Archive for the ‘Site News’ Category

It’s awards time again..

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

Yes. Much as we hate to blow our own trumpet, it seems we’ve been nominated for an award, this time by the good people over at Scottish Roundup. And though obviously we don’t run this blog for any kind of self-aggrandisement (did we mention the Telegraph thingie? Number 12? We did? Right, sorry…), it is nice every once and a while to get recognition for our efforts.

So, we where wondering if you, dear, dear readers would go over to The Scottish Roundup site to vote for Inside Left. We’re some way down the page, so keep scrolling. Our appreciation for your vote goes without saying, unless we don’t win, in which case we’ll be banging on about the injustice of it all for weeks to come. We’ll also be appealing to the SFA, who are good at overturning crap decisions, apparently.

Right, so that’s it. Get voting! Please.

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Coming back soon

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

Aye aye – it’s been a while, but we’ve decided to give Inside Left another go.

Ok, so to some it may seem about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit, as pointless as fitting wheels to a tomato and as needed as a hole in the head, but look: it’s summer, we’ve got a lot of spare time to fill and quite frankly, Scottish football and, in particular Scottish football web sites could do with a site that continues to wave the flag, fights the cause and brings Scottish football to the unwashed masses.

Over the next few weeks we’ll be making some more changes to the site including getting rid of all those grey boxes above the articles and updating the team reviews and previews. And this time we promise to complete the Second and Third Division teams!

But to make this site a success, we need your help. If you’re keen to help build a site about Scottish football with a difference, a site that entertains, educates and irritates with equal measures, then do please get in touch via our contact form. We hope to be fully online by about the start of July.

Until then, we look forward to hearing from you, either as a contributor or as a regular commenter.

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Fort William FC – Site Review

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

It’s been a pretty quiet period for one of Inside Left’s favourite teams, Fort William. The Highland League side, currently bottom of the league have not had too many games to play lately, what with the terrible weather and all that. When the Fort do take to the field though, it’s been pretty much business as usual.

A 7-1, a 6-0 and no less than two 10-0 defeats have all been posted this season, though admittedly there have been some close calls. In September the team was only 3 minutes away from winning their first game of the season until Wick Academy’s Greg Shearer equalized through a powerful header (courtesy of a cross put over by his brother Craig).

By now you’ll all know about Americas Team, a slice of reality TV where subscribers to the program get involved in making decisions that may -- or may not -- lead Fort William to first ever Highland League title.

Although the TV show is yet to begin in earnest -- no sign so far of the American imports that will help take the club forward -  the most noticeable change that has occurred at the Fort is a rather good new website which allows fans and the generally curious to catch up on all the latest from the club, meet the players and, best of all, watch pre and post match interviews with manager Callum McLean.

Throw In: Fort William FC

  • Fort William play in the Highland League. Claggan Park, their home ground,  is one of the most fabulously located stadiums in Scotland.
  • Founded in 1984, they’re currently managed by Callum McLean.
  • The Fort will take to the field again in a week’s time against second-from-bottom Rothes, a team they only lost narrowly to (1-0), right before a run of eleven postponed games disrupted Fort Williams season.
  • The new homepage, featuring team news, player profiles, fixtures, news and other club info is well worth a look.
  • The Americas Team FC website is run by Paul McDonald, the man behind Americas Team. Find out more about his plans for Fort William FC there.

We’ve always expressed doubts about the whole Americas Team thing, but to be honest if it helps bring some focus and attention to Scottish Football in general, the Highland League in particular and Fort William FC in detail we’re happy.

If nothing else, bookmark the site and check in regularly to see how the team are doing.

We’ll leave you with a Fort William & Americas Team showreel. Somewhat hilariously, it has been subtitled, presumably for the foreign market (not unlike that classic Scottish movie, Gregory’s Girl, which had to be subtitled after American audiences had difficulty understanding the Scottish accents).

Mind the language by the way, it’s NSFW. Enjoy!

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(Scottish) Season (2008/09) Greetings

Thursday, December 18th, 2008

Aye aye everyone.

Just a quick note before we depart for foreign shores. The football might not stop up in Scotland despite the weather or the time of year, but here at Inside Left we like to take a break at this time of year to spend time recovering from our injuries and so on. Before we go though, here’s a quick round-up of all the things you can expect over the next few weeks while we’re gone.

In the SPL, we have one Old Firm derby coming up. On the 27th December, Celtic travel across the river for the second clash of the season. Celtic’s lead over Rangers has been cut to four points, making this game all the more exciting. Celtic of course got trounced 4-2 earlier on in the season in the first Old Firm derby – it was their worst loss to Rangers in years. Celtic still battle with injuries and the rather distracting kerfuffle around the row between Strachan and McGeady is not the sort of thing they need right now as they head towards the end of the year.

