The excitement is at fever pitch ahead of the opener against Haiti tonight with fans desperate to see us start our campaign with a win.

After 28 long years the wait is finally over. Scotland are back playing football on the biggest stage of all – and the Tartan Army out in Boston just can’t wait for kick off.

The excitement is at fever pitch ahead of the opener against Haiti tonight with fans desperate to see us start our campaign with a win.

Supporters pulled on their Scotland tops and dusted off their kilts as hundreds of fans headed into the city centre early doors for some nerve calming lagers.

Elsewhere, at Rowes Wharf, buzzing footsoldiers slapped on the sun cream before marking the historical moment by heading off on a three-hour party boat.

Chris Gibson, 50, from Maud in Aberdeenshire, helped organise the cruise for over 200 fans ahead of the match.

The builder and landscaper told the Record: “I’ve got a nervous energy. Just the game, how the team are performing – but I’m excited and I know a few beers on the boat will calm my nerves.

“We have 200 of the guys on board. It’s an open bar – which I am worried about. I just hope they have enough beer!

“We’ve done nine all over Europe. So this is the first one outside of Europe.”

Fans headed down to the waterfront on Saturday morning as hundreds of excited fans boarded the aptly named ‘Freedom’ vessel.

The three-hour cruise includes an open bar, with fans lining their stomachs with sandwiches before starting on the early lagers at around 11am local time.

“It’s an early start but there’s a lot of older guys on board, so hopefully they take it easy”, said Chris.

“I’m worried about missing the game and stuff. Because it’s early days, but if anyone misses it I’m taking no responsibility!”

Asked for his prediction ahead of the match, Chris said: “I’ve got a feeling I’ve got to do something special. Become the first Scottish team to get through the group.

“It’s obviously such a big game. This one in particular – if we win this one we have a good chance to get out the group.”

Most of the fans donned the new away strip as they cheered and sang songs while boarding the boat.

As the ship set sail, the captain delighted the revellers by blasting “Freed from Desire,” with fans instead cheering “Scotland’s on fire!”

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Ewan Oman, 28, a plumber from Peterhead, said: “”It’s been the trip of a lifetime already. We flew into New York. We’ve been to Mike Tyson’s local to see where he keeps his racing pigeons – it been mental.

“Then we had the boat party today which was fantastic.

“It’s such a big day. We have waited so long for this moment. I genuinely feel we are going to show up.

“We’re going to play our best team and I think our quality will show.

“History isn’t kind to us. I think in the past we have underestimated teams like this, so hopefully we’ll learn our lessons from the past. Honestly it feels different this time.”

Most fans had their travel and accommodation booked up back in November after qualification was secured against Denmark.

But Ellis Mutch, a farmer from Turriff, decided he was coming just 10 days ago after having deciding he couldn’t miss out.

The 33-year-old told the Record: “I was only six when the last World Cup took place so my memories are very faint.

“I just booked this trip 10 days ago – they talk about FOMO – a fear off missing out. I was getting serious FOMO so I just took the plunge and booked it. I packed very light, my kilt is the only bottoms I’ve got. But we are here and the atmosphere is amazing.

“The folk from Boston are so friendly. We’re here for a good time – and let’s hope we get a good win.”

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Suzanne Nisbet, 52, and her husband Robert, 56, have travelled across to Boston from their home in Kirkintilloch.

Suzanne, a community staff nurse, said: “It’s been amazing trip. Absolutely magic. Back in 1998 we had just got married. Just moved in to our house.

“It was a long time ago. We were starting to feel like this moment would never come.

“We’ve not got tickets but we’re looking forward to watching the game with all the fans in the city. I think we will get the win. It will be close, but we’re going to do it.”

Kevin Lynch, a 41-year-old police officer from Aberdeen, said: “It’s amazing to finally be here after waiting all this time.

“The whole place is bouncing. Everybody has been excited before we got here – but now we are here it is finally starting to sink in – we’re actually going to be at a World Cup.

“It think it’s going to be amazing tonight. It’s going to be emotional – but it’s going to be good.

“We’ve got tickets for all three games. I’ve got a month off my work, so I’m here until I’m here until we go home.

“I think we will get the win we need tonight – but I don’t think it’s going to be pretty.

“It won’t be a walkover, they’re going to be looking at us as their easiest opponent as well.

“So I think it’s going to be tough, but I think we’re going to win 2-0.”

Speaking from the party boat as he enjoyed his first beer of the day, Kenny Hall, a 61-year-old retired police officer from East Lothian, said: “It’s unbelievable to be here.

“The locals have been absolutely fantastic. The boat is absolutely brilliant. It’s an open bar which could be dangerous, though – so it’s a good job we’re speaking to you now and go later!

“I don’t know where we will watch the game tonight. We’ll just play it by years – head into the city centre, and try and get the party started.

