Shotts56

I always thought Rab Douglas was a not-too-bad keeper, until I saw a photo in the paper the day after that game of him coming out for a cross for one of their early goals and trying to catch the ball with his eyes closed. A devastating first half hour, meaning we then had to sit there for the rest of the game knowing we had blown it and we were out :-(

As a supporter, I quite like the long distance away trips, always have done. When Accies were in the Third Division, highlights of the season were going to Elgin and Peterhead. Now in the Premier League I enjoy going to Inverness & Dingwall. Makes for a great day out, IMO.

I like it too, a great wee city. Would much rather go there for a day/night out than London.

Accies haven't announced yet, but was £300 last year. I would imagine the same again this year. My good lady's Dunfermline season ticket renewal has just come in at £210, which feels not too bad.

Exactly. If this had happened in a lesser nation, FIFA would already be on the case suspending the national team for political interference (as has happened a few times recently).

Fair point, can't disagree with that.

Section MILF ? Outstanding

Agree with every word. Absolutely the most gutted I have ever felt at any Scotland game, being knocked out the World Cup by Morocco and having to head home the next day, instead of heading south to Marseille for a second round tie. Going out of Euro 96 on goal difference thanks to that late consolation goal as well was also a sickener.

We (Accies) charged for season ticket holders in the play-offs v Falkirk and Hibs last season. Being honest, it never ever crossed anyone's mind that season tickets would be valid, there was just the assumption that they wouldn't be. If they're not valid for cup ties (as they haven't been for about 20 years) because gate money is split, they were never going to valid for the play-offs for the same reason. Of course, now that a big club is involved, out comes the greeting claiming "its no' fair".

Absolutely. We did well v Holland and were unlucky to lose 1-0, but we then absolutely destroyed Germany in our second game. We missed half a dozen gilt edged chances in the first 15 mins and should have been out of sight. Germany scored a scrappy goal totally against the run of play, we then proceeded to batter them some more, before Germany broke away late on and a cross took a deflection over Andy Goram and landed in the back of the net. To this day I still cant believe how unlucky we were to lose that game. Justice (a little bit) was done when we hammered Russia 3-0 in the final game to finish 5th out of 8 in the tournament, but that was a very very good team under Roxburgh who deserved a semi-final place, at least. We were certainly much better than Germany or the hosts Sweden, who both got to the semis.

Brown and Roxburgh for me. Mocked by the Scottish media because they never played at a high level or pandered to the Old Firm, which I think unfortunately rubbed on off some of our supporters.

I flew into DME airport last year and it was a fair hike, about 40 mins on the express train into town. I gather SVO airport is even further away. Stay away from airport taxis, all the ones I spoke to at 4am were all wanting in the region of £100 to go into town. I waited until the first train at 6am and got that for, off memory, less than a tenner. Worth going into Moscow and just scooting about on the metro for a while. Lots of see in Moscow, and the underground in itself is something else. Maybe worth picking up a local SIM card (even if just for a day) so you can get google maps etc on your phone, thats what I did and got 4GB of data for a tenner. Makes the whole wandering about thing a bit easier.

No, it was Boksic who scored that day. Prosinecki was phenomenal around that time, especially the game at Hampden, and if he had scored I would say he was probably one of the best ever to score against us. Scholes scoring 2 in the 1999 game at Hampden must be a candidate. If you ask people in football (Platini, Pirlo, Zidane etc), they all say Scholes is one the best they have ever seen. Agree with earlier comments about Zico and Shevchenko. Other ones that spring to mind are Hagi (Romania 1 Scotland 0 in the early 90s), Michael Ballack for Germany v us in Dortmund in 2003, and maybe Raul when he equalised for Spain v us in Valencia. At a slight tangent, in 30 years of watching Scotland, I have never seen an opposition player so good against us as Gareth Bale was in Cardiff. He's not the best in the world by any means, but I have never seen anyone single handedly win a game so well as he did that day.

Yes, I noticed that as well. You are lucky if there was 90 seconds of play between the goal on 87 mins and the final whistle 8 minutes later. The referee seemed as though he couldn't wait to blow up.

Agree with that.

We were very very good at Tannadice a couple of weeks ago and their keeper played a blinder. Still cant believe we lost that 1-0. As much as it pains me, I would still be betting on a comfortable win for Motherwell on Friday, maybe 3-0. Usually at this stage of the season, teams who have something to play for tend to get the better of teams who have downed tools for the season. :-(

I would probably go with that. It wont be a Paris-type 25k in the stadium, but I certainly think 10-12k is realistic.

Never heard of that in Scotland, but there certainly is (or used to be) in Spain. It was 10% IIRC.

Scotland 0 Colombia 0 in a dull friendly at Hampden in 1987. It was terrible, but I was hooked.

I agree. I love the Friday night games - Accies always get bigger crowds on a Friday night, for some reason, and its great going from work straight to the game, beers after the game, and you still have your whole weekend ahead of you. The geographical considerations you mentioned above are a no-brainer. Stick to that, and Friday night games are a great idea.

Did the Belfast-Dublin train for the game in 2000, and what I do remember is that the buffet car ran out of alcohol VERY quickly, ie 10 mins into the two hour journey. Fortunately we had a carry-out, but lots of people didn't.

Agree, its a fundamental principle of football all over the world that deciding league games all have to be played at the same time. Has been that way since the 1982 World Cup game that saw West Germany and Austria fix a 1-0 result that put them both through and eliminated Algeria, who had already played. Sadly, the SPFL must be the only association in the world who completely ignore that. They did the same with the split this season. Going into Saturday there, the last two top-six places were between St Johnstone, Dundee and Hamilton. St Johnstone and Hamilton's fixtures finished at 5pm on Saturday, and Dundee have a two week rest before their last pre-split game against Celtic on 22 April. Hamilton made a balls-up of it so it didn't matter, but we could very easily have had a scenario of everyone finished apart from Dundee, giving them a clear advantage going into their outstanding game in a knowing exactly what they have to do, and nothing anyone else could do about it.

Indeed. They had some brass neck on them to say that it was a completely random draw.

Anyone looked into hiring a submarine ? Now that would be an interesting travel option.

Indeed. A few years ago when it was between Accies and St Mirren for relegation, Accies had to play St Mirren away 3 times and only once at home. Can you imagine the reaction if three Old Firm games were at Ibrox and only one at Celtic Park, or vice versa ? Their poor wee heads would explode. Will be a cold day in hell before the preferential treatment the OF get in the post-split fixtures is scrapped just so their fans don't get all upset.