Fearchar

If you're going to write for radio, remember to include background effects. Perhaps you can get some from the club or the SFL - sounds from the crowd (especially recently). Another source might be several songs that feature Partick Thistle. Ask on here, and I'm sure you'll get some good advice. So much for the media; now for your questions. What's it like supporting Partick Thistle? What's in the psyche of a Jags fan? It has been longsuffering, in part down to recent ups and downs (particularly downs), but also due to the patronising attitude of many in Glasgow, particularly those that do not actually pay any attention to football but somehow see themselves as entitled to sneer on the basis that they belong to a tribe of hangers-on of one or other of the Old Firm clubs. The astonishing violence and paranoia among Old Firm supporters is, by and large, notable for its absence among Jags supporters. What is your most treasured memory of being a Thistle supporter? Not a public incident, but more of a process: introducing my sons to supporting Glasgow's only senior professional club that rejects any form of bigotry. That is not a small achievement in the hothouse of fervent tribalism that permeates this city. What are your feelings towards the Old Firm? Especially the Rangers debacle. To answer the latter first: Hell mend 'em! They are the unacceptable face of football, to steal Edward Heath's comment. Comparing them with any major European football club is a waste of time, since there is no equivalent. If these allegiances were not so entrenched in the media and the Scottish establishment, any reasonable authorities would have had them closed down long ago. In footballing terms, they are the maggot that is eating the apple of Scottish football from the inside - sucking all the goodness out of it (in terms of money) while giving nothing back, and even threatening to fly off at the first opportunity. Thistle are top of the league and in a cup final. How do you feel about how the season is progressing? What's changed this year? Will there be success at the end of it? I can't predict the future, but two things spring to mind: the football management team of Jackie McNamara and Simon Donnelly has been very successful despite their managerial inexperience, but also in large part due to having sound off-field support in the form of Ian Maxwell, who has moved smoothly from playing football to managing the club's off-field activities - a masterstroke by the new board. There may or may not be success this season, but there are certainly the signs of an attractive, forward-thinking approach to playing football not just in the first team but also throughout the club's teams. This is indicated by increasing crowds and also by the players that could earn more elsewhere being so keen to stay and benefit from the atmosphere and training at Partick Thistle. This even goes for apparently temporary employees, such as Graeme Smith, who was quickly drafted in to fill an unexpected gap. Finally, what are your thoughts after the game against Dunfermline at the weekend? It's not reasonable to expect to win every match. If German officials had been in charge of that game, the opposition would have been reduce to 8 or 9 players by the end of the match, but a First Division football club cannot expect any special indulgence from officials such as recognition of how football is developing everywhere else in Europe. Since the current management team is set on playing the right way without recourse to the kind of crude tactics that have tended to win the First Division in previous years, then there will be setbacks as attitudes among fans, officials and opponents will only change slowly. However, the current policies are making the Partick Thistle team into the most enjoyable team to watch in Scottish football: long may it continue!

On watching it again (a few times), I'm amazed that Barrowman didn't get a straight red for the first foul he was carded for, while the second could arguably have been a straight red too: he went straight for the ankles both times. (In some other countries, with notably more success in football, there would have been no question about it.) Interesting to see the TV highlights including these fouls: I think someone doing the editing decided to showcase a few fouls, which is rarely the case. Perhaps it was an attempt to embarrass Jefferies in the studio. Dargo, of course, was looking for a penalty by going down as soon as there was physical contact; to Jefferies, that was a "pull". Wrong direction, Jim! It's embarrassing to watch matches in which players foul time and again, and see that managers are encouraging their players to do these things (albeit without much sign of any finesse about it). Will someone in Scottish football please waken up and get officials to train in Germany or the Netherlands? The day of blood-and-snotters football is long gone everywhere else: why should we have to watch the dinosaurs walking out of the museum on to our pitches?

The criticism of Muirhead is unfair, as can be seen from the BBC commentary: "The busy Dargo looked to be in the clear chasing down a long ball, but Muirhead pushed the former Thistle forward who used all his experience to go down and force referee Steven McLean into a decision." That's diplomatic language, since experience doesn't really weigh very heavily on the slightly-built Dargo.

