| 30th August - How refreshing to have still been in the UEFA Cup draw today and pulling Hertha Berlin out
of the hat/bowl/bag is a reasonable tie. Should pull a good crowd to Pittodrie and difficult though it will be
to play them, there is always the hope that we might somehow squeeze past. Of course Aberdeen fans have prior experience
of Hertha although not in competitive football. They were the club at the heart of a corruption scandal that saw
Zoltan Varga coming to Pittodrie to ply his genius for one short season. This season Hertha are showing similar
league form to the Dons and are lying 9th in the Bundesliga after 3 matches. Let's hope that their form takes a
plunge whilst ours rockets. Hertha have a few players that people will have heard of and they play at the Berliner Olympiastadion which has a capacity of 76243 so they should just about accommodate our traveling support in the second leg |
||
| 29th August - After another few hectic days in the history of AFC we find ourselves making a bit of progress
in Europe. Nistru Otaci were not a great side but they weren't a bad one either so all credit to the Dons on this
morsel of success. The first round draw beckons tomorrow and let's hope that we can get a tie that will both pull
in a big crowd and give us a chance of progressing even further. The way that football finances are right now we
need to make serious money out of Europe and if we get a good draw then we can look for TV coverage and all that
that means. Unnoticed by the BBC in their coverage of the match, Aberdeen have also signed up a new midfielder in the form of Nikolas Fabiano - a player who the manager has wanted for a long while now. Who knows, with the window about to close we might even get another one yet. This growing French community at Pittodrie will have us singing the Marseilles before long and there's already French bread available from the caterers. What next? Strings of onions? Eric Cantona? Let's celebrate some positive news for a change and get wound up for Sunday's match against Partick - we need the points. |
||
| 25th August - First things first – whatever TRF or Dons fans in general may think of Neil Lennon, that the
persistent intrusion of religion into football has forced him to give up playing his chosen sport for his country
is a dreadful thing. A ‘hoax’ it may ultimately have been but that could only be known after the (non) event. Under
the circumstances it’s hard to see any other decision Lennon could have come to and his plight is deserving of
all sympathy. One thing that all this has proved is that there are still some neanderthals out there who confuse the identity of football clubs with those of ecumenical denominations. That religious convictions, which almost without exception include some form of goodwill-to-others concept, have brought so many groups to each other’s throats over the centuries is paradoxical enough in its own right; that such zealots additionally choose to vent their hatred through association with sporting teams is not only illogical but also unfair to those who like their football just for what it is – only a game. To suggest, as some with more direct involvement have, that the death threat was in some way vindicated or mitigated by Lennon’s admission that he would play for a hypothetical united Ireland national team beggars belief. Much of the reporting of this incident (particularly that of the UK media at large) has tended to suggest that this is entirely a Northern Ireland problem. That’s only telling half the story. Lennon’s catholicism has never, as far as I am aware, been any kind of secret, and it never caused any problems while he represented Crewe and Leicester. Indeed there are many other catholic players in current and past NI squads – the extrrrrraordinary Marrrrtin O’Neill (another former national skipper) among them. The baiting of Lennon has only come to such a horrible head since his transfer to celtic, geographically at least a Scottish club. So this is a tumour which spans the Irish Sea. The club in question has been notably quiet in its response to the threatened murder of one of its players. It proclaimed itself ‘disappointed’ (a sparsity of expression panned in an excellent piece by Tom Lappin in The Scotsman), and O’Neill said he would have done the same in Lennon’s boots. The reaction was amazingly mild given the seriousness of the situation and the club’s role in it. Though celtic fc may not have invented or created the cretin who made the call to the BBC, it has done nothing over the years, despite widespread pressure, to discourage its religious connection: by cashing in on that peculiar and falsely ‘twee and jolly’ oirishness it has positively encouraged it. It has done this because it knows that without the murderous religious rivalry between itself and rangers, celtic would be nothing more than a glaswegian football club, and an organisation with a 60,000 seater stadium, extremely well-paid players and a potential place in the Champagnes League (sic) has no desire to be Patrick Thistle, man. The club has always known that the tricolors it flies and the lovely ditties it sings are not used in such a St-Patrick’s-Night-Out-style outside celtic park, and that someone appeared willing to kill another man just for playing for celtic – and that so many took this threat seriously – has proved to whole world that celtic fc is an integral part of the sectarian problem. The Lennon incident presented the club with an opportunity to become part of the solution, or at least to be seen to, by taking a real stand. The words "aye" and "right" spring to mind. As soon as this story broke, the book opened in TRF Towers regarding which would be the first media outlet to rehash the scandalous ‘Red Hand of Ulster’ lie perpetuated after the Dons-celtic Scottish Cup tie. The heavy odds-on favourites were the weegie tabloids, but surprise surprise when the moment finally came it was the BBC’s Alan Mackay who put his foot in it on Reporting Scotland. Mackay pointed out that Scottish football’s sectarianism isn’t confined to the old farm, and, as the VT cut to those shots of Lennon noising up the Pittodrie crowd that evening, stated: "Sectarianism follows him to other grounds in Scotland. After these incidents at Aberdeen, police action followed." A round of applause, I suppose, for this genius twisting of the facts: police action did indeed follow, though only one individual was questioned – a certain Mr N Lennon, Glasgow, accused of incitement. Any news viewer with less knowledge of the game in question than you or I, however, will have been given the utterly opposite impression. Not that the Red Army has always been as wholly innocent a party as it was that night – last season’s parkhead renditions of "Lennon is a hun" were not only inaccurate but in spectacularly poor taste, and TRF hopes that anyone who joined that chorus is now thoroughly ashamed of the small part they played in the escalation of this episode. It’s worthy of note, though, that (doubtless after a flood of complaints from the north-east public) this section of the report was re-recorded for the 10:30 bulletin, though whether Dunfermline fans (a fairly personable bunch, I have always thought) were terribly impressed by the substitute appearance of East End Park I rather doubt. Strange, really, that the BBC decided not to use footage of Heart of Midlothian to go with that particular part of the story, given that club’s direct involvement in the sectarian abuse of Neil Lennon himself. For all that, what will follow now in the central belt media will inevitably be over the top. Lennon will become a martyr; an untouchable. No bad words will be allowed about the man, though the fact that he has undeniably suffered a hellish chapter in his life does not exclude the possibility that he remains an arsehole. This is already happening – Rob McLean took time out of his commentary this weekend to criticise those Partick fans giving Lennon pelters, despite the painfully obvious and recent causality of his usual intimidation of the referee. In every game I have ever seen Neil Lennon play I have booed him practically from start to finish, but not once has this been because he is a catholic, nor even because he plays for celtic (there are ten other such poor souls out on the pitch that do not receive similar treatment). I, and thousands of others, have chosen to jeer Neil Lennon because he is a dirty player and an arrogant, obnoxious, mouthy little bastard. His character has not changed since Wednesday morning and I will continue to voice my dislike of Neil Lennon whenever the paths of Aberdeen and celtic cross. This is no different to opposition supporters heckling Willie Miller (the second referee), Lee Richardson (a, shall we say, ‘combative’ midfield player) or even Eugene Dadi (a diver, when all’s said and done), and I hope it is treated as such. As above though, "aye right". So TRF extends its best wishes to Neil Lennon just this once – nobody deserves to go through that. The moral of the story is that religion and football do not mix and never have. If only celtic and rangers agreed. And as a final thought, we wonder what this enforced international retirement will have done for the thought processes of conscientious objectors such as Duncan Ferguson. Some hae meat but canna eat, big fella… |
||
|
|
||
| 20th August - Some further thoughts on Sunday's game: It was a tremendous effort of will that made sure
that our players channeled their anger into their play instead of mixing it with their would-be hard men opponents,
discipline will earn us more in the long run than loads of needless bookings (or worse) when the playing squad
is so thin on the ground. people who didn't go to the game, despite Gordon Smith's sour grapes on the radio, missed
a great Scottish fitba match and serves them right for not turning up. When the crowd got riled the atmosphere
was fantastic and you couldn't hear a peep from the visiting fans until they scored. Keep it up fellow Rudolphs,
the noise is worth more to the team than you can imagine and beats the hell out of a few flapping flags. By the
way, whatever happened to the drums that featured last season? PS Nothing to do with the game, but congratulations for one time fanzine contributor Early Ball on his new role in the footballing firmament. |
||
| 18th August - Hearts brought a new level of brutality to Pittodrie today and the red Army could only watch in frustration and anger as referee Mitchell and his cronies allowed it to happen. Sometimes a player can be injured in a challenge because somebody got their timing wrong - but four? Don't think so. Hearts' players knew exactly what they were doing and were allowed to do it with impunity as the referee utterly abandoned any pretext of ensuring fair play and criminally allowed challenges that saw three players stretchered off and the fourth barely much better. Boiling sentiment down to the kernel, Hearts are a shower of dirty bastards and Aberdeen are unlikely to be the only team on the receiving end when such week kneed refereeing is on offer. For the match to finish with the visitors having had only one more yellow card than the Dons simply defies understanding. Mitchell, if he was trying at all, lost the place and should be thrown out of senior football and the SFA should take retrospective action against the players who meted out so much mayhem in such a short space of time. | ||
