RickMcD

Classic obfuscation from you. sally02 asked direct questions which you have ignored. You trot out the same old shit ad nauseam which is good coming from someone who continually demands answers. I'm losing sleep over the USH. I don't personally know anyone who is a SMiSA committee member. At least not as far as I am aware, living a wee bit away. Don't see many jumping onto your bandwagon although you probably are spreading unease. You are an attention seeker extraordinaire as you have demonstrated in the past. The only area where I might be slightly on your side is my feeling that the SMiSA committee could be accused perhaps of being slightly arrogant. They don't think their decisions should be queried at all and seem a bit loath to respond to criticism whether it is deserved or not. I couldn't be at the AGM but it sounded a bit like they were unprepared to be ambushed by you even though you have previous for being a bloody nuisance. In case there is any doubt about where I stand, I will continue to support SMiSA 100% But please keep us all up to speed with developments. And why don't they publish minutes?

I've heard it called a lot worse. Now, I'm not one to point out spelling errors (believe it or not a guy used to always point them out on this forum) but I must point out that there is no 'h' in Shankill. Incidentally, how you pronounce the letter 'h' over here determines your religious affiliation. Pronouncing it 'haitch' brands you immediately. If you like a bit of Erse, Shankill derives from the Irish Language word Seanchill, meaning old church. Incidentally, a few years back I Googled Shankill for something or other and spotted the heading 'Best places to stay in Shankill'. I thought it had to be a joke but discovered Shankill is also the name of a few places in the Republic. The best place to stay in the Shankill in Belfast would be well worth seeing.

You say that nobody is blaming Gordon for anything but I thought when reading through it that there was an element of innuendo. Maybe you should have fronted this with the first post as those of us who have been around for a few years know well that LPM has previous for hysterical overreaction and continually on the search for bogeymen. Everyone has to have an angle apart from him. As the days passed last week I almost added a post to suggest that the SMiSA AGM could possibly be delayed to allow the committee an opportunity to take on board the criticisms and get their act together. I assumed there wasn't a lot to these complaints and while I am still minded to believe that, I can't help but think that the AGM sounds to have been a bit of a shambles. I still fully support SMiSA and am totally in support of the fans' buyout. However, I hope they don't get complacent. There is a sense of unease clearly and I hope if there has been any equivocation then SMiSA should come clean, tell the truth and then get on with things. No mushroom treatment and publish minutes. Why can't minutes be passed to members.

What does it mean? Is it a secret code? Mind you, on the Shankill and parts of East Belfast, 'our' is pronounced are. The tattooist maybe thought the guy said 'our' and the prick that got it is too stupid to know there is a spelling mistake.

Definitely one of your best ever posts, Oaky.

Sad days indeed. The quote from The Fonz seems to indicate that the poor woman had real problems.

Were you not too keen on Jackie Neilson?

Suppose Baker Street is out of the question. He was an American and there is a Baker Street somewhere else allegedly with a bit of a Paisley connection. Pity Cocklesloan exists elsewhere. Ferguson Way covers two former St. Mirren men but they both have connections with the manky mob.

A Spangle used to be a sweetie. If you're talking about Faraway, he never has been.

You can Google it quite easily. It makes surprising reading in many ways. In fact it is a real eye-opener to many people who have preconceived notions of who did what to whom. I started coming over here on business in 1982 and have lived here since 85. I wasn't directly affected apart from never knowing what time I would get to the office in the morning or home again in the evening due to bombs going off or more likely bomb scares. Countless times I left Belfast round 5pm and got home to Bangor, 13 miles away, after 8pm. A few big bomb blasts were close enough to frighten the brown stuff out of me including two here in Bangor. In the second of those bombs, a friend of mine's mother who was in the RUC lost a foot. Luckily nobody was killed. The nephew of a very close friend of mine was shot dead by the IRA up beyond Cookstown on the border between Tyrone and Derry. Mistaken identity. They were trying to kill his boss. That murder had Martin McGuinness's fingerprints all over it. The daughter of a client of mine was shot dead in a café in West Belfast by King Rat aka Billy Wright Her crime? She was a 17 yr old girl working in a café which was largely staffed by Catholics. She wasn't a Catholic and in fact was from a very religious Protestant family who forgave Wright many years ago. I wouldn't have. When Wright got shot in jail, a friend of mine from the RUC said to me 'Good riddance'. If you had asked me twenty years ago what I thought of McGuiness, my reply would have been full of expletives deleted. But I came to admire him greatly. I'm genuinely sorry that he has died. He will be missed in our chaotic political situation. I know Lady Sylvia Hermon and she told me that when her husband Sir Jack died (he was a former chief constable of the RUC) the first person to phone her was Martin McGuiness closely followed by Gerry Adams. It was another few days before any Unionist politician contacted her. McGuiness committed many terrible crimes. I came to admire him greatly and I genuinely believe he helped create a much better quality of life for all of us living over here. He was a devout Catholic and he is now possibly in the hands of his God. It would have been interesting to have been a fly on the wall at that little meeting.

Seriously a few guys might get tanked up. Equally a few guys might enjoy a companionable beer or two without getting tanked up. Suggesting it is all alcoholism is hyperbole. So far as your final sentence is concerned, that goes without saying. You have demonstrated that many times over several years now.

Definitely a foxes paws but assuredly not a Freudian slip. (See my post of 5th. Feb when we stuffed Ireland.) I've now lived nearly half my life in Ireland and I support them in nearly every sport but never when they play Scotland at anything. I have mentioned my guilty secret before. I support England at cricket but only because we (Scotland) don't have a test team.