“It’s obviously a huge game tonight but I think we will win. 2-0 Scott McTominay double.”

Bronwyn Heatherwick, a 28-year-old NDT technician from Aberdeen, added: “It’s absolutely amazing to be here. We’re here with the North East Tartan Army and we have organised a few of these boat parties – but this has to be one of the best.

“After this we will be heading to a tailgate party with a bbq before the match. I have a ticket for the game and we just can’t wait for it. I’m predicting a 3-1 win with Lawrence Shankland to score.”

Get Daily Record Premium for just £1 per month in exclusive offer to celebrate the world cup. Click HERE.

The offer is a light-hearted nod to Italy’s absence from this year’s FIFA World Cup, the third consecutive tournament the nation has missed out on qualifying for.

Up to Thursday, June 18, Italians dining at any Zizzi restaurant can enjoy a complimentary main course by simply showing their passport and purchasing a full-price drink.

More details on the offer can be found on the Zizzi website.

“We wanted to give Italians across the UK a reason to celebrate”

Discussing why they created the offer, Corrine Prior, brand and customer experience director at Zizzi, said: “While the Azzurri may not be competing this summer, we wanted to give Italians across the UK a reason to celebrate.

“Italy has already given the world the things people crave during tournament season, pasta, pizza and gathering around a table with friends and family.”

The campaign, titled ‘Forza Italia, Forza Zizzi,’ playfully positions Zizzi as an alternative way for Italian nationals to celebrate their heritage this summer.

With more than 340,000 Italians living in the UK, the offer serves as a small consolation for missing out on the football and a celebration of the country’s rich food culture.

For non-Italians, Zizzi is also offering 30% off all food, including starters, sharers, mains, and desserts.

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This will be in place until Friday, June 26, which marks the end of the group stages.

The restaurant chain says Italians still have plenty to celebrate, even if their team won’t be lifting the trophy this year.

Will you be making the most of the Zizzi free main course offer? Let us know in the comments.

Pike, who won an Olivier award for her role as a crown court judge in the Suzie Miller play, said the texter had broken the bond between cast and audience, The Times reported.On Saturday, it is understood that a member of the audience sitting in the front row failed to notice a phone alarm ringing for more than a minute.

Dotted right there on the corner of King Street and Market Street – essentially Westhoughton’s main street – you couldn’t pick a more conspicuous location for an eatery.

Wandering past you’ll find Provenance Artisan Food Hall – one of the best places to eat and shop not only in Westhoughton, but in all of Bolton.

(Image: Dan Dougherty)

Provenance was set up around three years ago by Paul Rogers, a man with decades of experience in the food and catering industries. He bought the large, historic building from the Tinniswood family who had spent several years building it up.

“It’s quite a historic building,” said Ethan Rogers, Paul’s son, “It’s great – it’s three storeys, and everything’s in house.”

The three-storey building Paul chose to inhabit has been put to versatile use. The ground floor sells drinks, pies, and cakes, with seating available for anyone wanting to sit inside. There is also an in-house butcher, selling top-quality ingredients, a full spice rack, fresh fruit and veg, wine, and all sorts of other treats.

(Image: Dan Dougherty)

The middle floor is the café, serving a wide menu of breakfast and lunch items from the in-house kitchen. All the classics are there – eggs Benedict, Caesar salads, steak frites – as well as a Sunday lunch roast menu and afternoon tea.

The top floor is the Provenance bakery, where the team’s in-house chefs bake fresh pastries for the two floors below them.

But the times are a-changing at Provenance.

(Image: Dan Dougherty)

Ethan only joined the business full time last year, working previously as a pool cleaner around Bolton. Despite the recency of his start-date, though, Gen Z Ethan has big plans for the place.

“I’m part of the generation where people are eating and drinking things I don’t even really understand – all the matcha and the Spanish coffees and things like that.

“My dad’s stepped back a bit and he’s given more freedom to me and Tom,” Ethan said.

(Image: Dan Dougherty)

Tom is the Provenance chef – he’s worked with Ethan’s dad on many occasions across many different locations throughout the years.

“Me and Tom have been trying to butt heads about what we’re going to do.”

Tom jumped in: “We want really good pies, really good pastries, different fillings, veg products, meat products.”

Butcher Rodney Mayoh (Image: Dan Dougherty)

And if Ethan and Tom want to start getting creative, Provenance is certainly a large enough canvas. Three floors, hundreds of products, and outside, a rapidly-growing town of 25,000.

“It’s a massive building – think of all the things we could do in here. It’s good now, but there’s so much more we could do with it.

“Everything we have is local. Our bread is from Ecclestone, our Basque cheesecakes are from Westhoughton, all the bakery stuff is made upstairs, the cheese is from Harvey and Brockless in Manchester – it’s all about the community.”

(Image: Dan Dougherty)

‘Community’ is at the heart of what Ethan wants to do with Provenance.