| 17th August - Forget Europe, forget the tims, let's get focussed on taking on hearts tomorrow at Pittodrie and taking them down a peg or two. They had a great win over Hibernian last week but that was not a typical match for them and we can definitely turn them over if team and fans are up for it. The Edinburgh team had the edge on us last season and if we had had a more balanced set of results we'd have been in third place instead of fourth in the SPL. Besides that, it is essential for the Dandies to improve their act and get the newest players more settled before we do head off to the eastern end of Europe in two weeks time. Tomorrow's a new day - let's seize it and make it ours. Come on you Redz!!! | ||
|
|
||
| 13th August - Two full days after out gubbing by the Tims and the staff at TRF have yet to stop seething. There are loads of reasons to be pissed off with that result, not so much the fact of yet another defeat by a member of the Gruesomes, but the way it happened. The like of players willing to TRY and compete with celtic was shocking and the tantrum between McAllister and McGuire defies belief. We've had far better players than these two shouting the odds at each other in games before now, often in much more important ones, but we've never had them trading punches in public. Ebbe Skovdahl has excused the behaviour, but he is wrong. The referee could have sent the pair of them off and exposed us to a far worse pounding than the one we took and just as important, what about the example they have set to young fans? They have got away with it and there's every chance that somewhere kids will think it is now okay to trade punches on the pitch - or elsewhere. Professional players have an obligation to set standards of good behaviour that people who admire them can try and emulate without ending up in trouble. This was not a storm in a teacup, this was a gale warning. | ||
|
|
||
| TRF 51 out for the Celtic match! | ||
|
|
||
| 4th August - Dramatic starts to seasons can equate to first sightings
of swallows, they don't necessarily signify summer. The Dandies had real highs and lows in yesterday's game against
Hibs. Luckily for us, most of the lows came in the first half and the bulk of the highs in the second. There can
be no doubt that there is tremendous spirit in the playing squad and that they can fight their way out of much
more than a paper bag these days, but part of that fight may have been inspired by the sight of Kevin McNaughton
getting stretchered off and we need to see more evidence that the team can turn it on without extra stimulus. There were a lot of positives to take from yesterday's game, but tempered with some early warnings that a moment's carelessness can cost us dear. Let's hope the injuries to McNaughton and Mackie weren't as bad as they looked because the squad is too small to survive losing may of its members at any one time. For the same reason, it was good that there were no bookings for the Redz and they must remember that good discipline will be a great way to help keep their numbers up as the season drifts on. The last thing we'll need is suspensions. So a decent start and a week to rest up and prepare for our first encounter with one of the Glasgow Gruesomes. Can't come fast enough. |
||
| 2nd August - Right! let's get down to Easter Slope (I know it's allegedly been flattened - but it's a great name) and sort out these Hibbys. The Dons are definitely good enough to win this one and need to start the season with much more than a whimper. The Red ArmyTM should be there in force, despite the disgracefully high prices that Hibernian charge visiting fans, and in good voice for this new season that surely has more promise that we have known for a few years. The message is simple, get stuck into them and grab the points, our home record was decent last time out but the away one was sloppy and needs drastic improvement. C'mon you reds, let's doooooo it! | ||
| 1st August - So here we are on the eve of a new football season with
the SPL beckoning and at the same time we find ourselves on the eve of a new era in Scottish football. with today's
resignations from the league by the majority of its members, there is a tremendous opportunity to sort out the
domestic game for the better and for the benefit of all. There are two years available now for a new set-up to
be carefully planned and organised and there is plenty of time for the clubs, the SFA and the SFL to consult together
and much more important - to consult the fans. There will never be a better time to set up a massive think-tank
across the whole spectrum of the game to construct a league that will excite, entertain and make a decent living
for every member club. There's nothing to lose by setting up discussion groups across the country involving people
from supporters clubs and trusts and from the fanzine movement to winkle out the best possible ideas for refining
by the professionals (!) and hammering into a competition that could become a role model for other footballing
nations to emulate. As for the Old Farm, their arrogance and indifference toward the rest of us has brought about the break-up of the SPL - maybe that's what they were angling for, so they'd have an excuse to leave themselves, but it has already been established that nobody else wants them and even if they did, UEFA and FIFA wouldn't let them move anyway. The wisest thing they could possibly do is gracefully concede that they have screwed up and join in a review of Scottish football along with the rest of us so that when it comes together in two years' time they will be able to participate instead of being left to play each other eternally and tediously for all eternity (or until their misguided fans get bored and desert them in droves). Opportunity + Consultation + Democracy = Excitement + Success * Scottish Football |
||
|
