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Scottish Sun
10 hours ago
- Sport
- Scottish Sun
Russell Martin risks everything by refusing to change his philosophy, he proved me & most Rangers fans WRONG says Leckie
LEAVE him on it. The cry of countless defenders down through footballing history when they see an opposition player with the ball at his feet – but not a clue what to do with it. 4 Russell Martin reacts at full-time Credit: Willie Vass 4 Columnist Bill Leckie has given his take on the big showdown Credit: John Kirkby - The Sun Glasgow In other words, don't bother charging in for the tackle, he'll give us it soon enough. Well, what the Greek equivalent is of the phrase, it must have been shouted a hundred times here last night. Because it took roughly five minutes for Panathinaikos to work out that if they stayed in their shape and left Rangers on it, all they'd have to do was wait. And the bottom line is that if they'd even been half-decent once they were proved right, this tie could have been done and dusted inside half an hour. But here's the thing about how Russell Martin wants his men to play. No matter how often they give it away, no matter how often they're caught out and caught short, he refuses to change. He demands that they keep getting their heads up, keep popping their passes around, even if it sometimes means taking two steps forward and three back. Time and again in that opening spell – both of the game and of Martin's reign – they looked confident with the ball at the feet one second then chaotic without it the next. Time and again they let Panatinaikos see the whites of Jack Butland's eyes only for last season's fallguy to keep denying them. Anyone could see where Rangers were getting it wrong. Except an idealistic 39-year-old coach who refuses to take a step back from his philosophy. Even if they keep giving it away. Even if they keep leaving Butland exposed. Rangers transfer special assesses whether Conor Coady deal is OFF, if Hamza Igamane will leave and when the Gers can expect more incomings Even if to do so risks everything. Why? Because he sees the risks as being greater than the rewards – and who can argue with after how things turned around once their visiting ran out of steam and went a man down? Plenty will insist they got away with one here and maybe they'll be right. But the scoreline doesn't lie. Next midweek, Rangers take a 2-0 lead into the meteorological and metaphorical cauldron of the Olympic Stadium in Athens with a priceless lead, one given to them by two terrific goals scored by two guys who – let's be honest – wouldn't have been near this level of occasion had the club been in better shape on and off the park. First 18-year-old Findlay Curtis and then sub Djeidi Gassama cut in off the left, drifting past defending who'd taken Leaving Them On It to extremes and smashed right-foot shots past keeper Bart Drawgowski. And you know what? 4 Martin, the man who broke with more than a century of touchline tradition by swapping the shirt, tie and brown brogues for a crew neck sweater and trainers, will tell you that he'd take it this way every single time. He'll tell you it's about sticking to the plan, wanting the ball even though you gave it away last time, believing in the rewards rather than fearing the risks. Because somewhere along the line, if they commit themselves it completely, they'll get the kind of moments Curtis and Gassama delivered. Suddenly, no one cared that they could have been 3-0 down inside half an hour. No one cared that Butland had probably been the best man on the park. No one cared about anything but the result and what it means. Which, season-defining or not, is one hell of a lot. For the fans, it's a sign that things aren't nearly as bad as they'd feared. For the new owners, it's a lovely release of the kind of pressure they've been under to deliver from Day One. 4 For the players, it's a completely different trip to the Med from the one it could have been, one where they were chasing a lost cause in a furnace. For Martin? Well, it's early days, but there's no doubt this was vindication of a pre-season preparation most – including me – felt would leave his squad undercooked and a raft of signings that on paper looked pretty underwhelming. Most of all, though, it was a marker stuck deep in the centre circle that said: This is how I play and this is what it can do. If he, the board and the fans are honest, they'll admit they'd have more chance of making a dent in the Europa League than the Big Cup. But if he can go over there and finish the job next week, he'll already be exceeding expectations. He'll be building optimism out of the rubble of a pretty damn miserable season gone by. And if he gets his men to keep on getting results they way they did here? Well, it'll never be dull, that's for damn sure. Keep up to date with ALL the latest news and transfers at the Scottish Sun football page
