Fearchar

Or maybe they should be on the interviewing panel? (You know - good cop: bad cop.)

Two months too early!

I doubt it: it's much more likely to be down to Rowser simply getting older and moving on to a career in which football is not the mainstay. (He may still play for a while, but part-time.)

A good sign for the future: obviously the money spent on the 50-50 draw is being put to good use.

What surprises me is that no-one has yet mentioned how long Simon Donnelly has given Thistle good, and at times superb, service. He has stuck with Thistle through some of the worst managerial periods and at times when he was the sole representative of a better way of playing, and then proceeded to persuade Jackie to come to Thistle, finally passing on some of his skills through coaching to our new, exciting style of attacking play. SID owed the club nothing, and could have gone elsewhere for much higher pay. Simon Donnelly's loyalty to his friend has eventually taken him away, but the club owes him a lot, even if he'd be the last person to shout about it or even mention it.

Given the park and the Cowdenbeath style of play, surely 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 would be better. That would also allow Doolan to take Lawless' place beside Erskine.

If an interim management team is to be put in place, then not just Archie and Shuggie should be considered, but also Son of Joe, whose playing career may be drawing to a close in the not too distant future too, and whose public statements showed a care with words that isn't normally associated with professional footballers.

It would be more of a worry, in my opinion, if Maxwell were to leave with them. He has been a bit of an unsung hero, managing the off-park affairs of the club extremely well.

We can be encouraged that we're left with a strengthened team and a setup, with a general manager in charge of running the club, that allows the board to choose good coaches to succeed McNamara and, probably, Donnelly. That may not be such a hard task as choosing an overall manager, especially since there are at least two potential candidates among the current players.

Admit it! Who shouted "I love you!" to Balatoni after he scored.

There is a pattern to our play that is becoming a worry - dominance of games, but silly goals given away by a defence caught flat-footed, and plenty of opportunities to score, but very few being put away. My explanation is a bit different: where the team played the ball on the deck through the centre early on in the season and so ran opposition teams ragged, scoring freely while doing it, what is happening now? Almost every ball is played out to the wings in the hope of a cross that will catch the opposition unawares. Maybe someone can tell us what kind of attacking the likes of Cowdenbeath or Dumbarton is really used to - is it fluid passing movements through the centre or is it high balls lumped into the penalty box? If we really want to succeed at this dull kind of head tennis, then it shouldn't be Craig that is leading the line, but Balatoni, who seems capable of getting on the end of most high balls. In my opinion, if the team stuck to what it's good at - playing a more direct passing game through the centre - more goals would be scored (and if some of them come from conceded penalty kicks and free kicks, does that cancel the goals out?) and the play would look better to spectators. There would also be less likelihood of losing possession so often. This typically British play from the wings is not just dated but also ineffective against inferior teams. The likes of Bayern München or Barcelona don't use it, and they seem to be doing alright. Although Craig is relatively effective, his presence seems to encourage the team to try dropping high balls into the box, which is taking away from more effective attacking means. I''d like to see Doolan, who is a more cunning, less predictable and more alert striker, in his place. (It's also worth thinking about how many goals each has scored in relation to the time they've been on the pitch this season.) There were several occasions today when Craig was looking about, trying to spot the loose ball in the box. In such situations, Doolan is usually much sharper.

(Context: my statement was "Again, that isn't some kind of unfortunate accidental clash: force has to be applied intentionally to cause that kind of damage.") An injury like that has to be caused by a concentrated impact, which is either a smash with an arm or a fist. From the replay, it looks as if McGovern turned away from the challenge, raising both his right leg and his right arm. The swing of his arm as he turned away from the ball caught Lawless in the face. Possibly McGovern was trying to protect himself from the impact, but it's my view (admittedly easier to come to from a replay) that it should have been a straight red for dangerous play.

I think the replay shows clearly that it there couldn't have been many questions if Falkirk's number 10 had had an early bath - a shocking assault from behind. As has been pointed out, Falkirk's players have resorted to this maltreatment of Erskine in the past, which suggests that there is a pattern emerging. Again, that isn't some kind of unfortunate accidental clash: force has to be applied intentionally to cause that kind of damage. The real wonder is how Falkirk managed to keep 11 players on the park for the 90 minutes. It wouldn't have happened in most other European footballing countries.

