Amid the tumult of the close season, there's some football to watch in the heart of Edinburgh this weekend.
Edinburgh's first Street Football Festival kicks off this morning and runs over Saturday and Sunday at the Ross Bandstand in Princes Street Gardens.
Supporting the Homeless World Cup, held at the same venue in 2005, the four-a-side tournament will see youth organisations, school teams and corporate sides strut their stuff in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle.
It was a result predicted only by the deluded and Scottish Sun sage Kenny Millar.
Gordon Strachan conceded at full time that a win for Croatia was 90 percent certain.
Somehow Scotland made the most of their ten percent chance.
Percentages figured highly. It was, said captain James Morrison, a victory earned by players giving 110 percent to the cause.
A two week build up to a Scotland qualifying match. Mounting excitement, ballooning optimism.
Not quite. More a growing sense of foreboding, a lengthening injury list, the challenge posed by Croatia looming ever larger.
That fortnight between the end of the domestic season and tonight's game always looked like it might prove problematic.
It might not have been the tweet "heard around the world" but the impact wasn't bad for a brief bout of sermonising in the aftermath of a nondescript football match.
Thousands of retweets and replies, questions immediately put to the England manager, hundreds of news articles.
In fact it took Gary Lineker more than a tweet to express his dismay at England's performance on Wednesday night.
It seems football's ability to sail serenely through uncertain economic times continued apace in 2012.
Estimates suggest that, in the year of the much celebrated London Olympics, football attracted $4.5 billion in global sponsorship. Other sports continue to flounder in the wake of the global game.
One year and one week on.
Again we trudge to our buses, looking like the club shop has thrown up on us, ready to troop through to Hampden.
Ready to watch Hibs wrestle with their Scottish Cup destiny. Part 111.
An unlikely final appearance.
The first consecutive finals since 1923 and 1924 (those losses courtesy of Celtic and Airdie).
Was it really just last week that Stewart Regan was lecturing Scottish football on the financial uncertainties of the ongoing league reconstruction farrago?
He also took time out to tell us that he loved his job.
Well he might, with today's news of an "inflation-busting" pay rise of 13.
Do Hibs feel the hand of Scottish Cup history on their shoulder? Or does it have them by the throat, threatening to throttle them once again?
They head to Hampden as favourites to beat Falkirk in the semi final - 1.6 to win at Unibet to Falkirk's 5.5 - but demons lurk in every corner.
What do we chew on at the betting online feast?
Another week closer to the reconstruction that will save Scottish football.
Or another week further away from the reconstruction that will save Scottish football.
On Monday St Mirren poked their head out from under Neil Doncaster's blanket of SPL unanimity to confirm that actually they wouldn't be voting "yes" to the 12+12+18 structure after all:
"The concept of playing 22 games prior to breaking into three leagues of eight, including the middle eight losing their points gained in the first series of games, is not a system we see as taking the game forward in the long term.
I've been a little neglectful of the blog of late.
Real life stomped through the door uninvited, turned 2013 into a big bundle of rubbish and left even a little light blogging a stretch too far.
Beyond turning up at Easter Road and groaning quite a lot at what I've been watching, Scottish football has been a care too much.
I've been a little neglectful of the blog of late.
Real life stomped through the door uninvited, turned 2013 into a big bundle of rubbish and left even a little light blogging a stretch too far.
Beyond turning up at Easter Road and groaning quite a lot at what I've been watching, Scottish football has been a care too much.
When I heard the news that my good friend Scott Johnston, of thefootyblog.net "fame", was walking to Lille with his longtime guy pal and French football fanatique, Andrew Gibney, I thought they'd set themselves a bizarre test of their bromance strength.
That might well be the case.
But they're also challenging themselves for the greater good: 127 miles across England, Belgium and France to raise funds for the MS Society.
Snippets from a day's football news.
In England, semi-professional footballer Daniel Ailey calls the treatment of his deafness "the same as racism."
In Italy, Inter Milan are fined €50,000 after their fans directed racist chants at Mario Balotelli. Balotelli was himself fined €10,000 for gesturing to those same fans.
Scottish football's great cinematic triumph?
Perhaps not Ally McCoist's turn in A Shot at Glory, the underwhelming dénouement of Robert Duvall's odd fitba' flirtation.
What of John Wark's monosyllabic scene stealing in Escape to Victory?
Or the sainted Gordon Smith's experience of being an extra as Hitchcock directed Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief?
Fifth in the league, a point better off after 26 games of this season than they were after the SPL had run it's course last season.
Hibs fans, punch drunk from their annus horribilis, heard promises in the summer of a rebuilt side capable of making progress.
A top six berth after two-thirds of the season does indeed point to progress.