The Irish Sun
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Irish Sun
I'm an ex-Miss Scotland and feel the pressure to look perfect – but I'm embracing wrinkles at 36
A FORMER Miss Scotland has revealed she's embracing her wrinkles after feeling the "pressure" to look perfect. Jennifer Reoch, 36, has taken inspiration from sofa queen Lorraine Kelly in her bid to look natural without cosmetic procedures. Advertisement 5 Jennifer Reoch was crowned Miss Scotland in 2011 Credit: Andrew Barr - The Sun Glasgow 5 Jennifer credits Lorraine Kelly for her 'natural' approach 5 Former Miss Scotland Jennifer Reoch is embracing her natural beauty Credit: Instagram/Jennifer Reoch The ex-model, from Glasgow, was crowned Miss Scotland in 2011 and is no stranger to glam photoshoots and TV appearances. She entered — and won — the annual beauty pageant before finishing seventh in Miss World. But she is more than happy to embrace her natural beauty without the full glam look on a daily basis. She told the Advertisement 'I do feel the pressure to look perfect, but I know that's not really possible all the time. 'I used to come into the Heart studios looking like you'd expect to look at that time of the morning. There are cameras in the studio but I didn't care. That's how I am in the morning!" She added: 'I have friends who might have had a cosmetic procedure and I fully support them if that's what they want. 'I wouldn't criticise them because who knows how I'll feel in a few years' time? Maybe I'll be doing the same.' Advertisement Most read in Fabulous 'Lorraine Kelly is a bit of an inspiration for me, and not only for what she's accomplished in broadcasting. She looks fantastic and she's very natural. I'd love to be more Lorraine.' Beauty queen turned radio breakfast host Jennifer married her fiancé Jamie Hunter in 2023 after 12 years together. I'm a proud pageant mum cashing in £15k - I wax my nine-year-old's eyebrows as I don't think she's beautiful enough, even though she hates it She has been with her GP partner since being crowned Miss Scotland. Her TV debut came when Miss World organisers invited her to front their own coverage of the finals in Bali the following year. Advertisement She went on to head up many STV programmes including The Riverside Show, Live at Five and The Edinburgh Fringe Show. In 2018 she was made redundant after the loss-making STV2 channel folded. 5 Jennifer Reoch is no stranger to glam photoshoots and TV appearances Credit: The Sun 5 She ended her time with Heart Radio this month Credit: Instagram/Jennifer Reoch Advertisement But Jennifer bounced back to become a household name featuring in shows such as ITV This Morning and BBC Getaways. She co-hosted Heart Breakfast Scotland with Des Clarke every weekday morning for two years before ending her time with the radio station this month. The Scots star is now planning a podcast series about beauty pageants featuring in-depth chats with people involved in the industy.
Scottish Sun
a day ago
- Health
- Scottish Sun
While you and I struggle with the real world, our leaders sit and ignore chaos in Unicornland
BILL LECKIE While you and I struggle with the real world, our leaders sit and ignore chaos in Unicornland EVER wonder why the national animal of Scotland is a unicorn? Historians tell us it's because our forebears saw it as a creature whose strength, innocence and purity embodied the values our people held most dear. 3 Bill Leckie reckons our leaders are living in Unicornland Credit: John Kirkby - The Sun Glasgow 3 First Minister John Swinney Credit: PA 3 The case of nurse Sandie Peggie has shown how leaders and civil servants are living in a fantasyland Credit: Alamy But that was then, back in the 15th century when it was first adopted onto our coat of arms. While this is now, when the people who run the country have long since deleted those values along with their incriminating WhatsApp messages. A time when the textbooks really should be rewritten to record that the unicorn is Scotland's beastie of choice because, like our politicans and bureaucrats, it exists in a fantasy world. And because anyone doesn't like what they get up to is welcome to sit on its horn and swivel. We see this attitude in First Minister 'Full-On' John Swinney's latest re-heating of an Independence policy which, were it a Tupperware of leftovers in your fridge, would long since have mutated into its own tiny population of furry bacteria who hate the outside world. We see it in the 67 days summer holiday our