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Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger explains why Rudi Völler's battlers were different from their predecessors, and how they made him care about the national side again

Sometime around a quarter to three on Friday, June 21, I caught myself slowly and silently rocking back and forth. Even my son, a nervous chatterbox less than two hours earlier, was very quiet. He is only 12, and at that age it’s not only normal to support your national team but perhaps even, well, healthy. So I kept my mouth shut because there was nothing positive to say and I didn’t want to foster a cynical image by saying something negative. All the more so since there were plenty of other people already doing that.

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Saturday 1 Mick McCarthy is delighted with Ireland’s comeback against Cameroon: “There’s been a lot talked about the spirit and camaraderie and I think that has been shown today.” Niall Quinn claims he tried to get Roy Keane to return but couldn’t persuade him to phone McCarthy: “I’ll never understand why Roy didn’t make even a lukewarm attempt.”

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Falkirk appear to hae been saved from relegation by Airdrie's demise. But James Teideman is still bitter about the fate of clubs excluded from the SPL

It is the night that Bayer Leverkusen host Manchester United in the second leg of their semi-final. The Cham­p­ions League music that welcomes the teams on to the pitch at Brockville Park floats with comic irony over the terraces – as if it isn’t surreal enough that Ev­erton are playing here tonight for the honour of lifting the Alex Scott memorial trophy, highlight of Falkirk’s 125th anniversary celebrations. The travelling fans must have had a laugh as they surveyed the crumbling “stadium” that sums up the melancholy malaise of small Scottish clubs.

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Airdrie have gone bust and Motherwell almost suffered the same fate. Ken Gall reports on the financial troubles besetting Scotlands's middle-ranking clubs

After more than a century, Airdrieonians FC have, to all intents and purposes, ceased to exist. A few miles down the road, their not-much-loved Lanarkshire neighbours Motherwell – following an initial panic that they were headed for the same fate – entered interim ad­ministration, slashing wages, sacking staff and can­celling players’ contracts. All in all, then, the grim­­mest few weeks for Scotland’s domestic game since Third Lanark went out of business in 1967.

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Al Needham isn't ashamed to admit he was an ITV Digital subscriber. Here he recalls the channel's highlights – that's the first two paragraphs anyway

When ITV (née ON) Digital was launched in aut­umn 1998, it seemed a very appealing offer to the televisual tat aficionado such as myself. You could get WWF and back-to-back episodes of On The Buses without throwing any cash directly into the maw of Rupert Murdoch, and you only had to plug it in and ring a call centre to get connected.

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