The Rocky Road: Dunipace - Stenhousemuir - Mount Florida - Paisley

Visited four football stadiums in the space of six days this week - not bad going.

Saturday's appetizer was served at a muddy Westfield Park, Denny. I'd only ever seen Denny in the holiday catalogues so it was nice to finally get there in person.

Westfield Park can fair fill up

The Pace (Dunipace Juniors) were hosting The Undertakers (Port Glasgow Juniors) in a Central District Divison One game.

Junior football is smashing but I'm afraid this was just a flying visit.

The guy trying to get the ball got nutmegged several times

Next stop that afternoon was Ochilview in the Stenhousemuir/Larbert area for East Stirlingshire v Queen's Park.

Queen's keeper Neil Parry's crucial save from Andy Stirling with the game at 1-1

I was on match-reporting duty for a local paper and got treated to a pulsating game which ended with a 93rd minute winner for Queen's Park, courtesy of the Scottish Football League 3rd Divison's top scorer Jamie Longworth.

Queen's Park's David Anderson assisted for the winning goal

Tuesday night saw me join 413 other football fans at Hampden to see Queen's Park host Berwick Rangers.

Now, perks of the press pass at Ochilview the previous Saturday started and ended with free entry to the game.

However, at Hampden it was an altogether different affair.

That's some of my fingers on the left

Yes, at the national stadium there was access to a half-time home-baking extravaganza. Whole platefuls of goodies were the centre-pieces of many circular tables and I managed to secure a tremendous slab of Rocky Road.

Rocky Road: one of your five-a-day

Oh and the game finished 2-2 with injury time goals for both sides.

Thursday night's location was St.Mirren Park in Paisley, but not for a game this time. This was to be part of an audience during a live recording of BBC Radio Scotland's Sportsound programme.

Some of The Borrowers got front row seats

Hosted by Jonathan Sutherland, it was really interesting to watch Jim Traynor, Chick Young, Billy Dodds and Steven Thompson discuss football's hot topics and take questions from the audience.

So there you go, four stadiums in six days.

Tomorrow it's back to Hampden for Rocky Roa.......I mean Queen's Park v Stranraer.

Male, 29, seeks minority sport

So, at uni, some of us are being gently reminded to write about subjects other than football. Yep, it's in my best interests. Understood. Crystal.

Don't get me wrong, the course I've been on this year has required us to write about all sorts of topics. It's just that when we get a free-choice assignment, there's always four or five individuals clambering towards the beautiful game.

It's not a crime. It's what we know. But I acknowledge there's no harm in being able to write indepthly about another of the sports I like to keep one eye on.

So what's it to be then?

Here's three potentials, with their justification.....

Golf

Hopefully it's only a matter of time before I start playing golf. Maybe this summer actually.

I flirted with it mid-teens before entering a ten year period of taking nothing more than a fleeting interest in who won the majors.

But the dormant golf volcano within me is rumbling. The last two or three years have seen me closely follow the sport and I find watching it on TV both enjoyable and relaxing. Can't beat hearing the bird-song in the background at Augusta.

Pangs for the fairways and greens only multiply when playing putting in Portpatrick.

Portpatrick Putting Course - where friendships are put on hold

So, golf's a serious front-runner.

American Football

Aged five, I sat my parents down for a chat and decided education was the best route for me. Enrolment at Bothwell Primary was a formality.

There I developed a real aptitude for eating Quarterbacks, the 10p cheeseburger flavour crisps. A love for American Football was born, and I especially liked this American Football lark when I got a small broken crisp from the bottom corner of the bag which had an over-abundance of flavouring.

I stuck with my studies. Primary 1 became Primary 2, which became Primary 3. It remained Primary 3 for six years until I was ready to cut it at Primary 4. But, the graft was worth it, and before I could say 'touchdown', I was in Primary 7 with responsibilities like 'monitor'.