MSPs have awarded themselves while the country they're paid handsomely to run comes apart at the seams. We see it in the £10million-plus cost of keeping a cabal of NHS head honchos in Range Rovers while armies of sick and injured taxpayers suffer endless hours of misery in A&E queues or years of agony waiting for vital operations. We see it in the self-entitled behaviour of the minority of civil servants who must make their colleagues fume as they use pet cats and a lack of fresh air as reasons to refuse demands to work from an office. Perhaps most jaw-droppingly of all right now, though, we see it in the ever-mushrooming scandal of Sandie Peggie, the Fife nurse dragged through the courts because she didn't want to share a changing room with a biologically male doctor, Beth Upton, who identifies as a woman. So far, this travesty of a show trial, this embodiment of a breed of managers too terrified of their own shadows to display even a shred of common sense, has cost £220,000 in legal fees. Gender row nurse cleared of gross misconduct Once the employment tribunal which has been running in parallel with it is done, we can probably double that figure. Yet that's only the financial aspect. What will be so much harder to quantify is the monstrous waste of time and of energy, the positive work all those involved could have been doing all this time, the damage done to the mental health of both Nurse Peggie and Dr Upton over 18 tortuous months. And all because their bosses lacked either the savvy or the will – maybe even both – to sit the pair of them down and talk their problems through until they learned something from them. Not only would that have cost hee-haw, it might even have helped create a happier, more opem-minded workplace; an achievement that would, for me at least, have been priceless. History has failed to teach Israel's leaders LET us die of hunger, it is better. The plaintive words of a survivor after the latest brutal attack by Israeli forces on starving Palestinians queueing for food and water. After more than 70 died over the weekend – taking the total since a blockade on aid was lifted beyond 700 – Tel Aviv leaders claimed its troops 'faced a real threat' from crowds. Sure. When they have all the guns and the crowds barely have the strength left to walk. After the horrors Jewish people endured during World War II, the humiliation and the torture and the near eradication, I can't get my head round why Netanyahu's government now seem so hell-bent on wiping out their next-door neighbours in Israel's name. Does history teach us nothing? Or does it simply turn us into the thing that we once feared and despised? Instead? No sooner had Nurse Peggie been cleared of gross misconduct on Thursday than her employment hearing was re-starting on Friday. And halfway through that day's evidence, NHS Fife had the brainfart of all brainfarts and decided to release a 1,700-word statement that left her legal team without a name. They claim this attack was signed off on by their own lawyers, but not only did the KC acting for them in the employment hearing claim not to have seen it before it went live, it has since been edited twice to remove veiled suggestions that Nurse Peggie's supporters had threatened opponents with violence. Seriously, how do these chancers attain such a level of arrogance that not only can't they admit defeat and rethink their mindset, but they swagger straight back into another unwinnable fight? Paying fortunes to turn a he-said-she-said shopfloor rammy into a national news story has done not one person one shred of good – yet it seems this is the only way our politicians and pen-pushers know how to deal with anything, to lawyer up and chuck money at it. Scattercash attitude They wouldn't dare have the same scattercash attitude were they running a private company, with profits to protect and shareholders to keep onside. Yet as this farrago of a sham of a mockery proves yet again, they clearly see the public purse as Monopoly money. As political analyst Chris Deerin wrote in yesterday's paper, the SNP have long since lived by the motto of 'public sector good, private sector bad', with the people they shoehorn into positions of power within the civil service become untouchable; in return, naturally, for never questioning anything Holyrood does. This is a key reason why Scotland has 14 health boards – meaning 14 CEOs, 14 heads of finance, 14 HR departments and the rest – for five million people, while London has just five for almost double the population. This bloated level of over-management, in turn, is a key reason why hospitals can't afford to provide the the basic services its clinical staff desperately want to. And so it goes, through