CaaC (John)

Both 35th minute, please.

Scotland win the Under-18 European Championship in 1982 This is a tale of footballing wit. Of leaving Marco van Basten raging. Of being described as a Brazilian in an Indian's body. And of not telling your girlfriend that you're going to Finland for a fortnight. It's a story of a team without a spine, but not lacking backbone. One laden with talent, both unfulfilled and otherwise, and led by two future national team managers. They remain the only Scottish side ever to have won a major international tournament at any age group when they claimed the 1982 European Championship at under-18 level. And this is their story... Cup finals, exams & lost stars "I said I was going away studying... but then she saw the back page of the papers." Pat Nevin was never particularly enamoured with the idea of being a footballer. A "very serious-minded young chap", he recoiled at the notion of telling people that he was one, lest they are seduced by the glamour of him playing part-time for Clyde. His girlfriend knew about his Saturday secret, but Nevin kept his international activities quiet. And why not? As one of the few players in Andy Roxburgh's squad not signed as a professional, he wasn't sure he'd get a game in Finland. "I was a part-time footballer and a full-time business studies student, that was my mindset," he says. "There were probably team-talks where I wasn't concentrating because I was thinking about economic theory..." Others were more focused on football. Centre-back Neale Cooper and forward Eric Black had both established themselves as part of Alex Ferguson's Aberdeen side - so much so that they, along with goalkeeper Bryan Gunn, were unavailable for the finals because it clashed with the Scottish Cup final against Rangers. All three had been part of the team that beat England 3-2 on aggregate to qualify; a 1-0 win at Ibrox followed by a 2-2 draw in Coventry. "That was the moment people started to think 'oh aye, this lot are no bad'," recalls Roxburgh, now 76. "But the Aberdeen boys being output a dampener on things because they were the spine of the team." Their absence called for a little ingenuity on the part of the coach and his assistant, Walter Smith. "We had no clear-cut striker, so we ended up being ahead of our time by playing what they'd now call a 'false nine'," Roxburgh recalls, proudly. Nevin and Tottenham prodigy Ally Dick were the two furthest forward players but were detailed to occupy wide areas, with Hearts midfielder Gary Mackay breaking into the space between them. And the plan worked. Albania were thrashed 3-0, and Turkey eased aside 2-0, meaning a draw with the Netherlands would be enough to advance. "I sent Walter to watch them," Roxburgh says. "He came back and said: 'No chance. The boy Marco van Basten is magnificent, Gerald Vanderburg in midfield is terrific, and the goalkeeper is outstanding'. And I remember saying we'd just have to fight them, in that case." Van Basten gave the Dutch the lead, but a late leveller by Dundee United defender Gary McGinnis put the Scots through to a semi-final with Poland, beaten finalists 12 months earlier. "They were physically strong but I felt we were in no danger technically," says Nevin. "You could tell five or 10 minutes in 'we can do them'. " And the Scots did, earning a comfortable 2-0 victory to set up a final with Czechoslovakia. But Nevin had a problem. He was scheduled to have a university exam the afternoon after the final. "When we reached the semis, I was gubbed because I had to knuckle down to my studying," he says. "I worked out I could manage both if we reached the final, but my one worry was that the plane would be delayed." 'We weren't able to drink' As it was, Nevin played and scored - along with Mackay and John Philliben - and Scotland secured a straightforward 3-1 victory to become European champions. "It was brilliant," says Hamilton Academical head coach Brian Rice, then a Hibernian youngster. "We were only babies, so we weren't able to drink... officially. We found a bar, had something to eat, then some of us had a couple of drinks and had a carry on and a sing-song." Nevin dodged the celebrations and "went straight to my room and my books" before catching his flight the next morning and ambling straight from the airport to the exam hall, where he was met by his gawping peers. This, after all, was a young man who had scored a stunning goal for Scotland in a major final the night before. "Roxy was good on unusual set-pieces but we made a mess of it and the ball dropped to me," he said of his strike. "I had four Czechs running at me and I just dribbled right through them, did the keeper, and tapped it in. If there is one goal I'd love to have on video, it's that one. Just to see if it is as good as I think it was." The Finnish press certainly thought so. On the plane, Nevin spotted a picture of himself on the back page of a fellow passenger's newspaper and asked him to translate the caption. "Apparently, it said 'Nevin played really well, very skilful, he's a Brazilian in an Indian body' because I was darker-skinned than them. But after that slight notoriety, I was back to Clyde." Not that Nevin was without offers. The forward turned down Chelsea that summer "because I still didn't want to be a footballer", while Roxburgh tells a tale of a Turkish FA official at that summer's World Cup finals in Spain asking him how much it would take to tempt the attacker away. As it was, a deal would eventually be struck with Chelsea, but first Nevin and his Scotland team-mates had the under-19 World Cup to play the following summer. But that tournament is another tale entirely... Scotland's European champions Robin Rae (Hibernian), Dave Beaumont (Dundee United), John Philliben (Stirling Albion), David Rennie (Leicester City), Brian Rice (Hibernian), Paul McStay (Celtic), Dave Bowman (Hearts), Gary McGinnis (Dundee United), Pat Nevin (Clyde), Gary Mackay (Hearts), Ally Dick (Tottenham). The substitutes for the final were Ian Westwater (Hearts), Billy Livingstone (Wolves) and Sammy McGivern (Kilmarnock). Jim Dobbin missed the game through injury and Celtic team-mate Jim McInally was suspended. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/52439322