That's quite a good idea - offering a stand name as incentive for future attainments. If there are none, then it gets whipped away to be offered to someone else.

Dare I suggest that John Lambie wouldn't be first in the queue to be honoured in that way? http://ptfc.co.uk/media/video/interviews/2008-2009/david_mcparland

However, the team on Saturday was picked assuming that Dunfermline Athletic would try to attack, but Hamilton Accies are more likely to adopt the Falkirk approach. That may justify a different approach, perhaps with three up front.

Surely the obvious way to do it is just a slight alteration from the current system: promotion from the SPL into the SFL 3rd Division, and then on up through the divisions. You know it makes sense!

Row numbers have been repainted, following a mention of this a short time ago. Well done! Could Thistle perhaps advise Deutsche Bahn how to run a business so that it serves its customers?

That confidence and willingness both to bounce back and to kill off another team are commendable changes that have come since the Ian Maxwell/Jackie McNamara rule started. (I think that IM's responsibility for the organisation often goes unacknowledged: his efforts leave JM and Simon Donnelly free to concentrate on the pure footballing side of what is, after all, a business.) Despite some reservations about defensive cover (and there were some signs of that in the first half, especially - not just in the goal conceded), the flexibility of several utility players does give respite when facing enforced team changes. We are seeing players dropping out for one reason or another, but with others ready to step in and take their place. (E.g. Rowson, Archibald, Murray, Sinclair, Welsh, Bannigan.) Fox is just the latest in a series of these.

Steady on! They have to be fair about this: all applicants will have to be able to speak comprehensible English. That should stop any applicants from the resource that is the Scottish fooball managerial roundabout.

Surely the other point about Archie is that he's in charge of the reserves and coaching younger players that haven't made it into the first team yet: it's not as if he's being tossed aside and told he has nothing to contribute.

Was there a problem with lack of communication, or is Fox just a bit unworldly? Punting high balls up to one or two strikers in the thick of four defenders when your team is already one man down isn't rational behaviour. Of course we were going to lose possession! He could have thrown the ball out to a defender or midfielder, or even taken shorter kicks, but no.....the ball was just presented to Cove Rangers time after time. No wonder we lost a goal! We were lucky not to lose more: just think if the penalty had been properly placed. <shudder>

The "long S" (ß) in German is in fact two letters: "sz". English is a hybrid, although it has a lot of Germanic (but not much German) content. The tenses, for example, show this: we use a lot of continuing tenses, which are pure Celtic (language - not football!) and not Germanic.

I agree, but some of the problem comes from referees being too concerned about upsetting players and/or the crowd. If they were consistent about stopping the physical side of the game, yes, there would be loads of moaning Minnies with their slogans ("It's a man's game, ref!' 'It's a contact sport!'), but just look at how much benefit that approach has brought to the Scottish game. We've all seen the turgid, stodgy play where poor ball control and fear of a tackle lead to an over-dependence on lumping up the park. even at the highest level here. A few seasons ago, it seemed that referees in Scotland were trying to wrench football into the 21st century (and being castigated for being pernickety), but it looks as if they're sliding back to the early 20th. I don't know what the solution is, but even on the limited highlights we see, it's obvious that some serious physical attacks are being made on the field of play. Perhaps an officials' panel (not including those present on the field of play) should review all match recordings afterwards, and add extra penalties as they see fit. Maybe if players had to watch out for cameras as well as officials, they'd have to mind their behaviour.

Oh, did you have some too? We had some troglodytes nearby, too, urging the team to punt the ball up the park when we were in possession. When the team did........oh, well, we all saw what happened there.

One other point about Scott Fox: can someone not give him a cap to shield his eyes when the sun is low? This seemed so obvious, but it wasn't picked up. Morton should have been looking for corners from the sunny side all game. Maybe the fact that Craig Hinchcliffe has deepset eyes has, er. blinded him to this weakness in Scott Fox.