In Primary 7, I think I was the only person in Scotland to have a stab at completing the Panini NFL sticker book. I soon soaked up a solid knowledge of all the teams, colours, crests and players. Having no-one to swap with was the collateral damage.

Since then American Football and I have been complete strangers. Almost awkward at times. It'll take a lot of patience and hard work but I reckon we could be ready to pick up where we left off.

A good friend of mine supports the Chicago Bears. They're from Chicago.

Cycling

Used a bike for paper-rounds. Rode around Millport within 24 hours. Can sometimes cycle one-handy. Only needing the single stabiliser these days.

So that's a start.

Couldn't work out why this one didn't work, so took it back to the shop

The Tour de France has turned my head. July dinner times are enhanced by the catchy tune of the one hour highlight show - I had it as my ring-tone for a three year stint.

The tactics, the teams, the sprints, the jersies, the crashes, the scenery. No complaints writing about that. Click here to see an infamous crash from the 2011 Tour.


Now that's just three potentials. I must say I'd be open to bringing cricket, motorsport, tennis, snooker, darts and rubgy into the mix too, but you folk must have homes to go to by now.

Where do you think I should channel my writing energies then?

Pollok FC - Feature interview article

Please find the end product of my interview with Pollok FC manager John Richardson here .

Pompey playing up

To those of you reading this who aren't really interested in football, I'll give you 100 points if you stay with me until the end, yes? It shouldn't be too hard - there's videos and everything......

A few Saturdays back I was in the enviable position of being able to catch some of Sky Sports' Soccer Saturday programme, where Jeff Stelling and his ex-footballing foursome enthusiastically provide an afternoon of vidiprinter based banter.

Laughs on the show are many and close together, as opposed to few and far between. Most of them involve Paul Merson's mispronunciations or Charlie Nicholas's invented phrases, but every now and again someone more unexpected gets centre stage.

The show is liberally sprinkled with visits to pitchside reporters at stadiums up and down the country. Naturally, these reporters are often at the mercy of fans standing behind them. Many of these 'loose cannons' fail to do enough to register a laugh with me back in the comfort of my lounge, but here's one who did.....

The scene is Fratton Park. Portsmouth are playing Nottingham Forest. One fan, behind reporter Paul Walsh, does a sterling job of giving us a laugh at his own expense for a few seconds; deliberately over exaggerating the nerve-jangling experience of a football match.....

.....and here he is again a little while later, falling victim to the infamous 'Fratton Park Strangler'....

Good effort sir.


Oh and I'm a man of my word, so if you stuck with me to the end, have 100 points on me.

Two monsters a-munching

Are you having a giraffe?......All for a packet of Monster Munch?

Apparently so.

In disbelief, I read that two armed robbers (one with an axe and one with a hammer) plundered a Greater Manchester newsagent of nothing more than a single bag of the paw-shaped baked corn snacks.

Brainless.

Crisps are great though, eh. Always been my weak spot of the junk food realm, so they have. What a culinary coup it would be if someone discovered they were good for us. (I wonder if Henry McLeish is at a loose end - he could maybe do another one of his reviews)

Prior to my days of literacy, I was absolutely oblivious to the delights my older brother was receiving when he asked my Mum for some "C - R - I - S - P - S".

You see, I would have known if he'd said the word, but spelling it out completely foxed me. After his request was granted, I assume the rascal must've taken them to a different room for eating - all the while I was probably sat watching Brum.

Alas, it wasn't long until I became old enough to be permitted crisps on a semi-regular basis and the Hula Hoop haven that was my Gran & Grandpa's house became a frequent watering hole. Yes, I took great delight in placing a beef hoop round each finger before picking them off one by one.

Since then, I've never really looked back.

So, I'd be thrilled to hear is what kind of crisps you would pull out all the stops to get hold of (although perhaps not as outrageously as the duo mentioned earlier).

You can hit me with your favourites, top three types/flavours or just a good old crisp anecdote.

I'm open.....

