it was not a great surprise but still very disappointing. We had the life strangled out of us towards the end with the replacements in the scrum obviously not of the same standard as the first picks. I firmly believe that our first XV- if all available AND in decent form - is a very good team, despite this result, and hopefully one day they will actually prove it in some six nations matches. But it's not easy to keep that line going wi my six year old son who has only seen us win one game in his living memory! At least by taking him to see us vs. Japan, Samoa and USA I have managed to show him it isn't always gloom and doom. Enjoyed watching the Ireland Wales game yesterday because it was close, but in all honesty I thought it was pretty poor. A draw was fair because neither of them deserved more. Plenty of mistakes, shortage of quality, lack of imagination. It was the most compelling of three pretty average contests. Another couple of weeks of this and the 'why aren't we as good as the Southern Hemisphere' bandwagon will be going at full tilt. Meanwhile I will start preparing for Italy away wi the 'early wooden spoon decider' script already written.

I've been lucky enough to go to five games so far wi two more to go. Agree that the pricing has been over the top but then again, full grounds everywhere suggest that it's all fine. I remember going to see Scotland Uruguay at Murrayfield in 1999. Ticket was £25 which seemed like a fortune at the time. It was a midweek afternoon. There were 9,500 rattling about in the ground!!

There is a very good article here by Simon Taylor which explains why the line out was called that way. Still a balls up, but you can at least see what they were thinking. Would have been a clean take if the throw had not been too strong, basically. Took the risk out of the jump, but put it into the throw instead...I feel for Fraser Brown who will always think that it sits on his shoulders. http://www.scotsman.com/sport/rugby/latest/simon-taylor-laidlaw-and-cotter-were-winners-after-all-1-3921797#axzz3p5z3HhNO I am pleased that neither Laidlaw nor Cotter have entered into the Joubert witch hunt. On the contrary I think they have been models of restraint and dignity. It's not the team's fault if Hastings and Matt Dawson went OTT. I would have been interested to see how the Aussies would have dealt wi it if the boot had been on the other foot.

mine was £35 in the Shed. Best 35 quid I have spent in some time. Brilliant atmosphere and a great win. Certainly the best/noisiest I have heard from a Scotland rugby support.

Any other pub recommendations other than teagues for tomorrow? getting in at 1145 tomorrow at the station and I doubt we will have time to get down to the docks, back up to the station, and have enough time to pick a decent spot in the Shed! So it's pubs on the way to/ near the ground for us. Really looking forward to this!

The way I see it, if we win then we should have a good chance of finishing second; we need to beat Poland or Germany at home to do it. If we draw, then we are pulled back in to the contest wi Ireland for third spot. Second still achievable but likely need to win all three of the remaining games. I'm not talking about where a defeat would leave us. That p1sh will be left behind wi memories of the 2007 disaster

One thing I could never understand is the mentality of supporting Scotland depending upon the extent to which a particular squad included your club team's players or a rival club team's players. I remember hearing a Rangers supporter in the pub around France 98 saying to his pal that he hoped Scotland get beat in every game this time because the squad was full of Celtic players, and Brown had left McCoist at home. Club allegiances seem to come up very rarely on away trips, other than for the purposes of good natured taking the p1ss out of each other, and that's the way it should be.

Applied for 9 matches, got 6, mainly by applying at category 2 and ticking the box of 'would you accept another category'. Accommodation in Marseilles around the games is very scarce. Probably travel agents have block booked the rooms and will sell them on at a premium. Rooms generally become available at some point though so no point fretting just yet. Of course hopefully we qualify and then all current plans for these games will be up in the air again...

Kaunas is also, for me, the worst Scotland trip. The whole experience was completely out of step wi every trip before and since. The boorish, aggressive locals was the difference. The tin lid in 2003 was losing to a sh1t team to a dodgy penalty on a snowbound terrace. The gloating locals on the way back down the hill. Riding about in their cars, tooting their horns and waving their flags, yelling abuse out of the windows. The folk in the streets trying to wind us up and provoke some bother. And the neo-Nazi home support at the u21 game in Vilnius wi their seig heils towards us. Their goalscorer Kucys running straight to us to noise us up in a game where it was laughable that we didn't win 4 or 5 -1, but ended up losing 2-1. It all added up to an unlovely whole. In 2007, a rather quiet walk back down the same hill. Stitch that. Mikolauinas's shameless cheating in the return game kind of summed their team up for me. What a ---t.