Before all that happens though, the game of this weekend is up at Tynecastle where the teams in third, Hearts and Dundee United meet up. There’s another Lanarkshire derby between two sides struggling this season. Hamilton are bottom of the league, while their opponents Motherwell are suffering from second-season blues.

Down in the lower divisions, it´s top versus bottom as St. Johnstone travel to Airdrie. For both sides this is a must-win game; the Saints need to keep that lead they’ve built up going, while Airdrie need to start winning games to keep up with the rest of the league.

In the Second Division, the game to watch is the one happening on the 30th December, when two teams who have been pretty close this season, Brechin and Ayr play each other. With these teams a clear distance away from the team in fourth, they need to win this game to keep up with leaders Raith who themselves face tricky ties away to Arbroath and fourth-placed Peterhead.

In the Third, the game we’re going to watch out for is the derby game between Stenhousemuir and the team with which they’re currently sharing Ochillview Park, East Stirlingshire. The Shire of course are current holders of our prestigious Performance of the Week award – their run of form has gotten our attention and should certainly be catching yours. By the way, if  you’re interested in the fortunes of a team once called  “Britain’s Worst Team”, get yourself along to their website and register for Shire TV, through which you can get all the match highlights for free!

Other than the football, the transfer window opens up again on the 1st January. We’re all keen to know how your clubs will fare in this seasons scrum for players. If you’re not a fan of one of the Old Firm teams, you’ll no doubt be anxiously awaiting which obscure player your clubs has managed to unearth from some other never-heard-of-before competition. Unless you’re a Hearts fan, in which case your next signing will be from Kaunas. Hibs fans – what are the odds of Fletcher still being at the club come the end of January?

From a personal point of view, we hope you like the new Inside Left. To think we nearly did a Gretna and go under a few weeks ago. After some soul searching and honest appraisal we decided to keep going with it. We’ve discovered a new-found enthusiasm for keeping the site going and hell,  a new lick of paint does wonders.

As we approach our first year in existence, we genuinely think we’ve built up one of the best Scottish footie sites on the net. Hopefully you think so too, and who knows, maybe next year we’ll get some of you writing for the site. No pressure though!

We’re back on January 4th, so  all that remains is for us all to wish you, dear readers, a happy Christmas, and a happy and healthy 2009 from all the staff at Inside Left.

 

 

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Mid-season slump

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

Aye aye, apologies for the lack of updates. Things are hectic at the minute with work and life generally getting in the way of all things to do with Inside Left and the wonder of Scottish football generally. We’re slightly understaffed at the minute also which doesn’t help as we’ve lost two of our regular contributors in the last week. I’m sure they’ll turn up again, but to quote Basil Fawlty, this is supposed to be a website, not the Burma Railway.

We’re going through a bit of a crisis at Inside Left, truth be told. When we started the site back in April, we always thought that there are bigger and better sites out there that cover Scottish football news. Regurgitating what’s on the BBC or in the Scotsman or in the Daily Record is uninteresting at best and lazy blogging at worst. We where also not keen to turn this site into the god-awful Sportingo or Caught Offside, the Sun and Daily Sport of football websites, feeding off unfounded rumour and fuelled by the vitriolic hatred of hundreds of armchair-heroes who think they know better, but lack the balls to write their own articles.

No, our mandate was to educate the great unwashed masses who knew little or nothing about the game north of the border, to raise the profile of the little teams, to tell the world about our rich football heritage – a Scottish Pitch Invasion, if you will. But a casual glance back over the last few posts, and we seem to have become exactly what we always wanted to avoid, just another news site (albeit tongue in cheek and with our own distinctive style). In other words, we’ve lost our focus a bit and frankly, Inside Left has become uninteresting (in our opinion), a fact reflected in our falling hit rate and lack of comments.

Mind you, we reckon we could double that hit rate if we did more articles about Stoke City, the two articles you’ll find on this site being tremendously popular for some fucking reason; that last sentence alone will guarantee us upwards of fifty hits. To prove that point, just look at the top article in the Classic Fixture list on the right …

So it’s time to take a step back and decide what we want to do with Inside Left. Writing articles for the site has always been a pleasure, but lately it has become a bit of chore. “Quality, not quantity” should be our mantra, so that is what we need to focus on.  Ideally, we want to complete our ‘Who Are Ya?‘ section with profiles for every team in the league. The ‘If You Know Your History‘ articles needs fresh input and fresh ideas. Our ‘Meat Pie‘ section, a repository for the weird and wacky world of Scottish football stats, facts and figures could do with some more, well, meat. That means having to come up with new ideas and topics. If we cant do that, then we need to be honest and call time on what has been a great adventure before we become all the things we hate about football sites.

We’re open to suggestions, we’re open to new contributors and we’re open to giving up altogether. We’ll probably do just the one update per week until further notice while we figure out our next steps. Bear with us, but for now, so long and thanks for all the comments.

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