health and schools and local councils, from potholes to ferries to courtrooms and back again. Bottom line? While you and I struggle along in the real world, the ones calling the shots are drifting along in Unicornland, blissfully unware of the utter chaos they're causing. Or worse still, not giving the teeny-tiniest flying you-know-what. Finally the airline returned my bag! FILED last week's column on Aer Lingus losing my luggage for a week then went straight back into battle. Rang a call centre, asked when my gear was being returned and – as no one who read the previous rant will be surprised to hear - was told that 'once we have an update, you will be informed'. Ten minutes later, they emailed to confirm my bag would be flying the following day to Boston and then on to Denver. Well, dear reader, enough was enough. I googled the CEO of Aer Lingus, copied them into an email addressed to their head of customer services and firmly but politely explained my predicament. Four minutes after that? The phone rings and it's the their head of baggage handling, apologising most sincerely and promising that the wee fella would be arriving in Glasgow at 7.40 that night and would then be sent directly to me in a cab. At which point we'll skim over the fact that it was in fact the following afternoon and an argument with Glasgow Airport before it was finally dropped off. And concentrate instead on these very valid questions: What if the person whose trip had been ruined by a missing bag didn't have the clout of a newspaper column behind them? What if they didn't have the cheek to take their problem the very top of the tree? And why should it take such drastic action to attain such a basic level of service in the first place? Answers on the back of a used boarding pass to the usual address. In Glasgow, that is, not Colorado.
Scottish Sun
6 days ago
- Sport
- Scottish Sun
Jim Delahunt gives his big racing verdict ahead of the Scottish Stewards' Cup as he rates Trilby's chances in Hamilton
TRILBY was the last horse into the Scottish Stewards' Cup field — but I fancy him to be first to cross the finish line. Sam England's sprinter was fourth of 12 in a £35,000 race over Hamilton's 5f in June and a 1lb drop means he's back on his last winning mark from Beverley in April. 4 Racehorse Trilby leads the way at Haydock Park in 2024. 4 SunSport columnist Jim Delahunt Credit: Keith Campbell - The Sun Glasgow The five-time winning five-year-old has had a wind operation in the five-week gap since that last trip to South Lanarkshire and the visual evidence of that second visit...
Scottish Sun
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scottish Sun
Ex-Celtic star reveals he told Pirlo DURING a game he would name his baby after him – and got perfect gift years later
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) RETIRED former Celtic star Beram Kayal has revealed how a bollocking from Neil Lennon led to him naming his child Pirlo. The Israeli star announced his decision to quit the game last week after a stint at homeland club Bnei Sakhnin at the age of 37. Sign up for the Celtic newsletter Sign up 4 Beram Kayal in action Credit: Kenny Ramsay - The Sun Glasgow 4 Beram Kayal and Andrea Pirlo Credit: Action Images - Reuters 4 Andrea Pirlo in action at Celtic Park Credit: Keith Campbell - The Sun Glasgow He won six major trophies with the Hoops during his five-year spell at the club before moving to Brighton ten years ago. He played for Celtic in the Champions League and in one of those matches against Juventus in 2013 in Turin, he was assigned a special task to man-mark Andreas Pirlo. And Kayal, in an interview in his homeland, revealed the unlikely story about why this was the reason he named his first born child Pirlo. He said: "All week Neil Lennon, our manager, told me that Pirlo was a legend, but his legs had gone. "My instructions were to stick with him at all time and to tackle him hard every time he touched the ball "But I couldn't get near him. "I came in from the left to tackle him, he turned to the right. The same when I went in at the other side. "At half time, I got yelled at by Neil Lennon. "I ended up approaching Pirlo after about an hour and told him that my wife was pregnant and if it was a boy, I would name the baby after him. "Thankfully, he was substituted soon afterwards, but he waited for me afterwards to swap shirts. Celtic launch new away kit with trailer featuring Scottish music icon and Hoops legends "The boy was born and we called him Pirlo as promised. "A few years later, he sent me one of his shirts and signed it, 'Best wishes from Pirlo to Pirlo.'" 4 Keep up to date with ALL the latest news and transfers at the Scottish Sun football page
