Opinion

The 30th anniversary of the release of the Blue Nile’s magnificently melancholic album Hats received a measure of recognition this week.

The post-mortem will go on for a long time, as indeed it must. It should, however, be extended well beyond an examination of coaches, players and performances, for it is likely that such an examination will yield few useful results. Indeed it might lead to the conclusion that, things being as they are, we did a bit worse than we had hoped, but it is unlikely we could have done much better.

Rose Reilly was unsure as to the identity of the sporting deity making a bee-line towards her on Thursday while watching Italy play Northern Ireland in the Under-17 Championship qualifying round at Oriam.

Craig Fowler takes a look at the problems with St Mirren as Jim Goodwin's side go into this weekend's clash with St Johnstone off the back of six games without victory.

Exercise has been described as a miracle cure and could transform the health and happiness of us all if Scotland was turned into a ‘sporting nation’.

Back to Tokyo for my last week here including a quarter-final weekend which sadly doesn’t involve Scotland but two mouth-watering matches to cover – New Zealand v Ireland on Saturday and Japan v South Africa on Sunday.

Heading home, heads bowed and nursing wounds, Scotland have now been kicked while they’re down and cast as the bad guys by 
the Rugby World Cup organisers. Misconduct charges have been issued against the SRU for comments made about the potential cancellation of the final group match against Japan, as the destructive Typhoon Hagibis descended upon the Tokyo-Yokohama area.

Gregor Townsend’s insistence that he will not quit as Scotland coach all but ensures there will be no imminent change at the top.

Hampden was supposed to have been a mausoleum to a Euro 2020 group campaign that Scotland are desperate to see interred. Yet, in truth, it wasn’t at all.

It has been alarming to watch Scotland’s decline over the past 18 months. This result shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone. Other teams have advanced and we, patently, have not.

It seems a long way from reporting on Kelso Community Council and the never-ending public complaints about dog dirt as a cub reporter in the Borders two decades ago, when I got my start with The Southern Reporter.

There’s a piece of old footage in glorious monochrome which will never gather dust because it’s pretty much always in use. Programme-makers in TV sports departments invariably reach for the clip because it perfectly illustrates how much footballers have changed, how much footballers’ downtime has changed, how much the image of the footballers’ wives has changed.

W e have been hunkering down in Japan along with the rest of this country which never underestimates the danger of a typhoon, a reasonable position to take since the last big one claimed over 100 lives.

Journalists have often previewed matches while aware that vile weather may lead to postponements. Today is different, for the pool match between Scotland and Japan is threatened with cancellation, not postponement, the latter being, according to Alan Gilpin, World Rugby’s tournament director, “unfeasible on logistic and safety grounds”.

Scottish football lost another link to a less confrontational and more gentlemanly past with the passing of John Smith at the age of 77 last week.

The sacking of Jack Ross by Sunderland this week may have caused a cold sweat to break out among some of Scottish football’s current managerial fraternity.

Steven Gerrard will enjoy some light relief when he pulls his boots back on in the name of a good cause at Ibrox this afternoon.