Birmingham City 3 v Charlton Athletic 2

I'm just back on Terra Firma from a weekend in Edinburgh. Scotland blew it again (rugby now as well as football). With the Springboks there for the taking, Scotland dominated the first half but two penalty misses meant only a 10-0 lead at half-time which you knew wouldn't be enough to win the game if they couldn't add more points after the break because you knew the Boks would fight back. That's just what they did and Scotland managed to fluff another two penalties just for good measure to ensure the 14 points that the South Africans racked up in the second half was enough at 14-10. Parks and Godman were the culprits with two misses each after the metronomic Chris Paterson was injured after only ten minutes. "Close but no cigar" as one of my old bosses was fond of saying.

Scotland were at least good to watch but that's not good enough and our continuing failure under Frank Hadden means that we are now in serious danger of falling out of world rugby's top eight nations which will be an indightment on the SRU. That will mean Scotland will be seeded with the also-rans in the next World Cup and will need to overcome two of the big boys if they are maintain their record of reaching the quarter-finals of every World Cup. 

Which brings me neatly on to the other passion in my life; Charlton Athletic. I have been looking forward to getting home and trying out my new CAFCTV subscription only to be disappointed by the fact that the action from yesterday does not appear to have been uploaded. Maybe this is one of the "resource issues" alluded to in the club briefing? Maybe Premium TV don't work on Sundays? Either way it's not good enough. Most of the value is surely in making the highlights visible quickly. I could have recorded The Championship this morning and seen the if I had known. Apparently the audio commentary wasn't  great either with quality being a bit of a problem and one or two unable to get it at all.  Hopefully just teething problems.

So I have had to make do with the newspaper reports and other Blog updates. Sounded like the fighting spirit at Plymouth might not have been a one-off and that alone should give us hope for Saturday. It was encouraging to see us take the lead after being 1-0 down through Bouazza and Gray but our nemisis Kevin Phillips once again beat a Charlton keeper to level things before Franc Queudrue got the winner (another player who enjoys a goal against Charlton). Kevin Phillips must be close to Tierry Henry's scoring record against us? Nicky Weaver managed to push the ball into the path of a scoring forward again twice in this game and, whilst I think he's a decent stopper, we really need a keeper who saves shots rather than parries them.  Alan Pardew was "so disappointed for the players" who "didn't deserve to come away from this match with nothing." Close but no cigar. 

Can we make it three battling perfomances in-a-row on Saturday but get the elusive win this time?