As real-life work has once again reared its ugly head, I've been pretty quiet on the writing front. Since just before OryCon, I've been a little obsessed over a few time travel ideas, and they've been fleshed out a little, but not with any concrete results. I'm hoping to have one story ready by the middle of this week. We have about a week until the next online edition of 1097 is going up, so that will take up a pretty nice chunk of time this week as well, since we're not quite ready for that. The print edition isn't too far off, either, and there's work to be done there. Long story short: I'm busy.
In other news, there are two slightly uplifting stories involving my football teams. First, Caley Thistle won a tight match over St. Mirren in Inverness on Saturday, 1-0 on an early Don Cowie goal. Combined with Gretna's draw with Hearts, that puts us eight points above Gretna and one above Falkirk, who have been dropping like a rock. Nice to have another squad between us and the bottom. Caley is coming up on a very hard run of games, with Dundee United (#4 in Scotland), Hibernian (#3) and Celtic (#1) all coming up. I don't expect a lot from those matches, especially since United have been unstoppable at home this season. Hibs might be vulnerable - we'll see.
The other footie news is that Scotland has received their draw for the World Cup 2010 qualifiers. We will be in a five-team group with Holland, Norway, Macedonia and Iceland. It's a pretty good draw, certainly miles better than the Euro 2008 draw that saw us matched up with Italy, France and Ukraine. Holland is a team we have mixed results against, and Norway has been playing strong lately. We need at least second-place in the group to advance to the World Cup. Both of the minnows in the group, Iceland and Macedonia, are tricky, and can pull off the occasional upset, but that might not be the worst thing. In an even group like this, without a clear leader, it's the team that DOESN'T SCREW UP that wins. Scotland has been pretty consistent, and will play solid defensively if nothing else. We can reasonably hope that Macedonia has at least one upset in them (like their recent win over Croatia) and can hope that it's against Norway or Holland and not us. I like the draw. Holland is one of the only 1-seeded teams I think we may actually be better than on current form, and I'd put our odds of winning the group at about 4:1, odds of qualifying in second place at about even. Since there's 8 months or so to wait before the actual matches start, there's plenty of time for guessing.
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2 comments:
Hurray Caley! Seemed they were up against the wall with the injuries and the suspensions. Came through in the end, though.
Yeah, it was a good win. A year ago, a home game against St. Mirren would have been a cake walk, but it's been that sort of season. Any win is a good win. Hopefully we'll get some guys back from injury before Hibs, United and the dreaded Celtic come calling.
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