To be fair to Fox, he is not being defended in the box: opposition sides put someone directly in front of him, and no defender gets between them. This offers ample opportunity for "accidents" of various kinds to happen out of sight of the officials. Then Scott Fox is blamed for poor goalkeeping, when in fact he's being pinned back or down and not given the freedom to move that a goalkeeper needs. Murray looked as if he didn't really want to be there, and that was true in the previous game too. Jackie McNamara should have taken him off at halftime and put Bannigan in his place, bringing Sinclair on at left back. In the event, he was forced to do that, but by taking Erskine off. On that narrow park, where the long ball game was even being used by Scott Fox (not entirely ineffectively), Craig should have had another striker to combine with, and that could have been Erskine. Later on, once Craig began to tire, he could have been substituted with Doolan; he and Erskine know each other's play well enough by now to combine effectively as a striking pair. Lawless was being pummelled consistently, and although he won one free kick for his pains (literally!), he was subdued throughout the game. If the substitutions had been made and 4-4-2 adopted. we'd have been in with a chance. After all, it took almost half a match playing with 11 against 10 for Morton to score from open play. Slane was noticeable for making an obvious foul. He is a winger, and couldn't offer anything on this kind of park, but if that's his contribution, he can stay warming the bench. Muirhead should be Archie's successor as captain: Paton has been mentioned as a contender, but today he launched wild tackles even after being yellow-carded. Muirhead controls play at the back and sometimes spots openings and probes to take advantage of them, contributing one shot from a distance that, if it had been targeted a little lower, would have brought us back into the game - in addition to directing others from defence, and distributing the ball well. (He did fluff a few, but still got back to cover.)

It occurs to me that the tendency of the team to follow the opposition in playing head tennis may have been a result of the narrow pitch - apparently 70 yards as opposed to the 76 yards at Firhill. Our attempts to spread the play wide and provide crosses didn't come off. Maybe play on a pitch like this needs more running through the middle and less reliance on wing-backs.

Just the type of "football" played there would gie ye the boke. In general, it was turgid, static, stuff, with plenty of long balls into space (or at least lumped somewhere up the park) and clumsy first touches with very little ball control - an approach designed to shield players from their own weaknesses, such as chronic one-footedness. No wonder supposedly leading Scottish teams get dumped out of Europe at the first attempt at competing. Of course the likes of the zombies will come out on top at that kind of game: they're paid more highly to compete adequately with that kind of rank anti-football. However, when they get the better of other 3rd-Division sides, they're only winning due to the fitness of their full-time players - not because they play better. It's a thought that the standard of football may actually be higher in the 3rd Division than in the SPL, if the only real difference is fitness.

I've been given random complementary tickets by a Greenock Morton supporter at Cappielow - and because of that I'm more favourably disposed towards Greenock Morton than I would otherwise be, and I'm more likely to visit there again, even in the restricted legroom there.

Most of what can be said already has been, but I'd add that if a few of the shots late on in the first half had been on target, then it would have been much harder for Cowdenbeath to force their way back into the game. That great strike looked like a contender for goal of the season, by the way, and the OG would have been fired home by a Jags player if the defender hadn't stretched for it. There was one cross earlier on that I thought would have been snapped up by Doolan if he'd been on the park - a poacher's opportunity.

The last time Sinclair came on, Bannigan remained at left back and Sinclair played in front of him in midfield. (Erskine was playing more of a midfield role then, too, rather than alongside Lawless.) It's great to see such flexibility in the team.

Er, the team already has done, at NDP - much to my annoyance. According to Jackie McNamara, the players are being encouraged to play with confidence, and he's employing a psychologist to help. Please don't apply to help out. It was even more obvious at the game itself. He shielded the ball, bringing others into play; he is faster than Craig, enabling him to chase down a loose ball, and he can take it past opponents. The squad really does have some of the most exciting forwards in the division.

Was that why we were collecting Gibsons at one time - in the hope that we'd hit on brothers who knew what to expect of each other in the same team?

Some, maybe, but, as in all other walks of life, others have nerves of steel. (BTW, are you sure you aren't just gash at five-a-sides, regardless of your confidence? )