That game was lost in the dugout: if your team dominate midfield for half the game and keep putting one cross after another into the box, only for it to be defended, then it's time to try another approach. What the team did was presumably what they were told to do - more of the same, in the hope there would be a different result. Craig did not contribute (and it doesn't matter what the reason was), whereas Doolan was near to scoring a couple of times: so why substitute Doolan rather than Craig, if you want to freshen things up? That was poor decison-making from Jackie. The Dumbarton manager, on the other hand, had it sussed: keep pressing Thistle players to play the long-ball game, and they'll lose possession while they're piling forward, making a sucker punch all the more likely. The result? 2 goals up, and packing the box will wrap up the game. A lesson for our rookie manager, I hope. (Don't forget that Falkirk did the same and Cowdenbeath has come close to it too.)

"The top two divisions would split after two rounds of fixtures in which teams had met home and away. "The top eight clubs would then meet a further twice home and away, while the bottom four clubs would play against the top four from the Championship. "These eight clubs would have their points re-set to zero then meet twice, home and away, with the bottom four clubs being relegated at the end of the season. "The bottom eight clubs in the lower division would also play-off against one another." That's just a dog's breakfast. Oh, for an SFA that had the cojones to tell them they'll have proper-sized divisions as the customers want, and any clubs that don't like it can go and join the Northern Irish League. After all, we've all seen how Armageddon has failed to arrive: so the boot really is firmly on the other foot, and as the national body the SFA should be representing the interests of the paying customer that keeps the whole thing going. In any case, why can't the SPL get to grips with the fact that they're in the entertainment business - not that of providing cheap TV? (And TV will become much, much cheaper: that's not a business that can afford to throw money around, especially after the cutbacks hit the BBC.)

Was that Balatoni that lost his footing in the box just before the final goal? He seems to slip more often than anyone else in the team: is he wearing the wrong kind of studs?

Am I the only one whose eyes glaze over amid talk of splits? If it's a proper, grown-up league, then it has a good number of teams competing against each other. If, on the other hand, it's a knockout competition, then it's a cup competition, in which the lowlier teams are almost always knocked out early on - and with plenty of extra games for the more able teams. If you're trying to crossbreed these, then all you end up with is a chimera, and they can't survive.

That's how I see it, too: the game should have been wrapped up by halftime, but one chance after another was squandered. Craig just wasn't fast enough to beat the Livingston defence or even to put their goalkeeper under serious pressure after a passback, while Doolan, who would have been quick enough, was forced to play deeper to accommodate Craig.

My family's four season-ticket places (2 for each st) will not be needed, since all four of us are going for hospitality. Christmas has had to be postponed, of course, till late 2013.

Presumably there have to be calculations about how long the heating has to be on for the pitch to thaw out, without leaving patches frozen.

Yes.

What a pity to see this discredited (and renamed) "charity" pushing its views here! It has argued vigorously for years that all men should be screened for prostate cancer, despite overwhelming (peer-reviewed, statistically relevant, medical) evidence that this would harm many, many men - rendering them impotent, incontinent and/or depressed to the point of taking their own lives. More and more men are dying with prostate cancer - but they're not dying of it: they're dying of old age, as expected lifespans increase. Prostate cancer is a disease of age - a natural phenomenon. Here's a free explanation of what prostate cancer is and what (not) to do about it: http://www.cancerwa.asn.au/articles/news-2010-media-releases/new-book-challenges-prostate-cancer-testing The biggest study on testing for prostate cancer ever carried out (on thousands of men in eight countries) came to the conclusion that it resulted in too many men dying and being mutilated, due to false results. "To prevent one prostate-cancer death, 1410 men (or 1068 men who actually underwent screening) would have to be screened, and an additional 48 men would have to be treated." Also, "Overdiagnosis and overtreatment are probably the most important adverse effects of prostate-cancer screening and are vastly more common than in screening for breast, colorectal, or cervical cancer." (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0810084#t=articleDiscussion)

Perhaps it's relevant to point out that after that game Jefferies was talking about a pull and Dargo said he'd been clipped on the ankle. To most of us watching, it was a push - if a light one. Dargo's version looks like an excuse for going down, but at any rate it's obvious that someone somewhere was making excuses on the basis of something that didn't happen.

Perhaps it could be played midweek at the end of January.

Is there really any point in sending a manager to the stand nowadays? They can stay in touch with the dugout using a phone or walkie-talkie, and get a better view of the game too.