Matches played from 5th to 7th of June Freiburg 2-2 Gladbach Leipzig 3-0 Paderborn Leverkusen 1-3 Bayern Frankfurt 3-2 Mainz Düsseldorf 2-3 Hoffenheim Dortmund 2-1 Hertha BSC Bremen 1-3 Wolfsburg Union 1-1 Schalke Augsburg 2-2 Köln

Above South

Shame about Gazza as he could have been up there with the greatest but to me, he had too many 'hanger oners' who lived off his football stardom and relished in his booze antics like his friend at the time when Gazzer was on top in Jimmy two bellies' as Gazza named him, his boozing pal but you never hear much about this Jimmy two bellies now when Gazza hit the skids. I loved the guy when he played for my Glasgow Rangers here in Scotland like a lot of other Ger supporters, the locker room laughs of him sticking dead rotten fish in dressing room lockers and in players cars, a fucking laugh a minute, Gers Ally McCoist got caught out with the dead fish one. Coisty was done a kipper by the crafty former Ibrox star who stuck one fish under his liftable armrest and another under the spare wheel in his boot.

Lived in Southend-on-Sea off and on for over 15 years workwise found it ok but never considered living there permanently, been living in Leith, Scotland now permanently since 1996 and would never move now, I found Southend to be a Tory, Tory, never say die attitude and we are the best, no thanks.

SpaceX launch: Nasa astronauts set for a second try Rocket company SpaceX will make a second attempt in the coming hours to get Nasa astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken into orbit. Their flight to the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday was postponed because of poor weather at Florida's Kennedy Space Center. Saturday's forecast is not brilliant. The meteorologists say conditions will probably be touch and go again. The lift-off is scheduled for 15:22 EDT (19:22 GMT; 20:22 BST). FULL REPORT

Nothing can beat a walk in the woods and witness mother nature.

Climate change: 'Stunning' seafloor ridges record Antarctic retreat Scientists are learning just how fast the ice margin of Antarctica can retreat in a warming world. They've identified features on the seafloor that indicate the ice edge was reversing at rates of up to 50m a day at the end of the last ice age. That's roughly 10 times faster than what's observed by satellites today. The discovery is important because it puts realistic constraints on the computer simulations that are used to project future change in the region. "In numerical models, you play with the parameters - and they can do very strange things," said Prof Julian Dowdeswell. "But what these data are saying is that actually rates considerably higher than we get even in the satellite record today were possible in the not-far-distant geological past." Thwaites: Journey to the 'doomsday glacier' Antarctic Peninsula 'can avoid irreversible change' Antarctica's 'green snow' mapped from space The director of the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) in Cambridge, UK, led an expedition last year to the Larsen region of the Antarctic Peninsula. His team deployed autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) with high-resolution mapping capability to examine the sediments at the bottom of the western Weddell Sea. What the robots saw was a delicate pattern of ridges that looked like a series of ladders where each rung was about 1.5m high and spaced roughly 20-25m apart. The scientists interpret these ridges to be features that are generated at the ice grounding zone. The zone is the point where the ice flowing off Antarctica into the ocean becomes buoyant and starts to float. The rungs are created as the ice at this location repeatedly pats the sediments as the tides rise and fall. FULL REPORT

2 salad rolls and that's about it, warm outside so any kind of salad fits the occasion.

World's deepest octopus captured on camera The deepest-ever sighting of an octopus has been made by cameras on the Indian Ocean floor. The animal was spotted 7,000m down in the Java Trench - almost 2km deeper than the previous reliable recording. Researchers, who report the discovery in the journal Marine Biology, say it's a species of "Dumbo" octopus. The name is a nod to the prominent ear-like fins just above these animals' eyes that make them look like the 1940s Disney cartoon character. US adventurer reaches deepest points in all oceans Deepest-ever sub dive finds plastic waste Robot duo wins ocean-mapping XPRIZE The scientist behind the identification is Dr Alan Jamieson. He's pioneered the exploration of the deep using what are called "landers". These are instrumented frames dropped overboard from research ships. They settle on the seabed and record what passes by. FULL REPORT