“We want to start pushing upstairs with the shop – create somewhere where people can come in and do a bit of work.

“We have Hive products, and they’re great, but nobody is doing all of it at once. Nobody is offering the comfortable, relaxing, Manchester-style atmosphere, and that needs to come over.

(Image: Dan Dougherty)

“Because then you get those people, you get people from other places, people visiting Westhoughton – it builds the town.

“Gen-Z is coming up – the oldest Gen Z people are now 29.”

There are barriers to this, as Ethan realises. The first thing may be the perception of Provenance as an expensive place to eat – a perception bolstered not a little by the self-designation of ‘artisan food hall’.

(Image: Dan Dougherty)

“But ‘artisan’ doesn’t have to mean expensive,” said Ethan, “it just means quality.

“We once had a food influencer come to Westhoughton and he was filming in the street. He was saying, on camera, ‘where else can I go to eat in Westhoughton?’ We were in the background as he was talking and he didn’t even think to come in here!

“So we have the restaurant, but we want to push it into more of a hybrid with a café.

(Image: Dan Dougherty)

“We have so many students around here that want a place to just sit and work, and there’s nowhere really you can do that.

“We’ll be doing it on the first floor – we just need to get our heads around it first. Then we have to let everyone know they can come here and eat and work and relax.”

As a concession to changing trends, Provenance recently acquired a canning machine, that they can use to make matcha, iced coffees, and even cocktails.

“We want it to have that cosy vibe upstairs – rustic. It’s dining-room seating at the moment, but we want it to be mix-and-match, so it will have those chesterfields, warm and welcoming vibe.”

(Image: Dan Dougherty)

What isn’t going to change is the commitment to quality. Ethan may be pushing the business in a slightly different direction, but the fresh meat, local cheeses, restaurant-tier cakes, and sausage rolls they require a knife and fork – all that is going nowhere.

As the ‘Provenance’ name indicates, no matter how much they change, they aren’t going to forget where they came from.

EXCLUSIVE: When the Royal Family made their way to the Buckingham Palace balcony for the RAF flypast to signify the conclusion of Trooping the Colour, royal fans were eager to catch a glimpse of the rarely-seen Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.

And according to body langage expert Judi James, 11-year-old Charlotte was ‘in charge’ of the Wales family and their presentation to a see of royal fans who had descended on the Mall.

Judi told the Mirror: “It was Charlotte in charge of the choreography here, motioning Louis to his ‘spot’ with a two-handed gesture and checking George, ushered with one very tender hand on the back by his mother, got to his place in the line-up, too.”

The expert added of her older brother Prince George: “Perhaps because he will soon be off to ‘big’ school, George appeared to want to stick close to his mother here. After William waved Charlotte and Louis into the front row, George stood beside his mother, even side-stepping across to get closer.

“Not only did this place him more in the ‘grown ups’ row, he was able to keep Kate company as they chatted and laughed together fondly.”

The route will be free for everyone to use in its first two weeks

A Cambridgeshire city is set to get a new bus service which will be free for its first two weeks. From Monday, June 29, the new Peterborough 26/26A service will begin operation, linking Queensgate to Longthorpe, Serpentine Green, Great Haddon, Yaxley, Farcet and Fletton.

Buses will be operating hourly in both directions, with 26 travelling clockwise and 26A anticlockwise. On Saturdays, buses will operate between Yaxley and Peterborough via Great Haddon, Serpentine Green and Longthorpe only.

Central Connect, who will be operating the new service, have said that fares for this route will remain below the national fare cap, with fares to and from Peterborough Centre costing £2.80. Discounts are also available to anyone buying day or season passes.

For journeys around the loop that don’t start or finish at Queensgate or Rivergate, an Orbital Single will cost £2. For the first two weeks, 26 and 26A will operate completely free to everyone as an introductory offer.

George Russell took a morale-boosting pole for Sunday’s Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix and will line up alongside a resurgent Lewis Hamilton on the front row in Spain.

Russell, who has had a torrid few weeks in which he has fallen 68 points behind Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli in the title race, told his team it was “nice to feel the groove again” as he returned to the pits.

The British driver beat Antonelli by over three-tenths of a second at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya to continue his fine form from practice.

Hamilton, who has profited from Russell’s recent struggles to move into second in the championship, very nearly pipped his former Mercedes team-mate to pole. The seven-time world champion was up on Russell’s time midway through his final push lap, but lost time in the final sector to finish 0.064sec behind.

Hamilton’s Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc suffered a heavy shunt in Q3, bringing out red flags while marshals carried out repairs to the barriers. It follows the Monegasque’s race-ending crash in Monaco last weekend, since when he has switched his brake setup to match his team mate. Leclerc’s latest accident led to suggestions he may be rattled by Hamilton’s form.