Better out than in

"Every hour a child spends outdoors each week reduces their chance of becoming short-sighted by two per cent."

In between blinking duties, that was a newspaper article my eyes saw over this past week.

I’m genuinely grateful for Waitrose quality sight to date. If these Cantabrigian scientists are correct, then my childhood supports their theory – I played outside at every available opportunity.

(Cantabrigian means 'from/of Cambridge'. I hold my hands up, it was new to me too.)

Anyway, I began to recount some of the outdoor activities that may have contributed to my virtuous vision.

Here’s a selection:

Football

This was always going to be recalled first.

Squint trees or jumpers for goalposts. It’s hard to express the clarity with which the memories from hundreds of evenings at ‘the field’ are seared into my mind.

Mainly fraught doubles tournaments, sometimes sides. The reputation of our Bothwell set-up went before it. Friends from Uddingston thought nothing of cycling three miles just to be a part of those matches.

A special shout goes out to Adam Armstrong here, for all those afternoons and evenings hitting and saving long range shots.

Survival-hunt

You know the drill.

Required the following: 1 x housing estate; 1 x cold evening where you could see your own breath; 2 x ‘het’ participants; 15+ ‘not het’ participants; 1 x unathletic type to suffer the ignominy of being caught first. Could also be played on bikes.

Footy-down

Only played on bikes, with multiple cyclists.

A large square was selected and you had to remain on your bike within that limited space. Competitors interweaved, trying to make opponents ‘put a foot down’ without getting in a tight spot themselves. Proceedings gradually whittled down to one winner. Tactics, psychology, balance and skill.

In my opinion it was never played as much as its ingenuity deserved.

Go-karts

Of the pedal variety. And maybe not so much in my teens!

Kettler anyone? It’s only fair that I be quiet here and give you a moment to reflect. Some of you might be smiling.

Rope-swings

There was always one of these kicking about somewhere.


I'm keen to hear your memories of incredible childhood outdoor gaming......

Shafi only has i(s) for me

Shavi, my local newsagent owner, has one set aside for me every morning.

This guy’s good. Despite my paper-hopping over the past year, from Herald to Mail to Telegraph to Times, it didn’t take long for him to latch on that the ‘i’ had become my rag of choice. Monitored me, so he did.

Truth be told, I’ve still to establish if Shavi is definitely his name. I think it is, but I don’t use it to his face yet. I’m going to ask him soon.

We normally talk about the weather; a news headline; the fact he gets up at 4am; or about how I feel most tired on Thursday mornings.

Anyway, he stashes a daily copy of the i for me. My side of the bargain is to keep him sweet with the exact money for payment, or as close to that as I can manage. (The look on his face when I took in a tenner one morning showed me loose change is like lots of sons to him)

You see, that’s the beauty of the i – it only costs me 20p. If I don’t get a proper chance to devour it, I’ve hardly wasted money. A bit like buying a Chomp and not eating it. That said, I reckon I absorb at least 10p of it each day.

An offshoot of The Independent, it has just celebrated its first birthday. Describing itself as “the essential daily briefing”, pages two and three comprise of a matrix-like arrangement of succinct news story summaries, which are then expanded on further inside.

The same format exists in the sport section. James Lawton and Sam Wallace comprehensively front that impressive department.

There’s comment, letters and features too, while the likes of Stefano Hatfield (executive editor) and Simon Kelner usually have daily columns that ‘read short’.

“Ah, but we’ve got the Metro, and it's FREE!” I hear some of you exclaim. The Metro reminds me of Onslow from Keeping Up Appearances.

So, why not have a look at the i for yourselves? Just 20p or five for a pound. Let me know if you rate it.

I'm off to bed.

ZZZzzz ZZZzzz ZZZzzz ZZZzzz

His name is ‘Shafi’ by the way – asked him this morning. He spelt it for me too, so you can quote me on that.

p.s. I've got a big box of Chomps needing eaten if anyone is interested.