I also watched it recently. It's certainly an interesting experience to watch it again in the cold light of day when you are not dreading that every time they lump it forward there might be a scruffy goal and a disastrous 2-1 defeat. The over-riding impression was that it must be a tough time to support Ireland at the minute - going on to the park hoping to score rather than in expectation. We didn't create many clear openings ourselves but when the game calmed down a bit in the second half we played some very good fitba in parts and showed glimpses of what we're capable of. There were some definite 'end of season' performances - giving the ball away needlessly, even in the second half. They had the one major chance when Marshall saved wi his legs shortly after 1-1 following that very good Hoolahan through ball. Otherwise we looked a lot more comfortable than I felt at the time... I subsequently watched the Georgia home game - what a contrast in terms of the quality of the fitba on show. We were very, very good that day in possession and in creating chances. Enjoyable to watch. It would have been ridiculous if we had ended up wi a 1-1 draw when they had that chance at the end. If we can play like that again then we will do very well in Tbilisi. The main concern was the inability to finish off the chances. The concern remains that if his eye is not in, Naisy will needs four or five excellent chances to get one goal.

personally the most enjoyable trips have always been those which are very different/unique experiences - Belarus, Moldova, Faroe Islands, Georgia come to mind - Dublin is great and the people were very friendly but it's like a variation on what we have at home, so it can't reach the same heights as some other trips, as enjoyable as it was.

It may have changed but in 2007, it was fine at the airport as long as you don't mind haggling in Russian and/or sign language and know that you must agree a price before you get in the car. Did all that last time late at night but this time we'll be four and will organise a transfer first to avoid the hassle.

I watched back the video of the home game over the weekend. I was reminded how well we played and that it was ridiculous that we were only 1-0 up and at risk of an equaliser near the end. If we can put in something like that level of performance again we will do well. I know it's an away game, it might be hot, they have a new manager etc, but we looked much better on that show and if we can have the confidence to play our game freely then I think we will come out of this well. Was also reminded of how much joy Robertson and Anya had against their defenders, and how much their goalie flapped at crosses (including for the goal). Bookies have us at 11/10 and that's a shorter price than we have been for an away game (bar Faroes etc) in a very long time.

We had a terrific time. Locals were brilliant, very friendly. Before the match, a number of the troops wandered past a wedding in full progress and were invited in for the bevvy and dancing. Tbilisi was very run down and shabby in places but there was some great food - lots of grilled meats, aubergine, walnut sauces, stews, classic Georgian grub, and the famous kachapuri cheesey bread! One of our party had a particularly delightful scrambled egg and sheep's brain as I recall. Red wine fantastic, beer alright. Pretty cheap throughout. We had a great trip to the David Geji (sp? no the boy from the Wedding Present) monastery. Right on the Azerbaijani border, you could see over the way. Great beery singalong on the way there and back. Stopped off at a restaurant proposed by the tour guide which was great. Lots of toasts - they love their toasts. 'To Georgian culture'. 'To Scottish women'. 'To music'. 'To Scottish literature'. 'To football and friendship'. etc etc. An amusing moment amidst the beer wine and brandy to realise that the guide and the driver! are doing a 'linked arms' toast wi the local firewater. Easy on the 50% spirits there, designated driver! Then the minibus ran out of petrol in the outskirts of Tbilisi! Woke up in a thunderstorm to find us stuck at the side of the road and the driver off wi a jerrycan. The guys very apologetic. We didn't hold it against them. Georgia seems to have a very happy, laid back, 'it will be alright' kind of a vibe which makes it difficult to be too annoyed when things don't quiet run as smoothly as they could. Happy days, it was a brilliant trip right up to that appallingly bad game of fitba. (How many times have we said that before??!) This time I reckon it will be different on the park, no different off it.