Antonelli will start third, with McLaren’s Lando Norris fourth and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen fifth.

More to follow…

The Lotto draw, which has an estimated jackpot of £2 million, will take place at 8pm tonight. To win the jackpot, a player must match all six main numbers. The odds of winning the Lotto jackpot are about one in 45,057,474.

Meanwhile, the Thunderball draw, which has a top prize of £500,000, will take place at 8.15pm. The odds of winning the Thunderball top prize are about one in 8,060,598. Other smaller prizes, ranging from £3 to £5,000, are also up for grabs. Players have a one in 13 chance of winning any prize in each Thunderball draw.

The Great Knaresborough Bed Race saw thousands of residents and visitors of Knaresborough line its streets to cheer on 90 teams as they sped to the finish line at Conyngham Hall today (Saturday, June 13).

The event has been a highlight of the town’s calendar – excluding 2020 and 2021 – since 1966.

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It sees participants, including one passenger sat on a decorated bed, race across Knaresborough in a gruelling course of 2.4 miles.

Each year, teams are also judged on their bed decoration in accordance with a certain subject – with 2026’s event marking 60 years since the inaugural bed race day and a fitting ‘Swinging Sixties’ theme.

Ninety teams took part in this year’s Bed Race – adopting a ‘Swinging Sixties’ theme (Image: Lisa Young – Camera Club)

Speaking about this, chairman of the Bed Race organising committee, Jatinder Khalsi, said: “Themes are changed every year, which keeps the Best Dressed Bed competition fresh and really alive.

“Last term it was TV Adverts and before that we have had Innovations, Entertainment, the Environment, Yorkshire, Heroes and Villains.

“But this year, with its great significance of six decades of Bed Race, what else could we have had as a theme but ‘The Swinging Sixties’?

“The idea is to give the teams the broadest canvas to spark their creative juices to come up with ingenious designs.

“Cross-dressing is a major focus and it all adds up to a wonderful parade through town.”

Delays are expected as closures along Market Place, High Street, Bond End and Harrogate Road lift.

Readers have been debating road safety on Sycamore Avenue in Dogsthorpe, Peterborough, after two teenagers were seriously injured when the car they were driving struck three parked vehicles.

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Cambridgeshire Live readers have debated a local report about motorists using residential streets that led to a collision. Contributors expressed firm opinions on speeding, enforcement, and the consequences for emergency services and cyclists.

A city councillor is demanding action to address speeding and reckless driving on a Peterborough road after two teenagers sustained serious injuries in a crash.

Dogsthorpe Councillor Katy Cole is scheduled to meet with residents, police, Peterborough City Council officers, ward councillors and Cabinet colleagues on Tuesday, 9 June, to explore measures that could tackle speeding and road safety issues.

“The reason I’ve put this meeting together is so that the [council] officers, the police and Angus Ellis (Cabinet Member for Transport) can come up with a plan,” Cllr Cole said.

The residential streets surrounding Sycamore Avenue are recognised as an area where drivers regularly travel erratically at excessive speeds. Earlier this month, two teenagers suffered serious injuries after the vehicle they were driving collided with three parked cars.

One reader, Garyblowpants comments: “Looks like it needs more speed bumps and cameras. Speed bumps and also potholes give drivers a much-needed massage in the lower region from their long hours of sitting in queues of their own causing. They should be thankful!”

Freddly writes: “I’m equally concerned about the ‘respectable’ drivers in Dogsthorpe who routinely drive at 45 in a 30 zone. We will not solve this problem until the fines are commensurate with the danger to life. There is very little speeding in Aus / NZ towns and cities because the fines are many hundreds, every time.”

Skipper says: “Problem is, 99.999% of drivers drive sensibly, but all of us are penalised rather than tackling persistent offenders. Of course, the anti-car councils use it to make life even more unpleasant for drivers.”

Tyrannosaurus adds: “Elected in 2023 and not many months without concerns from residents. It’s nearly halfway through 2026, so why has she ignored her residents’ concerns for 3 years? And let me get this straight, she can ask for meetings with the police, and they attend, yet if you’re a normal citizen of this dump, the only time you get to see a police clown is when they are watching football, watching whatever fun run is going on or if there is a new Greggs opening. Perhaps if they weren’t sitting around in meetings, they could possibly do their job and actually deal with crime, but no, they only have the resources for the 3 things mentioned above and sitting around in 3 years to late meetings.”

While over on our Facebook page, Katie R B comments: “It won’t change, they’re like it everywhere in Borough, Paston, Dogthorpe, Westwood. There’s a long road or ring road; they’ve always done it.”

Janie M mentions: “Thought it was King’s Hedges road, Cambridge, as that’s a rat race too. Ballacarva idiots doing wheelies, speeding on those stolen motorbikes. Seems it’s the same.”

Will more speed bumps/cameras solve this issue? Comment below or HERE to have your say.