What a result for Ireland. I thought they had an outside chance but that was an incredible match. We had a ball down our local club. Never known it so noisy. Poor old England. There are three blind guys who come in the club regularly. Obviously they can't see the match and there is so much racket going on it's damned near impossible to hear, so one of the blind blokes called Joe listens on an ear piece. Trouble is whatever commentary he listens to is about fifteen seconds ahead of the TV commentary. I kid you not. But it was funny to hear Joe saying 'Oh, for f**k's sake!' when there was sod all happening on the screen or equally when he jumped to his feet shouting 'Ya f**king beauty!' when we saw nothing coming. Mind you, it was nice to know we had won a good twenty seconds ahead of the telly.

No, you got it right, Slarti. I've read it again and it still reads OK to me. Having been born in Ibrox is a hell of cross for a St.Mirren fan to bear.

Would just like to point out that I was responding to saintnextlifeline who referred to wee Nicky. It was she I was calling a clown. And I always call virtually all MP's clowns with only a handful of exceptions. I don't like our party political system. Never have. When it comes to talking about shitting themselves, I was amazed by the reaction of Merkel et al in the EU at the Brexit vote.They were bricking themselves even more than Cameron and he had diahorrea. Nothing has changed my opinion that we should have stayed in the EU until it implodes fairly soon. It's a busted flush and more and more people in Europe are beginning to realise that.

Hope you ain't talking about me. I wanted the two of them to get beat yesterday so I'm happy enough I suppose. Video replays will be introduced pretty soon. It works fine in many sports. In my post I didn't say whether I thought it was a penalty or not. I simply agreed with Strachan that from the angle the ref was seeing the incident it was impossible for him to be absolutely sure. When video replays inevitably get the green light, probably there will still be arguments. Maybe I should have said a bluey /green light in case I get accused of bias.

Agree entirely. If the SNP think Scotland is a voice in the wilderness in UK terms, what kind of clown thinks they will have more clout in the EU? In the unlikely event that the EU isn't the beaten docket that it is rapidly becoming, Scotland will be told to shut up and stay in it's small corner where it belongs. By the way, what do the British still need to agree to?

Easy for us sitting at home watching umpteen replays from several different angles. I'm no great fan of Strachan but I thought his take on it was about right. There was a camera behind the goal line and from that it was clear that the ref's view of what was going on was partly hidden by the defender's body. Strachan also made the point that the ball clearly got deflected to the left which could have led him to believe that the defender had made contact with the ball. And as Strachan said,, the referee has to have no doubt whatsoever to award the penalty. Part of the trouble is too, that if a defender as much as farts near some forwards, they go down like they were hit by a juggernaut. Sounds like Strachan and Thommo were singing from the same hymn sheet. A conspiracy I suppose. Refs have a thankless job.

I've had a look at their site and it seems if you have a UK or Irish address you can't get the match live. Is that correct?

Probably as well that we never adopted the old Native American habit of looking out of the tepee when a child was born and naming the child after the first thing they saw which resulted in one lad enjoying the name Two Buffalos Shagging. Your name might have been Saints Getting Stuffed. Or maybe a lot worse.

A friend of mine, sadly no longer with us, went all through Jordanhill College with Roger Hynd. Apparently he was a fitness fanatic who did all kinds of crazy things. His piece de resistance was to pile a mountain of gymnastic equipment in the gymnasium, almost all the way up to the roof and he would then run up to it, spring off a trampette and to a forward roll over the equipment, almost scraping the roof and then landing on his feet unscathed on the other side. Nobody else dared try it which always surprised me because back then a lot of those would-be PT teachers were half daft. Another story about him, probably apochryphal, was that when he visited such places as The Locarno or The Majestic, his chat up line was 'Fancy a shag?' Of course the retort was that he got an awful lot of slaps but almost as many shags. He was rubbish with Rangers but he did seem to have a decent career with Birmingham. RIP anyway, Roger.

If being born in Thornhill can count as Paisley, then I want to change my vote from Glasgow to Paisley. Wasn't my fault that my mother went to have New Year with my Gran in Ibrox and I happened to turn up early. Ibrox can't be much further than the Thorn from the boundary with Paisley. Come on guys! Back me up. Ibrox counts as Paisley.

Well, Oaky, dunno if you've got a fat arse but I am pretty sure you're not a lecturer. You're a self employed rocket scientist or some such I'm led to believe, I was toying with the idea of coming over to a match but I'm not coming for that one. I'll regret it if we beat them. I'm never comfortable at Parkhead or Ibrox and I just can't be arsed with all the crap that we hear at both grounds. A friend of mine over here who is a Celtic fanatic has invited me to go over with his crowd. I declined. Hope you get rid of your wheeze soon. You should invent a cure.

He was indeed. I was at the match when he replaced Jim Clunie, another great St.Mirren legend. I played in school and BB football with Archie and I went berserk when I saw his great goal in Argentina. I reckon it's impossible to pick 'the' greatest Saints player. Of those I saw, Archie is up there with the likes of Telfer, Clunie, Holmes and quite a few others. Plenty of others in fact. Davy McCrae's statistics take some whacking. I've always thought that the best I ever saw in pure footballing terms was Tommy Bryceland. What he could do with the ball at his feet was incredible.

I must have had my head in the clouds back then. I knew there were a load of wee nyaffs around but never thought it was a gang as such. Good on your old man and good on the Nice Policeman. Suppose someone on here will reprimand me for saying that. Years ago over here I was talking to a couple of RUC detectives in a Belfast pub and one of them had first joined the Polis in Greenock. When I told him I was from Paisley he went on to ask me if I knew Ferguslie Park. Apparently when there was action in Feegie on a Saturday night, some reinforcements occasionally got sent up from Greenock. This cop told me he enjoyed some of the most frightening nights of his life down there. The other cop told him not to be so stupid and asked him if Feegie was worse than Andytown, Short Strand or the Bogside and the answer was that they were all a dawdle compared to Feegie.